Today is the birthday of George Pargiter Fuller (January 8, 1833-April 2, 1927). He was the “the eldest surviving son of John Bird Fuller, a partner in Fuller Smith & Turner, brewers.” “Fuller inherited a share in the family brewery (in Chiswick, London) on his father’s death in 1872, and was also chairman of Avon Rubber in Melksham.

He also served as High Sheriff of Wiltshire in 1878. He lived at Neston Park, Corsham, Wiltshire.” He spent most of his time, however, as a politician. He “was a member of the Wiltshire County Council, chairman of the Chippenham Rural District Council and of the Corsham Parish Council and School Board and a Justice of the Peace for Wiltshire,” and “a Liberal Party politician in the United Kingdom who sat in the House of Commons from 1885 to 1895.” Despite his lineage and ownership stake in his family’s brewery, he doesn’t appear to have been very involved in its management at all.

The Fuller’s Brewery in 1902.

Today is the birthday of John Courage (October 1, 1761-October 1797). He founded the Courage Brewery in London in 1787, when he bought a brew house in Horselydown, Bermondsey, London.

This biography is from Courage & Co., a website dedicated to the Courage Brewery and the Courage family.

John Courage, the founder of Courage & Co., came to London in 1780 as a
younger son of a French Huguenot family who had been exiled and settled in Scotland a century before.

In a letter dated 7th February 1786, the Founder’s sister writes to him congratulating him on his marriage to Harriet Murdoch and that “the marriage is no surprise to us and be that she be a sober good woman and that we drank your health on your marriage night very hearty.”

By 1787 he had already been in business in London for eight years as an agent for the Glasgow shipping firm of Carron which traded from the Glasgow Wharf (the Carron and Continental Wharves) on the north side of the Thames, downstream from the Tower of London.

John Courage was the only surviving son of his late father, Alexander, when he left Aberdeen for London in about 1780 to become the Wapping agent for Carron Shipping, leaving behind in Aberdeen his mother Isabel and his unmarried sister Ann. John could see across the river to the foreshore of Southwark and decided to diversify his interests by going into the beer business. Thus it was that the name of Courage became associated with the brewing industry.

When John Courage, together with a number of friends, settled for the purchase of a brew house at Horselydown, on the south bank of the Thames, he was investing his acumen and money in a staple industry at an opportune time. He purchased the Anchor Brewery at Horselydown, Bermondsey, in 1787 from John and Hagger Ellis. An earlier owner of the Brewery was Vassal Webbing a Flemish émigré. What is interesting is that both Vassal Webbing and John were described in G.N. Hardinge’s book, Courages 1787-1932, as being Protestant émigrés. Frank Courage wrote to his daughter Milly in New Zealand in 1914, that he thought John (his Grandfather), could have come from Flanders, as brewing has always been more of an industry there than in France. The only known French Protestant Courages in the 1600s were Thomas and Nicholas Courage, and their names do not appear in Aberdeen, so the search has shifted to Flanders (Belgium), for our Protestant forebears.

On 17th December 1787, John Courage, aged 26, paid a cheque for £100 to the Morris Estate as part payment for the Private House and Old Brewhouse at Horselydown over the Thames and opposite Wapping. On Christmas Eve, John paid the balance on the purchase of £674 18s 9d. On 4th January 1788, he paid George Courage £26 6s for sundries and scroll book. On 15th January 1788 John purchased one silk waistcoat for 19 shillings 8d, and on 7th June paid John Ward £10 for a gelding. On 15th November 1788, the Founder’s sister Ann writes to her brother “this piece of news that our king is died” (Bonnie Prince Charlie in exile in Italy).

In March 1793, tragedy struck and John’s sister Ann died of a fever in Aberdeen and was buried beside her father in Old Machar; there is a long letter from the Founder’s mother, Isabel Courage, about this in the Courage Collection at the Greater London Record Office, EC1, together with the other original letters that survive from this period including the old brewery book.

In May 1793, Archibald Courage from Findhorn supplies his cousin “with 1000 American staves and 20 bundles hoops”. Courage Beer was being shipped all over the world, as its reputation grew. 2 hogsheads of Porter on 25th February 1793 were shipped back to Scotland to the Earl of Fife,
and throughout 1794 barrels of porter were dispatched to India, Dominica, Antigua, Amsterdam, Hambro, Gibraltar and Lisbon. Ann Murdoch, the Founder’s mother-in-law spent £6-10-6 on clothes for her grandson John in September 1796 and Mrs Courage’s house expenses for the month of October 1796 were £9-6-10d.

On 26th June 1788 a son, John, was born to John and his wife Harriet and on 8th June 1790 twins Ann and Elizabeth were born. On 23rd February 1795 another daughter, Harriet, was born.

John Courage died in October 1797 aged 36 and was buried at St John’s, Horselydown. His widow, Harriet died in May the following year aged 32, and was also buried at Horselydown. On Harriet’s death, the new John Courage was only 10, and John Donaldson, the managing clerk, took over the running of the Brewery, becoming a partner in the newly named firm of Courage and Donaldson, taking a third of the gross profits which was afterwards enlarged to half, as well as half of the capital.

