Ale Tales - booklet design by Jo Harrison - Make Bright

CONTENTS

3...........Introduction 7..........“Most streets would have at least one brewery” The old breweries of Lewes. 14..........“We had a brewery poised to take advantage” A revival in traditional brewing. 20..........“The bushel baskets were tipped into pokes” Hop growing and picking in Sussex. 26..........“They used to have long leather aprons on” Draymen and deliveries. 30 .........“You can only drink singing beer and not fighting beer” Folk song and ale tales. 35..........“Licensing laws encouraged more respectable public houses” Changes in drinking culture. 41..........Learning Resources 48..........Acknowledgments

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

INTRODUCTION

In 2013, between May and November, a team of trained volunteers from the Lewes-based Ale and Hearty project recorded a total of twenty oral histories with individuals connected to the brewing industry or the history of brewing in Sussex. This booklet is based upon the themes that have emerged from these collected interviews and each is supported with documentary and photographic resources found during a survey of local archives; both public and private. It was produced by project co-ordinator and freelance oral historian Dr Sam Carroll and local teacher and Key Stage 2 expert Louise Collings. The project was funded by The Heritage Lottery Fund and match funding was provided through a variety of sources who are to be found in our acknowledgements and to whom we extend our sincere gratitude. This booklet gives an insight into the rich cultural heritage of the brewing industry in Lewes and its’ surrounding areas of Sussex. It is designed to appeal to the general reader with an interest in local history or brewing and at the same time to serve as an educational guide for primary schools. A set of teachers’ resources can be found at the back of the booklet. They have been designed for pupils at Key Stage 2, however could easily be adapted for use with lower Key Stage 3 pupils. The six sections correlate with the content of the six themed chapters and could potentially deliver a different focus each week for half a term. The main learning outcome here is to develop a secure knowledge and understanding of the history of the brewing industry in Lewes and the surrounding Sussex countryside. Activities are intentionally open-ended in order to give teachers flexibility to adapt the ideas to suit their own style and to match the needs of their class. The activities reflect the purpose, aims and content of the history Programmes of Study: Key Stages 1 and 2 from the revised National Curriculum (2014). Substantial crosscurricular links exist, mainly in English (spoken language, reading and writing) but also in music and science. A trip to ‘The Keep’, East Sussex’s archive and historical resource centre, is suggested and there are two potential homework activities.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

This publication would not have been possible without the recordings made with the twenty oral interviewees. It is to them that we give our utmost thanks:

Rev. Godfrey Broster was once an excise officer for the Shepherd and Neame brewery in Kent. He is now the vicar of the All Saints Church in Plumpton Green and set up the micro-brewery Rectory Ales, originally, in 1995 in order to raise church funds. Michael Cooper helped create the arts and craft studios Star Gallery in the late 1980s on the premises that had once housed the Beards Star Lane Brewery, Lewes. On first entering the property he found many artefacts left over from its previous usage. John Copper is from Sussex’s well known Copper family who have been collecting, preserving and singing folk songs for around 150 years; going back to John’s great-grandfather James “Brasser” Copper (1845-1924). The family also have a history of running local drinking establishments. John Davey is a local historian who has continued his father’s legacy of researching and delivering talks about Lewes pubs. His father, L. S. Davey, was the author of The Inns of Lewes Past and Present (1977). Jeanette Eason spent many childhood summers of the 1950s hop-picking in Brede, East Sussex. Jeanette’s extended family met for many decades to work the picking season. Lesley Foulkes helped set up Langham Brewery with her partner James Berrow and his co-founding business partner Stephen Mansley. Her background in law and accountancy has been useful for the business and marketing side of things and she also gets involved hands-on when required.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Chris Hare is part of Emily and the Hares who research, perform and teach traditional folks songs from across Sussex and Hampshire. Their HLF funded South Downs Songs Project ran successful workshops over 20112013. David Harris worked for Beards Brewery in Fisher Street Lewes from 1984 until they closed. He worked mostly in local van delivery but sometimes would cover draymen’s rounds in the Beards’ 40 tonne lorries. David Hitchin is a local historian who has a special interest in the history of Lewes Quakers. He has a vast knowledge of the old brewing families of the town and is the author of Quakers in Lewes: An informal history (1984) and (2010). Mathew Homewood is a researcher at the University of Sussex with a specific interest in the social history of “long forgotten” pubs in Lewes. He also works as a freelance genealogist. John Isted was employed by Harveys Brewery for twenty-two years. He worked behind the scenes as part of a small team mostly involved in equipment cleaning and preparation for brewing. Miles Jenner is the son of Anthony Jenner who was first employed by Harveys Brewery in 1938 and later became the company’s Head Brewer, Chairman and Managing Director. Miles grew up at the brewery and followed in his father’s footsteps to become the present day Head Brewer and Joint Managing Director. Bunny Lucas and her husband Gary set up Kissingate Brewery in the garage of their Crawley home in 2009. They soon outgrew the space and relocated to the Church Lane Farm Estate near Horsham. Bunny’s role is marketing and overseeing brewery cleaning and maintenance.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

