Meux's Brewery

A label from the Nut Brown brand. The horseshoe logo can clearly be seen.

Meux's Brewery Co Ltd was a London brewery owned by Sir Henry Meux. Established in 1764 the company was a major supplier of porter in the area. The company had several breweries around London and was eventually sold off in 1961.

Owners and mergers

Sir Henry Meux, 1st Baronet had been a partner in Reid, Meux & Co, who operated from the Griffin Brewery in Clerkenwell Road. After a dispute in 1807, Sir Henry left the firm and purchased the Horse Shoe Brewery, located on the junction of Tottenham Court Road and Oxford Street, which had been established in 1764^[1]. The horseshoe became part of the Meux identity and was incorporated into their logo. Dudley Marjoribanks, 1st Baron Tweedmouth was the chairman for many years in the 19th century. In 1921, the Thorne Brothers brewery of Nine Elms Lane was also acquired by Meux, and the company brewed there for 43 years.^[2] In 1956, Meux's Brewery merged with Friary, Holroyd and Healy's Breweries Limited based in Guildford, Surrey, to form Friary Meux Limited. They went into liquidation in November 1961 and were acquired by Allied Breweries. The Horseshoe Brewery ceased to brew in 1964, although the Friary Brewery continued until 1969^[3]. The Friary Meux brand was later revived by Allied until they sold their brewing interests to Carlsberg-Tetley in 1997^[4].

1814 vat failure

Main article: London Beer Flood

The Horse Shoe Brewery featured a giant porter vat measuring 22 feet (6.7 m) high and containing 3,555 barrels (565.2 m³). In October 1814, the vat burst when the securing hoops failed. The contents rushed out of the vat into the streets and surrounding buildings. At the time, the brewery was surrounded by small housing owned by the poorer classes of London; some of the buildings could not withstand the force of the flowing beer and collapsed. Eight people are known to have died either from falling debris, drowning, poisoning by the porter fumes, or from inebriation. ^[5][6]

The company found it difficult to cope with the financial implications of the disaster,being mainly a significant loss of sales made worse because they had already paid duty on the beer. They made a successful application to parliament reclaiming the duty which allowed them to continue trading.^[5]

The Horse Shoe brewery was demolished in 1922, and today the Dominion Theatre occupies a part of the site of the former brewery. The adjacent brewery tap, built on a grand scale as a combined pub and restaurant, survived in other uses until 2004.

References

1. ^ The Brewing Industry - a Guide to Historical Records, Lesley Richmond & Alison Turton, Manchester University Press, 1990. p.223
2. ^ The Brewery History Society. "Questions and Answers". Accessed 11 March 2007.
3. ^ http://www.aim25.ac.uk/cgi-bin/vcdf/detail?coll_id=13742&inst_id=118&nv1=search&nv2=
4. ^ http://www.prnewswire.co.uk/cgi/news/release?id=14772
5. ^ ^{a b} British History Online. "Industries: Brewing". Accessed 11 March 2007.
6. ^ RateBeer.com. "Pub Crawls of London". Accessed 11 March 2007.