This is a short history of the brewery from its Wikipedia page:

Courage & Co Ltd was started by John Courage at the Anchor Brewhouse in Horsleydown, Bermondsey in 1787. He was a Scottish shipping agent of French Huguenot descent. It became Courage & Donaldson in 1797. By 1888, it had been registered simply as Courage. In 1955, the company merged with Barclay, Perkins & Co Ltd (who were located at the nearby Anchor Brewery) to become Courage, Barclay & Co Ltd. Only five years later another merger with the Reading based Simonds Brewery led to the name changing to Courage, Barclay, Simonds & Co Ltd. In the late 1960s, the group had assets of approximately £100m, and operated five breweries in London, Reading, Bristol, Plymouth and Newark-on-Trent. It owned some 5,000 licensed premises spread over the whole of Southern England, a large part of South Wales and an extensive area of the East Midlands and South Yorkshire. It was employing some 15,000 people and producing something like 75 million imperial gallons (340,000,000 L) of beer annually. Its name was simplified to Courage Ltd in October 1970 and the company was taken over by the Imperial Tobacco Group Ltd two years later.

Its vast Worton Grange (later the Berkshire) brewery was opened on the Reading/Shinfield border in 1978. The Anchor Brewery closed in 1981 and all brewing was transferred to Reading. Imperial Tobacco was acquired by the Hanson Trust in 1986 and it sold off Courage to Elders IXL who were renamed the Foster’s Brewing Group in 1990. The following year the Courage section of Foster’s merged with the breweries of Grand Metropolitan. Its public houses were owned by a joint-company called Inntrepreneur Estates. Scottish & Newcastle purchased Courage from Foster’s in 1995, creating Scottish Courage as its brewing arm.

Today is the birthday of Thomas William Everard (September 8, 1851-January 1, 1925). Thomas William Everard was the son of William Everard, co-founder of what would become known as the Everards Brewery, which is still a going concern today, and is still run by an Everard, who is fifth generation from William, and fourth from Thomas William.

Here is Thomas William Everard’s short biography from the brewery website:

Thomas William Everard was born on the 8th of September 1851, the year the Great Exhibition was staged by Prince Albert in Crystal Palace in London. He was the youngest of three children and joined his father’s firm at an early age. Thomas became very involved in his work at the brewery. He was so fond of his work he did not like to take holidays.

In 1890 a new partnership was formed to run the company- Everards, Son and Welldo. The partners were Thomas, his 69 year old father William, and a local wine and spirits merchant. Charles Leeds William Welldon.

Thomas took over the running of the brewery after the death of his father William, in 1892. He married Florence Muriel Nickisson of London on the 28th of September 1888. They had two children-William Lindsay, born in 1891, and his sister Phyllis Muriel, born three years later. William Lindsay would later go onto run the brewery.

Thomas enjoyed both country and urban life and was an active member of the Leicestershire Agricultural Society, as was his father. He continued the Everards tradition of public service and, like his father; he became a J.P. before being made a deputy Lieutenant of the County, and, in 1905, High Sheriff.

The brewery, around 1875.

And here’s the basic brewery history from Wikipedia:

The company began as Hull and Everard in 1849 when William Everard, a farmer from Narborough Wood House and brewer Thomas Hull leased the Southgate Street Brewery of Wilmot and Co from the retiring proprietors. Although Hull continued as a maltster, Everard was the driving force behind the business which he managed until his death in 1892.

The business expanded as the company progressively acquired outlets, with over 100 pubs by the late 1880s. In 1875 the company moved to a new state of the art tower brewery designed by William’s nephew architect John Breedon Everard. The brewery, on the corner of Southgate St and Castle St extracted very pure water from wells 300 feet deep beneath the premises and steam engines played a significant part in the mechanisation.

After the death of William, control passed to his son Thomas. The historic centre of the UK brewing industry remained some 40 miles away at Burton-upon-Trent, which by the 1890s produced one tenth of Britain’s beer. Everard’s leased the Bridge Brewery on Umplett Green island in 1895 but its 10,000 barrels per year capacity proved insufficient. It was replaced with the newer Trent brewery in Dale St which became available after going into liquidation in 1898. The Southgate brewery remained the distribution centre to the Leicestershire pubs with beer arriving by rail from Burton. The Trent brewery was purchased outright in 1901. It was renamed the Tiger Brewery around 1970.

At some point their Tiger Best Bitter became their flagship beer, and I remember really enjoying during my first CAMRA festival in the early 1990s. It was a regional festival in Peterborough, which happened to be going on in later summer at the end of my wife’s summer semester at the University of Durham. So we took the train up to Peterborough from London to attend the festival, and it was great fun. I had many fine beer that night, but for whatever reason I clearly recall liking this one.

Today is the birthday of Timothy Taylor (August 6, 1826-January 1898). He was born in Bingley, part of West Riding in Yorkshire, England. In 1858, he founded a brewery with two partners, local businessmen James Shackleton and John Naylor, but by 1863 the partnership was dissolved and it became known as Timothy Taylor & Co. His sons, Percy and Robert Henry, joined him in the family business, and today the brewery remains in the Taylor family.

