British breweries : an architectural history / Lynn Pearson.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Pearson, Lynn F.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Breweries--Great Britain--History.

Breweries.

History.

Great Britain.

Architecture, Industrial--Great Britain.

Local Subjects:

Architecture, Industrial--Great Britain.

Physical Description:

xii, 256 pages : illustrations ; 26 cm

Place of Publication:

London ; Rio Grande, Ohio : Hambledon Press, 1999.

Summary:

'A Magnificence Unspeakable' was how one eighteenth-century London brewery was described. Breweries were often large and striking buildings grouped around the brewhouse tower. When occupying sites in the middle of towns, they formed conspicuous landmarks. As befitted the flagships of a major industry that generated some of the great business fortunes, breweries were designed for architectural grandeur as well as for their function (which demanded size and height). Sir John Soane and Sir Giles Gilbert Scott were amongst the architects responsible for breweries. Brewers were aware of the marketing value of their buildings and used them as advertisements. Around the brewhouse itself were numerous subsidiary buildings, including offices, stables, cooperage, stores and the tap brewery, again often distinctively designed.

What is surprising is that so little attention has been paid to breweries, in contrast to other industrial buildings such as mills and warehouses. British Breweries: An Architectural History is in fact the first book devoted to them as a whole. Heavily illustrated with photographs of existing and vanished breweries, it covers the whole history, from the country house brewhouses of the eighteenth century to the great breweries of Georgian and Victorian England, which reached their ornate peak in the 1870s and 1880s.

Contents:

1 Towers of Strength 1

2 Brewing and Building 13

3 A Magnificence Unspeakable 27

4 Function and Style 41

5 Breweries of the 1870s 61

6 The Rise of the Brewers' Architect 77

7 The Ornamental Brewery 101

8 Decline and Fall 121

9 The Brewery in the Twenty-First Century 141

A Directory of Brewers' Architects, 1780-1939 150

Brewery Construction by Town, 1865-1906 199.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 237-246) and index.

ISBN:

1852851910

OCLC:

42295763