Brewery Architecture

BREWERIES
AND ARCHITECTURE

British Breweries: An Architectural History by Lynn Pearson, published by the Hambledon Press in 2000. You can buy the book from Amazon.

The Architectural History of Breweries

Lynn worked with the Brewery History Society (BHS) during 2007-10 on the Brewing Industry project funded by English Heritage to explore the historic industrial environment of the brewing industry. The post-project conference 'The Last Drop: England's Surviving Brewery Heritage' took place on Saturday 12 March 2011 at the National Brewery Centre in Burton upon Trent. The reports (see covers below) can now be downloaded from the English Heritage website. One of the events leading up to this project was the BHS/Victorian Society study day 'From hops to hostelry: the brewing and licensed trades 1837-1914' which took place at Young's Brewery, Wandsworth on 25th February 2006. You can read Lynn's paper Towers of Strength: Brewery architecture at home and abroad here (you will need acrobat reader).

Lynn is working on a new book on the history and heritage of brewing and breweries, due to be published in autumn 2013. Follow its progress on Lynn's blog about researching and writing the book - the Built for Brewing blog.

Read or download Lynn's article Decorative ceramics in the buildings of the British brewing industry from the Journal of the Tiles and Architectural Ceramics Society (2000), volume 8, pp26-36.

The architectural and townscape influence of the brewing industry was not restricted to brewery buildings alone - churches were endowed by brewers, they built a significant number of country houses, there are tombstones, memorial windows, statues and much more. Left is Michael Bass, 1st Baron Bass of Burton (Burton upon Trent, 1911, F. W. Pomeroy)