Here’s part of the early history of the brewery from the UK journal Brewery History:

Timothy Taylor, born on the sixth of August 1826 at Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, was the eldest son of Richard and Elizabeth Taylor (neé Petyt). The family lived at Myrtle Place, Bingley, in 1841. Richard’s trade was tailoring and at that time they had an apprentice living with them. By the following census, Timothy had joined his father in business, then at premises on the Main Street, Bingley.

Between the years 1854 and 1857 a branch of Taylor & Sons, tailors and drapers, became established in Low Street, Keighley, with Timothy moving there, presumably to manage the outlet. The town had a population of 18,259 in 1851, with its main industries being the manufacture of textiles and engineering. Drinkers were able to slake their thirsts at eighteen fully licensed public houses and nine beerhouses. Three pubs were situated in Low Street, the thoroughfare where Timothy had set up shop.

Next door to his premises was the business and residence of Robert Aked, printer, stationer and stamp distributor.

Robert had one daughter, Charlotte, who married Timothy on the seventeenth of September, 1857 at the parish church. The following year Timothy commenced brewing in Cook Lane, a road that adjoined Low Street.

Whether his father-in-law instigated this new career move or was entirely of Timothy’s own volition it is not known, obviously he would have seen the amount of trade done by the local inns. He continued with his tailoring and drapery business, which had by 1861 been removed a short distance along Low Street, to a point where it became Change Gate. The company purchased their first public houses during 1859, the Volunteer’s Arms, Lawkholme Lane, Keighley, and New Inn at Bocking.

Richard Metcalf of Barking, Essex, presumably a property speculator, offered for sale in May 1863, the Knowle Park Estate, either in one lot or several lots. Timothy bought an area of land 5,000 square yards, forming part of Walker Royd Close, opposite Knowle Park Farm. The purchase of this green field site, about half a mile from the Cook Lane property provided the opportunity to move away from what was at that time the rather insanitary centre of Keighley and secure a pure supply of brewing liquor. An application to build at the Knowle came before the Keighley Local Board of Health in June 1863, sometime after that date Knowle Spring House, brewhouse and maltkiln were erected. The dwelling house was built as two homes for the Taylor and Aked families. Ownership of the land changed in September 1863 to Robert Aked. In this rural idyll, Timothy also farmed and when he later advertised for a malt kiln worker, one with agricultural experience was preferred.

By 1867 it appears he had severed all connections with the textile trade and a couple of years later showed his commitment to the local brewing trade by joining the Bradford and District Brewers’ Association’s first committee.

And this early history is from the UK blog Make Mine A Magee’s:

The founder of the firm, Timothy was born in Bingley in the West Riding of Yorkshire, on the 6th of August 1826 to Richard and his wife Elizabeth. Richard Taylor was, appropriately enough a Tailor, who at the time of Timothys birth was living on Myrtle Place in Bingley; and his eldest son joined him in his business. Soon after leaving school in 1841, where he quickly learned his fathers trade and went on to become the companys salesman in the local towns, and by 1853 the concern was known as Richard Taylor & Sons with premises on Main Street in Bingley and a second branch opening in Keighley in 1854; where Timothy was joined by his younger brother, Henry. However after two years the business partnership was dissolved; with Henry Taylor moving back to help run his fathers business in Bingley as a separate concern. The neighbours of Timothy at his premises on Low Street in Keighley included another local businessman, Robert Aked whose daughter Charlotte was to marry Timothy Taylor, in the parish church of Keighley on September 17, 1857.

In 1858, a family tragedy (the death of Timothy`s brother-in-law, Charles) quite probably gave him the inspiration to enter the brewing trade; as later in 1858, he entered into a partnership with local businessmen James Shackleton and John Naylor An old barn and stables on Cook Lane in Keighley were chosen as suitable for conversion to a brewery and Timothy commenced producing his ales later that year. The business began to prosper and by 1861, the census returns show that Timothy Taylor was listed as a Brewer, employing 8 men and 1 boy; however in 1863, the partnership between Timothy and the other gentlemen was dissolved on the 22nd of April.

Later, in 1863, the estate of the Greenwood family in Keighley; Knowle Park was offered for sale by their agent, and Timothy was possessed of sufficient acumen to acquire a substantial portion of it; and in June of that year, an application was duly presented to the Keighley Board of Health to erect a new brewery and other structures; amongst which was Knowle Spring House, (The family home for many years). By 1867, Timothy had severed most of his close ties with the clothing trade and was a founder member of the first committee of The Bradford & District Brewers Association whose first meetings were held in that year. Sadly, Timothy Taylor passed away in January 1898; with the business carried on by his sons Robert Henry Taylor and Percy Taylor, and by 1911, rising demand for the brewery’s products saw an expansion of the brewery, with new buildings being erected to house a Mill, Mash Tun (which was in use until 2000), Copper and Hop Back (replaced in 1976).