David Muggleton is a social historian at the University of Chichester with a specific interest in leisure and drinking culture. He is the editor of the Sussex Drinker and writes the on-line blog The Quaffer. Steve Sewell (and his sister Anthea) grew up at Little Pells Farm in Wadhurst, East Sussex. Steve now manages the farm where they still grow award winning hops. Amongst other breweries they supply Harveys. Mark Tranter began working at the Dark Star Brewery at its origins in the basement of The Evening Star pub in Brighton. He was employed by Rob Jones and his experience as a cook and home brewer helped to develop his skills on the job in order for him to become the master brewer he is today. Les Travers is Head Brewer at Turners Brewery. In 2010 they set up a cuckoo brewery (using other brewery’s spare capacity) to craft their ale. The team now have an established premises at High Field Farm, Ringmer. Robert Wallace is the owner of the Kings Head Pub in East Hoathly. He set up the 1648 Brewing Company with brewer David Seabrook in an old stable block adjacent to the pub in 2002. Elena Jean Washer (and her sister Beryl) grew up in the Ashby family who have owned Willetts Farm in Blackham, East Sussex for four generations. The farm’s hop gardens employed local families for hop-picking each season until the 1970s. Andy Westwood worked for Harveys Brewery as a drayman from 1992 until he retired in 2013. Starting as an agency worker he went on to be a regular HGV driver and skilled worker. Over the years he forged good relationships with Harveys’ customers.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

“MOST STREETS WOULD HAVE AT LEAST ONE BREWERY” The old breweries of Lewes.

John Harvey’s Brewery at Cliffe Bridge courtesy of John Davey

In medieval times, brewing on the largest scale was carried out in monasteries such as Lewes Priory. Later on as small towns grew in terms of commerce and industry, brewing became a fruitful business. Lewes to a great extent was built on a brewing heritage and made its fortune through the creation of ale. With water often being unsafe to drink, brewing originated as an everyday domestic activity in order to produce a liquid that was most people’s staple drink or “small beer” as it was known. The town didn’t develop as an important industrial centre, its inhabitants being largely concerned with agriculture, however, the vogue of Lewes as a residential and marketing centre made brewing a profitable industry and led to the establishment of a good many breweries and ale houses. The brewing industry was advanced by a robust rural agricultural trade, that of growing hops, barley and brewing malt. Related industry resulting from this brewing trade locally included Blacksmith trades, Coopers, Malthouse workers, coppersmiths, brewery engineers and brewery architects. The cattle market, held near to the High Street, was also a regular draw for

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

local farmers. By the end of the 19th C the town had housed nine major brew eries, namely Ballards, Beards Brewery, the Bear Brewery, Castle Brewery, Harveys, Lyells, South Malling Brewery, the Southdown Brewery and Verralls. In addition to these, most of the abundant ale houses would also brew on their own premises. In the early 20th C, with the emergence of keg beer technology, many of these older breweries with long established traditions began to decline and larger companies such as Tamplins and Greene King moved in to amalgamate with or buy up the smaller competition. In Lewes, Harveys and Beards held out the longest with the latter closing in the 1980s; by then there remained a sense of these old industries being trapped in time. Harveys was the only one to survive to experience the re-emergence of interest in real ale. It has since thrived and remains as a symbol of homage to past techniques having brewed on the same site at Bridge Wharf since 1790.

Lyell Brothers Brewery in Malling Street courtesy of John Davey

Rev Godfrey Broster

The first forms of brewing on a commercial scale, happened in the monasteries and until the 20th C, the only safe drink was in fact beer, because it was boiled and therefore it was pure. Every monastery had its own brew-house and they probably would have only brewed one beer. It would have been brewed from a variety of things, barley, wheat, whatever they could lay their hands on. What you would have seen in the brew-house would have been something very similar to that which I use. There would have been a big mash tun, in which the monks would have mashed, by hand, with great big paddles, and they did that up until probably the middle of the 19thC when mechanical rakes came in.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Mathew Homewood

Malling and Cliffe were a great place to start breweries even back into the 18th C. It was right by the river so the hops, the barley coming in was quite handy and the water from the chalk cliffs was very good as part ingredient for the beer. There was the brewery at South Malling and there was the Ballards Brewery which was in Bell Lane near the Swan and also near the Swan was Verralls Brewery which closed in 1898. In fact I think three breweries closed in the 1890s. It was not a great time for breweries at that point, and quite often they would be taken over by bigger breweries from outside the town.

David Hitchin

In 1811 Thomas Beard took over Chitty’s Brewery in Star Lane known as Fisher Street. That was the Star Brewery. In the mid 1700s another Quaker John Rickman came to Lewes. He bought a malt house and later on he became a brewer and the freeholder of the Bear Inn in the Cliffe. He was succeeded by his eldest son Richard Peters Rickman who was a bit of a tearaway as a young lad. It seems that he was spending time with one of the young Verrall’s, Elizabeth Verrall, and suddenly they rushed off to the parish church to get married, there was a reason for it. When he died in 1801 he was followed by his son John who opened a thatched house pub in South Street. In 1817 he sold the brewery to Roff Tamplin and Thomas Wood and in 1839 Tamplin and Wood gave up the brewery and it was bought by Edward Monk. It became Monk’s Brewery.

