28th March 2024

The Tipperary pub in Fleet Street, London, has reopened after four years of closure, excellent news, since it’s one of the most attractive little pubs in the City. Planning permission was actually granted in April 2020 for its conversion into office...

A fascinating pair of pieces of ephemera, these, because they tells us something about brewing and beer consumption in large households and by farmers, and give a clue as to why farmers who brewed sometimes became actual commercial brewers.
The first is a 163-year-old bill for malt and hops from Samuel Wright of Walkern in Hertfordshire to “S. U. Heathcote”. That is Samuel Unwin Heathcote, Lord of the Manor of Shephall, and owner of Shephalbury Manor, three miles south of Walkern. Samuel...

Frederick William Fellowes was born in Beighton, between Norwich and Yarmouth in Norfolk, in 1856, one of the 10 children of the Reverend Thomas Lyon Fellowes. Several of his brothers, like their father, entered the church. But in 1872 an older sister...

Tuesday, and we’re off travelling again, 20 miles south to Roeselare, and the Rodenbach brewery. To me, as a historian of beer and brewing, Rodenbach is a fascinating operation, since it brews well-aged ales in what is almost certainly the same way that...