CAMRA CENTRAL LANCS BRANCH AND ... BEERMATS

This being the 50th year of CAMRA Central Lancashire branch, I am again looking back at the local pub scene in the early years of the branch’s history.

In those days almost all the pubs in the branch area were tied houses selling the products of just one particular brewery. Leaving aside the ‘big six’ brewing companies, in the 1970s the CAMRA Central Lancashire branch area contained pubs owned by a good selection of independent breweries. Matthew Brown easily had the greatest number of pubs, but there were also plenty of pubs owned by Thwaites, Boddingtons, and Greenall Whitley, while Burtonwood, Higsons, Robinsons, Samuel Smiths, Vaux, and Yates & Jackson were also represented in smaller numbers. For good measure, and not too far away from the branch boundaries, there were also pubs tied to Hartleys, Holts, Hydes, Lees, Mitchells, and Oldham.

All these breweries produced their own beermats, and some seemed to take it as a challenge to produce beermats that were the most memorable or the most eye catching in promoting the consumption of their products. This was a time when lagers and keg beers were being heavily promoted, but still there were plenty of beermats that were produced to publicise the qualities of a brewery’s cask beers.

The most prolific beermat producers were GREENALL WHITLEY. Over a number of years they continued to churn out an endless supply of humorous beermats. Often these beermats contained two corny cartoon jokes, with one being printed on either side of the mat. Some of these jokes may now be looked on as being politically incorrect, but most were just cringeworthy harmless fun. Another amusing series of their beermats featured cartoons by Bill Tidy – famous for creating What’s Brewing’s Kegbuster, but also a friend to our branch as the cover artist for two Real Ale Guides that were produced.

Also featuring on their beermats was the idea of a utopian ‘Greenall Whitley land’ where drinkers could go for their fill of Greenall Whitley beers. The phrases ‘Smile please, you’re in Greenall Whitley land’ and ‘It’s Local Time in Greenall Whitley land’ later gave way to the unforgettable ‘I wish I was in Greenall Whitley land’, which as a song was heavily advertised on television.

HIGSONS were another brewery to produce several series of humorous beermats. They came up with a great concept, producing beermats featuring a colourful set of Merseyside characters like Ann Field – a Liverpool FC supporter, Pierre Head – a French balladeer, Wallace E Tunnel – the human mole who built the second Mersey Tunnel, and those feared bottle snatchers Birk ‘n’ Head. I always wondered what similar characters we could find in the Central Lancashire branch area – what about Bamber Bridge – a rejected presenter of University Challenge; Chi Ping – a Chinese restaurant owner; or Friar Gate – a monk who frequents the local Wetherspoons pub. Perhaps there should be a prize of a free subscription to Ale Cry for anyone who can come up with anything better?

Another clever idea thought up by Higsons was to have beermats that featured made-up Higson words. Examples of this were – Higsomnia, when you can’t sleep without a glass of Higsons; Hignorant –someone who has never tried their beers; and Higscursion – the name given to a Higsons pub trip.

In contrast ROBINSONS were usually more serious in their outlook, for many years producing beermats that featured pub signs from their 300 plus tied house estate. There always seemed to be plenty of beermats around featuring their pubs in Cheshire, Derbyshire, and North Wales, but I never saw any featuring the pubs in our area. Whether or not they did ever produce beermats for the Black Horse in Preston, or the Myerscough at Balderstone, I don’t know.

Another set of beermats found in Robinsons pubs followed the theme ‘pure poetry’. This consisted of a collection of poems, some serious but most humorous, that had been sent in by their customers, usually expressing their liking for a particular Robinsons pub.

Not all breweries were quite as adventurous as Greenall Whitley, Higsons, and Robinsons. Over the years THWAITES beermats did not tend to change a great deal, with Thwaites Mild and Thwaites Bitter often being presented to the beer drinker as their two choices printed on opposite sides of a beermat. For a time they used the phrase ‘Thwaiting has its rewards’, with fictional sportsmen like cricketer ‘Batty’ Bates being pictured opting for a pint of Thwaites beer after his latest triumph.

Similarly BODDINGTONS (while an independent brewery) were also usually content to produce plain looking beermats containing just the name of the brewery or the name of one of their beers. In later years they followed the Higsons and Thwaites line, producing beermats that utilised a play on words, examples of this being – Boddy language; the name on everyboddy’s lips; and have you got someboddy in mind?

With MATTHEW BROWN pubs being thick on the ground in the branch area, their beermats were those most often to be encountered by local drinkers. Known by everyone as Lions, they made use of this on some of their beermats, with references to there being a ‘Lion reserve’ or that you were now in ‘Lion country’. Unfortunately this stance didn’t keep the big-game hunters away, with Scottish & Newcastle eventually going on to slay all the Lions in the branch area.

I have deliberately not said anything about the beermats that were produced to publicise lagers. There were certainly plenty of beermats promoting them – but who now remembers Einhorn (produced by Robinsons), Grunhalle (produced by Greenall Whitley), Slalom (produced by Matthew Brown), and Stein (produced by Thwaites)?

CAMRA members may look back on the mid-to-late 1970s as a time when the organisation came into its own to fight back against the takeover of keg beers and lagers in our pubs. No doubt beermat collectors will probably look back on those same years as the golden age of beermat collecting when there was such a great range of beermats to be found in pubs.

GORDON SMALL