Swan Inn and Verrall’s Brewery offices courtsey of John Davey

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Miles Jenner

My father (Anthony Jenner) was actually employed by Harveys in 1938 as Head Brewer and subsequently became Managing Director and Chairman of the company. He was very young and enthusiastic and felt that the brewery could succeed. The 1950s was the time when I remember breweries shutting every day of the week and my father when he was trying to buy equipment described himself as a vulture on the funeral pyre of other breweries. I didn’t go to the auction, I would have been about two at the time, but he told me about it and it was in 1954 and he wanted to acquire a new mash tun and grist case for the brewery at Page & Overton’s Brewery in Croydon. Sir Edwin Chadwick Healey who was a director of Harveys Brewery mash tun Charringtons went to the auction to oversee the sale of this brewery that were divesting themselves of. In those days you could buy brewing plant at scrap metal prices because nobody actually wanted the plant to brew with. It just wasn’t a growth industry in those days. So my father duly arrived and he was surrounded by a sea of scrap metal dealers and he started the bidding and there was one other guy eventually bidding against him and I think he got up to £200 and this man by this time was absolutely incensed and he shouted across the floor at him, “You silly little”, well I won’t say the word on tape, but it was very uncomplimentary, “you’ll never place it” meaning he’d never get the value of the metal back paying that for it and Sir Edwin Chadwick Healey stopped the auction and he said “Gentleman, I would have you know that Mr Jenner is not a scrap metal dealer, he is a brewer and he wants the plant to brew with at Lewes” and there was a stunned silence and the same voice said “Well that’s different mate, let him have it” and we acquired our mash tun and that went in and I brewed on it this morning so still very much in action.

John Copper

When I was building up the business (at the Central Club) with real ale trade, we kept running out, so I’d have to run up there to Harveys in the car, go

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

and pick up a couple of nines (a nine is just over 40 litres). In those days you used to go in the front office and there used to be a big ledger desk in there, as high as a mantle piece, a higher stool behind it, and a man sitting there. It was a Victorian scene. He’d be writing out the invoices very nicely, with the copperplate handwriting, and looking over his pince nez glasses. It was so old fashioned, suddenly you’d gone back 60 or 80 years and that place hadn’t changed since before the Great War, I’m sure of it.

Michael Cooper

Fisher Street then was called Star Lane and that’s where we got the idea of the Star Gallery. In 1986 we managed to buy the building and that’s how we started. I was there when we were knocking through the archway. This air came out, just like in Tutankhamen’s tomb, you know, when it rushes out. There was a pump because there was a well in there too. Anyway, this well appeared, and Paul Milmore, a ranger on the Downs, he popped in one day, together with his helmet and his climbing gear and ropes and he said “Do you mind if I pop down and have a look down the well?” I said “No, of course not”. It was 300 feet down! The top part was brick, then it turned to chalk blocks, which had got graffiti on them, dates, you know, 1800, 1804, that sort of thing. The further you got down, 1780 or ‘90, something like that. He said “Do you want to go down?” So I said “Okay,” and I went down and had the helmet on and the rope and all the rest of it, and I was a bit nervous. So I went down, a bit gingerly, and got right to the bottom. I think the mistake was looking up and then I thought, “Oh my God!” because there was a little pinhole of light at the top – a pinhole – and I thought “Good God, I’m 300ft down”. Anyway, I got back up again and I was glad to be back really.

Verrall’s chimney demolision courtesy of John Davey

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

John Isted

My job was to clean what they call vessels. I had to clean them out, wash them, polish them and whitewash round the sides, then fill them up with liquor, you can’t call it water, it’s liquor. They lost a lot of stuff in the flooding (in 2000). It put the boilers all out. We were halfway up the steps and the water raced in, come over the top of the wall. They lost crates, barrels, the sugar in the blue tubs that was floating about and down the river. We were trapped by the floods but there were firemen who had these rubber dinghies and they made their way round the gate and I was one of the first ones off because I didn’t fancy stopping there all night. The barrels all floating in the yard, there was all this mud and all inside, it smelt terrible. We had to put them through the machine, steam wash clean, take them off and put them back through again.

Above left: Demolition of Verrall’s Brewery courtesy of John Davey. Left: Southdown Brewery Indenture courtsey of ESRO

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Clockwise from top left: Auction of Southover Brewery courtesy of ESRO, Southover Brewery plan courtesy of ESRO, Map of The Cliffe courtesy of ESRO, Verrall Brewery auction courtesy of ESRO

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

â&#x20AC;&#x153;We had a brewery poised to take advantageâ&#x20AC;? A revival in traditional brewing. By the mid 1960s keg beers were a booming trade in the brewing industry. Large companies were now able to create standardised beers that, having been pasteurised, were profitable in terms of mass storage and transportation. However, for some there was a sense of something lacking; those that favoured traditional cask ales preferred the natural taste and carbonation found only in the live product. From the late 1960s/early 1970s a revival of interest in more natural, preservative free products was emerging across the consumer market, not only in food and drink, but also clothing, skin and hair care products etc. In 1971, a small group of enthusiasts got together to form the Revitalisation of Ale, later called CAMpaign for Real Ale (CAMRA). They went on to produce the Good Beer Guide, coining the term Real Ale and raising the profile of cask beer as an alternative to mass produced keg beer. Over the 1970s there was also an upward trend in home brewing, with kits readily available on the market at affordable prices. The enjoyment of traditionally brewed ale was no longer considered the domain of older working class men. There was now an increasing middle class interest and smaller old breweries that had managed to maintain their traditions amidst the declining years were now back in vogue. By the late 1980s, microbreweries using those old traditions, replicating old equipment and maintaining old terminologies, began to appear. Beer festivals and brewing competitions nurtured an environment of friendly competition and also mutual support. Since then, many more micro-breweries have emerged, each trying to achieve a corner of the market by crafting with new combinations of flavours, ingredients and processes; looking back in time and across the globe for creative inspiration. Lewes had also historically been famous for the production of ginger beer, a non-alcoholic beverage popular with young people and teetotallers. The traditional brewing methods of ginger beer production have now too been revived.

Miles Jenner

In 1968 we won the championship gold medal and six awards at the Brewers Exhibition as it was known then, which was the pinnacle of excellence for a brewery. I think in days gone by it was considered very infra dig but, when CAMRA arrived in 1970, we had a brewery poised to take advantage of that, although we had to expand dramatically every few years on fermentation to

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

take on board the speed with which we were growing. That campaign, which really took us back to our origins and the sort of beer that we had always been producing, suddenly put us in vogue in a way that we never had been. And those beers that had been in existence, those other breweries, had they had survived that period would probably have seen a similar story but, we were the only brewery left in Lewes at that time.

Mark Tranter

Rob designed this crazy little brewery that fitted in the cellar of the Evening Star. He had kept the name Dark Star (from a beer he had brewed in London), and thought it would be a good name to call the brewery and so they started in ‘94 and I joined in February ‘96. I was, at the time, putting on punk bands and working as a chef, and trying to do a bit of artwork and home brewing and Rob tried some of my beers, and was kind enough to offer me a job on the basis he thought they were fairly good for home brew. So I started under his sort of tutelage as it were. He gave me quite a free rein early on. I liked Rob’s innovative approach and the fact that it wasn’t just about malt hops, you know, yeast, water; he was putting some spices in, things that would compliment beer. It was that sort of innovative approach that Dark Star continues now. It was very much founded on that springboard little brewery, just making beers that we wanted to drink. There are parallels with cooking in terms of food and innovating dishes and stuff. You don’t want to just think that that’s all there is; it’s like music, there’s other forms of music that haven’t been invented yet, pictures that haven’t been painted. I’m not saying I’m some great artist or anything, because I’m not, I’m just someone who likes to fanny around with ingredients and not be bogged down.

Ale and Hearty visit new Dark Star brewery

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

The stable block of 1648 Brewery

Robert Wallace

Being a CAMRA member, and liking real ales, it was one of my passions and before I came into the pub business, I actually used to do a bit of home brewing as a lot of people do. And with a friend of mine, we actually got into conversation on this and decided we could make use of the stable block, which is adjacent to the Kings Head, from when it was a coaching inn. I was the landlord at the time. We got involved with Rob Jones at Dark Star brewery at the time and he kindly came across and gave us a few tips on things and we set up the brewery. It’s ideal, if you’ve got a hay loft, then you can use that for your barley store above and then drop straight through the hopper into the mash tun, which is a traditional way of doing it, so that’s what we did.

8 Inside the 1648 Brewery .jpg

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Rev Godfrey Broster Rectory Ales

Rev Godfrey Broster

I first came into contact with brewing in 1975, the 1st August to be precise, which was the day I walked into the Excise Office at Faversham in Kent and my first job was to go to Shepherd Neame brewers where I was to be their Excise Officer. In those days Excise duty was collected on the strength of the beer measured by its original gravity times the amount collected at the end of each day. So, because of that, the department taught us how to brew and we were sent on various courses. So I could rule off, sign my name and be absolutely certain that the brewery were not pulling a fast one and hiding beer away and not paying duty. When I became Rector of Plumpton, I was faced with having two medieval and one Victorian church within a two mile radius of each other, as the crow flies and I had given a lecture about beer and brewing and did various tastings of different types of beers, and different traditions and that. Someone in the village approached me and said “Well, Godfrey, why don’t you actually set up a little micro-brewery and we could raise money for the church.” And that’s how it started. Brewing in Plumpton Green courtesy Rev Godfrey Broster

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Bunny Lucas

Gary’s brewed at home for about eighteen years now and he was made redundant a few years ago and decided to buy a small kit, which came from America. We started in our garage at home and it all went from there really. I got involved because some things you just can’t do on your own. We outgrew the garage quite quickly, within about six months and decided to look for a small unit, which we eventually found in Lower Beeding and gradually we outgrew that and we ended up in the lovely converted barn that we’re in now. We don’t like brewing what we call normal beers, we like being a little bit different, but you have to produce something that pubs that are a little bit out of the way will take. When we started the brewery in Maidenbower (Crawley) we didn’t want to call it by our surname. We did a lot of research and there was a foundry back at the turn of the century, and there was a kissing gate, just outside the foundry and a lot of husbands and wives and partners used to kiss goodbye, and so we decided to call it Kissingate after that.

Gary and Bunny Lucas at Kissingate Brewery

Lesley Foulkes

We found a wonderful timber mill in Milland, in Titty Hill (near Midhurst), and we thought that we had the ideal brewery premises and also the ideal name for a brewery. Then we needed to find a plant and we found somewhere up in the Midlands, it was a fire sale, the chap wanted to get rid of it. Timing went pear shaped, lost the brewery plant and we were back to square one. We were not faint hearted. We found the Wickwar plant, perfect size and the thing that was so heartening about how we set up was everything was done with friends and mates. Over nine months it was restored, refurbished, renewed, and cleaned intensively. Our travels took us to the Cowdray Estate and we found a very ramshackle granary barn down Langham Lane. We got

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

in touch with Cowdray and on a handshake they agreed to refurbish the barn into a brewery for us with the proper flooring. Brewing at the ten barrel scale is tremendous physical labour. I’m equal to men in many respects but in that physiological one I don’t think you’d find me doing it although I will occasionally help with humping them down from the mash tun, stand on the ladder and take them out front. When we do the events I’ll be a bit hands on. I can tap a cask, I’m not afraid of getting wet. The beer business is a fabulous business to be in. I wouldn’t change my involvement with it for anything.

Above: Lesley Foulkes at Langham Brewery Right: Langham Brewery Wickwar Plant courtesy of Lesley Foulkes

Les Travers

Ginger beer is becoming very popular. We did several test brews, weren’t happy with any of them to be honest so we went to the really traditional way of using ginger and sugar, obviously lemons and limes, but we get our alcohol from the sugar that goes into the ginger mix. So there are no grains in it at all. It’s a light, cloudy, ginger beer, fairly lively. We had one or two problems with it being too lively at first, it was almost like a champagne so we had to calm it down.

Turners Brewery

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

“The bushel baskets were tipped into pokes” Hop growing and picking in Sussex.

A hop garden c1930

Hops are indigenous to many of the temperate regions of the Northern Hemisphere. Arriving in Britain with the Romans, their early use was in herbal medicine, and it was not until the 16th C that they were routinely cultivated for flavouring ale. By the early 1800s hop gardens across the South East of England were prolific, with fields upon fields of land devoted to nurturing the female fruits of this often 25ft bine. A lot of care was needed to train or “twiddle” the bines up strings throughout the growing season. By the end of August/early September, when they were ready to harvest, each bine was very top-heavy, requiring much support. Hop pickers would arrive ready to work, many traveling down by train to the gardens of Sussex and Kent from London. Most often hop-pickers stayed in farm huts and, for the children of the families that arrived, this would become something of a yearly working holiday. There would be strict rules and regulations for the pickers which would be printed at the back of their “pickers handbook”. Hop growers kept careful accounts, charting weights picked and amounts owed on a daily basis. It was often tricky

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

for them to make decent money as, like any field crop, hops are susceptible to the problems of weather or pestilence. By the early 1960s hop growers were beginning to invest in new machinery which would make the picking process quicker and cheaper. This was the beginning of the end of hop-picking as it had been known and these days the remaining hop gardens are no longer open to migrant workers. There are many varieties of British hops with different characteristics and aromas, but amongst the most well known are Bramling Cross, Fuggle, Goldings and Boadicea. The British Hop Association (formerly the National Hop Association) was set up in 1996 by growers to ensure that the industry was well organised. There are just over fifty British farms still growing hops today.

Left: Jeanette Easons family hop picking 1930s Right: Jeanette Eason outside hop pickers accommodation shed 1950s

Jeanette Eason

There were several generations going to the hop gardens. We went to Brede which is in East Sussex. We didn’t have a car so we went all in the back of an army lorry. Everything went in the lorry whether it was mattresses, pillows, blankets, cooking pots, you name it, it’s a bit like camping now except that you take the kitchen sink as well. As a child it was idyllic. I’m not so sure it was that idyllic for my parents, for my uncles, my aunts and those that were actually earning money out of picking the hops but for us children it was. I had several cousins down there who were all of much the same age as me so, you know, after we did a little bit of picking of hops we would be making mud pies and exploring. The kids were sent off to the get the water to brew the tea. Unfortunately my abiding memory, I put the kettle down into the stream to get it filled with water, the lovely stainless steel camping kettles with the flat handle and that, and the force of the stream was so strong it took it out of my hand. Somewhere just down the way the stream went underground and I can only assume

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

that further out by Hastings or wherever it popped up in the sea. One of the other things that I’ve found out since being an adult and being connected to my old junior school, one of the teachers there gave me a copy of the school logs, and I noticed that on one year it was saying x number of pupils regis tered with the school, y number actually attended on the first day and there was a difference, you know, probably about 30, 40 “away hopping” and it took a few seconds for me to click that they weren’t hopping literally on one leg.

Elena Jean Washer

My grandfather originally was a tenant here, and then around about 1920 he bought Willetts Farm (Blackham, East Sussex). My father took over at about the age of 21 and he farmed on until he retired. We had hops here until about the early ‘70s. They were all handpicked by locals. We didn’t import any people from elsewhere. We grew them on strings, four to a hill as we called it. It was quite an intricate way of being strung up so that when you pulled a bine they didn’t all come down. The hops were trained up these strings. We used to call it twiddling. You’d pick hops from about half past seven until about midday and then dad would come down with a tractor and trailer with what we called pokes. They would hold about ten bushels I think. He would go round to each bin measuring out the hops with his bushel basket. I suppose the people picked about eight or nine bushels in a half bin and then a tally was put down in a book. Then these were all taken back to the oast house. The pokes were brought up and tipped on to the kiln and levelled out, about 4ft deep. First of all they had the brimstone burning, that was to keep the colour and then they lit the fire and that dried the hops through. The afternoon’s picking would dry overnight and dad used to sleep out there all night to keep stoking up the fire. You had to be very careful though that it didn’t go out because if it went out you’d got all that smell of the oil coming up through the hops and that would ruin the lot. So it was very important that you didn’t let it go out.

Left: The girls picking hops on Willett’s Farm Right: Elena and Beryl’s father Thomas Ashby weighing hop pockets

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Beryl Woolcroft

A bookkeeper followed them, you know, with a little book and with the pickers name and what they picked would be put down. And if a bin was too dirty he would say, “Too many leaves and stalks”, he’d say “I’m sorry Mrs whatever, yours are too dirty, I’ll come back later”. The bins were wooden. At each end Hop pockets loaded up at Willett’s farm they were crossed over to form the legs. And they were either divided in two so somebody could have half a bin or you’d have the whole bin if you were a good picker. My grandmother she loved to have an open umbrella and she’d sit there on her little stool with her umbrella and she’d pick into this and then that would get tipped into somebody’s bin, whoever she favoured that day perhaps, and children would have a little basket or something just to put their contribution in or else they’d go off and play in the mud and apples. And that went on, they were collected at about midday and then again you had another session in the afternoon and then off we went and your hands were black because it was a black, treacly sediment all over your hands. It’s a lovely smell though.

Little Pells Farm

Anthea Sewell

I was born at Darbys Farm, which is still in Wadhurst which our dad came to after the First World War. When he went to the hop garden I would come and hold the bushel basket and I loved it. Dad had a very strange old van and he’d go and pick up the people from around Tidebrook, and they all piled back. Dad

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

did the measuring and everybody always wanted to know what the tally (price per bushel) was and was it going to be better on another farm. There was not a hop wasted and you cleaned your bin, you kept your leaves out. The children got the tails to pick, the thin ones at the bottom of the bine. Twice a day, of course, there was the pokes to collect up. The bushel baskets were tipped into pokes; big Hessian sacks. And then they were loaded on the trailer and the tractor took them back to the oast house. When the first load of pokes came in everybody in the farmhouse came out and cheered.

Steve Sewell

The hops were different in those days, these days they’re a lot smaller hops, you couldn’t possibly pick them by hand nowadays. It was all Fuggles then. You had a few others like Early Choice but they did get severely wiped out by the wilt round here and these other varieties came in to replace them. Now those ones that replaced the Fuggle are quite popular again now so we’re lucky. There’s the Brambling Cross and the Progress and we’ve got some Whitbread Golding Varieties, they’re all the aroma varieties that we can grow here still and then we’ve got a Pilgrim which is sort of a dual purpose one. We can grow it well on our soil, it’s well resistant to the wilt but there’s a limited market for it. If you get really warm and wet nights they’ll grow so quick and there’s such a big gap before the next twist, so if you get a bit of wind they blow off. So if you can get the right weather they’ll stay on the string a lot better. Of course there’s all the disease and stuff you get with them as well. Spider mite, you have to have your glasses and a little magnifying glass and you can see loads of them just crawling around. They make these webs and they just suck the life out of the leaves. You can spray them but you’ve got to get them before they get too bad. If you got downy or mould in the early part of the season you can guarantee that’s going to be there all summer and it will be a problem and you’ll probably end up having to spray every week instead of every fortnight. It costs a lot of money, so you make sure you get your crops clean at the start of the year.

Left: Jeanette Easons cousins and Grandma on steps of hop pickers sleeping shed Right: Elena and Beryl’s grandmother on Willet’s Farm

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex. Clockwise from top left: Hop Pickerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Account Book, Taking a break in the hopfields c1890 courtesy of East Sussex Libraries (Hastings), Life in the hop garden by Thoebus Levin (1859) Townely Hall Art Gallery and Museum, Sewell great-grandfather and mother around 1900. Tally man with wooden tally sticks in front

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

“They used to have long leather aprons on” Draymen and deliveries. A dray was a low, flat, sideless cart pulled by horses and used for delivering ale in the years before steam or motor vehicles were invented. The word dray comes from the Old English word “dragan” meaning to drag or to draw. Barrels of ale are a very heavy load so dray horses needed to be tall with strong legs and broad, muscular backs. A good breed with these characteristics were Shire horses and so they were frequently used for this purpose. The brewery delivery man was and still is known as the drayman and he also needs to be strong in order to lift barrels all day long. Ale barrels were originally made of wood, and were much heavier than the steel casks used today. Steel has replaced wood as it is easier to clean, transport and keep ale at the correct temperature. By the end of World War One steam lorries called Foden engines were becoming more popular in British agriculture and delivery. Steam engine popularity was relatively short-lived, however, as by the mid 1930s many breweries were moving on to diesel powered motor vehicles. Many old breweries were originally designed to accommodate the dray horse and cart, and so with the development of larger motorised vehicles and the increase in traffic on roads, some old yard entrances would often become increasingly inappropriate. For some breweries, such as Beards in Lewes, their location became quite problematic. Harveys on Bridge Wharf, however, had good access at the back of the brewery and large lorries can still be seen heading out for delivery from there to this day.

Miles Jenner

There was only the one entrance for vehicles and it had only ever been built really with horses and carts in mind. So when our steam Foden lorries started up on a winters morning, and the engines turning over and then you got them moving out with the crates of beer and the casks on board, wooden casks in those days, the whole house would shake as they went by and it was very much our alarm call. Later on we would have the lorries ferrying goods between Beards and Harveys and on my way back from school, I would come down towards Fisher Street and if the brewery lorry was there I would get a lift home. I’d just get up into the back of the dray, climb in, and we’d be looking over the back as it sped down East Street. I mean you couldn’t do it today,

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Harveys ale truck 1970s courtesy of Matthew Homewood

there would be horrendous health and safety issues, but in those days it was all very natural and occasionally the driver would say you keep your head down boy or I’ll get into trouble but otherwise that was it and one lived and breathed the brewery. It was a way of life. Harveys steam foden model

Andy Westwood

I believe that for a drayman you can’t physically manage the weights that there are without having some sort of technique. You have to use as little effort as possible to get the most result and so I think because I loved physics at school, the lever principles and weight distribution and what have you. I was a bit strong anyway so it helped. We’d load in the morning, take the truck out, and go round delivering. We delivered the goods to the customers and have a bit of rapport because we were going to the same people week after week.

28 Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex. That gave me the best buzz really having the relationship with people. On the lorry we always worked in pairs and Mr Jenner was quite strong on that, just in case of accidents because the job was quite high risk really because of the weights that you were using. We’d bump the barrels down on to a bump mat. They are a bit like rough pillows, very heavy matting outside and I think they were filled with corks inside so they absorbed the shock of the barrel going down. Some of the cellars are quite deep underneath the pubs. The beer needed time to settle anyway because it’s been jumping around on the lorry for however many miles it’s taken you to get there. We used to have to be ever so careful when we were putting beer on the stollage that we didn’t knock other barrels because of course you’d disturb any of the settled finings in the bottom. It wasn’t always that easy when the stollage is bounced anyway but we used to do the best we could.

Harveys lorry courtesy of Andy Westwood

John Copper

They were right characters the old Harveys draymen. I was almost like prewar days, they had a very old lorry and the draymen seem to me to be ancient and they’d been on the firm for ever and ever. They used to have long leather aprons on and it was all so old-fashioned. They didn’t have wooden barrels, they had gone over to the metal casks by then. It’s much more hygienic.

David Harris

I used to do a Thursday run around Lewes to people who used to have a bottle of sherry, a bottle of port, a bottle of whisky. There was one chap who lived not far from the Elephant and Castle, who used to have a case of fifteen pints of Whitbread, and this poor chap had no use for his legs, I imagine he’s

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Dray outside Jolly Friars Pub in Priory St courtesy of John Davey

lost them due to the war or something and I took a crate of Whitbread up to his front door and his wife would take it. It was a lovely job in that respect because it was socially rewarding because you would go and see people and really have a good time. Then loading up and unloading and of course at Castle Ditch Lane, the Star Brewery there, theyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d have lorries reversing up which were vast, they were forty tonnes then, and they had no forklifts or anything like that so everything had to be manhandled through a doorway, which is still there.These were the draymen delivering to the standard pubs, the ones owned by Beards. And then when they came back Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d help unload all the empties and do all the bits of paperwork and generally run around. When one of the draymen was on holiday I would go out with the drays. I was actually a very pleasant but very archaic place.

Left: Harveys Dray Horses Right: Drayhorse

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

“You can only drink singing beer and not fighting beer” Folk song and ale tales.

Bob, John, Ron and Jim Copper 1950s

There is a well recognised Sussex song tradition with collections that can be traced back to the early 1800s. In particular, The Copper Family’s vast collection preserves an understanding of the historical relationship between folk song, agriculture and ale drinking across the county. The family still perform together to this day, drawing on their enormous resource of folk songs and tales, much of which dates back to the mid 19thC and James “Brasser” and his brother Thomas Copper. Brasser worked his way from shepherd boy to general farm manager on land belonging to local Squire Steyning Beard and Thomas was a publican who, for many years, was the landlord of the Black Horse in Rottingdean. An excellent source of songs for the Coppers came from agricultural workers. Of course, such folk have enjoyed singing about ale for as long as they have been drinking it, and harvest work being laborious would often be helped along with a song. Brasser would regularly accompany sheep and cattle drovers across the South Downs to market in Lewes. In the Market Tavern song sharing was a regular pastime, especially in the days before most working people had access to literacy; all song collection relied on memory. Entertainment in public houses, would mostly be unaccompanied; however some places might have a piano. Well known songs about ale, that celebrated barley and the hops, have entered our folk law in such a way.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Characters such as the personification of barley or ale “John Barleycorn”, for example, have been the inspiration for many different versions of song with a range of tunes and storied outcomes. Song was also a way of conveying political messages, certainly in a small town such as Lewes. They can convey a wealth of cultural understanding of times gone by. Left: Brasser Copper Right: Brasser’s son, Jim Copper

John Copper

Bob’s granddad Brasser (John’s great-grandfather), had a saying, he used to say, to a new employee (at the Black Horse in Rottingdean), “Now you can drink as much beer as you like,” by which he meant small beer, “but you can only drink singing beer and not fighting beer. If you drink fighting beer you haven’t got a job here,” and he used to say that to all prospective employees, and that goes some way to say how singing became a part of the village. We’ve got a huge collection of songs in the family, some of which are about beer. Brasser would be in say Lewes market or somewhere else around trading sheep, he’d have drovers with him, and after the work was done, they’d go into the tavern. After a few pints there’d always be someone in the crowd who’d say “Well, I’ll sing a song if you like.” Brasser, who was a big collector of songs, he’d hear someone sing a song he hadn’t heard before, and he had a method, very bright bloke, a terrifically retentive mind, he’d sort of half remember the song and he’d go and he say “If I buys you a pint of beer, will you sing that for me again at the end?” And that was a standard procedure. After everyone was clearing out he’d pay the landlord for his quart, take him round the back, in the quiet and say, “Now sing it again, slowly”. And he’d listen like that to the whole song, and he’d memorise the lyrics and tune. But he said “The only way I could do it, was leave after all the other drovers, when they got away, and walk behind them, not get into conversation with anyone and all the way back to Rottingdean. I’d be singing that over and over in my mind, not loud, in my mind, all the way back. By the time I got back home, that song would be in my heart.”

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Miles Jenner

It’s my belief that the brewers having amassed this tied estate of property felt that they really should be entitled to the political sway that their economic role in society entitled them to. So they were very much lobbying for parliamentary reform and that’s why you get that marvellous ale-conner song of Lewes where they have the MP, liberal candidate having a dinner: On a day so devoted to Old English Cheer can we ever forget that grand article beer. It was the staff of our life and I’ve never yet heard of a beer to compete with the beer of Ned Beard. It is just like his principles well understood, it is wholesome, agreeable, something and good. Those who drink it in plenty will wear a bold front, will be true to their King to reform and to blunt

Alfriston near Lewes by William Luker (1887) Somerset Museums Service

It was very much that sort of thing of them being at that forefront. The other one was Thomas Wood across the road. We speak of another as faithful and warm, a true heart of oak, a superlative wood. May those who love freedom and ardently quarter Daily moisten their clay with his genuine porter I mean it’s there, it’s a good bit of fun and certainly when John Harvey was brewing in 1832 he’s got down in the brewing journal “Town all of a bustle, election results”, and he’s listed all the candidates and the votes against them. So they were obviously very much political animals in those days.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Chris Hare

You can’t study English folk song without realising that a very large proportion of them relate in some way to drinking and brewing or the ingredients therein. These songs existed in the oral tradition and no-one really wrote them down until the 19th C, because the literate classes largely viewed this sort of stuff with contempt, or maybe at best, with amused indulgence. When people’s livelihood, prosperity and happiness was dependent on a successful harvest, you are going to be really keyed up to that and it’s going to be a vital interest.

Left: John Barleycorn by Mark Wallinger (1984) Arts Council Collection Right: Chris Hare and partner Anne singing about ale

When you’re totally reliant on your memory things are much more likely to be images rather than a great bank of visual text and that makes these songs different. John Barleycorn as this man/god who grows and is sacrificed and then is turned into beer, it’s not a metaphor, it’s almost sort of literal. And yet, at the same time, they would have known it didn’t, it exists in this strange world. Drinking songs create that good feeling by imbuing to drinking and brewing and the growing of crops a sort of supernatural element and it’s the communal activity of people coming together to sing and having strength and power through being a group and not isolated individuals. Drink Old England Dry is a warlike song and it highlights the central role of drinking in English life, because it was a song that was popular during the Napoleonic Wars. Whereas the French drew on their revolutionary fervour, the English songs typically drew on drinking:

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Drink me brave boys as I’ve told you before And drink me brave boys and we’ll boldly call for more For the French they invade us and they say that they will try They say that they will try and drink old England dry High-dry. High-dry, me boys, high-dry They say that they will try and drink old England dry

Ale Glorious Ale, that’s a humorous song, it’s also a later song, almost nudging on music hall: Ale, ale, glorious ale Served up in pewter It tells its own tale Some folk like radishes Some curly-kale But give I boiled parsnip And a great dish of taters And a lump of fatty bacon And a pint of good ale. So, that song is combining the food as well. And what it’s doing is it’s sort of looking down on these new fangled things that are coming, like curly-kale and, yeah, give us ale and fatty bacon with some spuds, you know, that’s what you want.

Clockwise from top left: Landscape near Lewes by William Luker (1865) Somerset County Museum Service, John Barleycorn jug by Dalton, The Copper Family 2013

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

“Licensing laws encouraged more respectable public houses” Changes in drinking culture. Cultural, sociological and legislative influences have shaped the pub and drinking culture of Britain in various ways over time. Archival documents and recently collected oral histories can help to map some general trends in the Lewes and wider Sussex area over a couple of centuries. As we have seen, in the early 19th C small ale was the staple drink for most people and the ale house was a place where many agricultural and industrial workers would spend their leisure time. In Lewes, different establishments were often frequented by different trades and classes. The White Hart was restricted to the wealthiest and the Unicorn next door would cater for their coach drivers. The Crown Inn and Market Tavern would serve the farmThe White Hart Hotel and the Unicorn ers and drovers arriving for the cattle courtesy of John Davey market. It is often claimed that by the late 19th C there were seventy inns in Lewes alone. The idea of ‘the public house’ or ‘the pub’ to describe the urban street local is a Victorian invention. They were gathering places where mostly working class folk would gather for games, group meetings and outings, yearly events and societies (with bonfire societies specific to Lewes). With little in the way of home entertainment at the time, pubs were very popular, often rough-and-ready, with basic comforts, but they would also be a warm and social place to reside. Drunkenness was often an issue, and a temperance movement developed in order to confront this. However, this never managed political support enough for prohibition. Many of the Lewes breweries were owned by Quaker families and whilst Quakers are sometime linked to abstinence, evidence suggests that instead, they rather opposed drunkenness; moderation was key. By the turn of the century there was a move for breweries to clean up the old drinking houses of the past, and licensing laws encouraged more respectable public houses, favouring

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

the new Neo-Georgian styled establishments under the motto “bigger, better, fewer”. This resulted in a huge decline in pub numbers. An excellent resource, particular to Lewes, that documents this decline is L. S. Davey’s The Inns of Lewes Past and Present (1977). By the late 1960s/early 1970s a steady incline of women and middle classes was to be found in pubs and the emergent folk and jazz scenes gave rise to a wider variety of live music. By the 1980s and 1990s pubs were devising new tactics to pull in customers; such as serving food and showing sports on large TV screens. By now, however, there was also a massive boom in home entertainment systems; wide-screen televisions and computer games could be found under most roofs. The combination of this with legislation allowing supermarkets and late night off licenses to sell cheap alcohol means that we have now entered a time when pub and drinking culture is once again changing shape and many establishments are struggling to survive.

School Hill wheelbarrow race courtesy of John Davey

John Davey

The cattle market used to take place in the High Street in Lewes and at noon on market days the proprietor of the Crown Inn would go out and ring a bell to summon the farmers in for their lunchtime ale and food. The market proceedings would come to a stop at that time. You had horses and cattle on the north side of the High Street and sheep and goats and pigs on the south side. Every Whit Monday between about 1902 or 3 and 1914 there was an annual toy wheelbarrow race from Library Corner to two pubs in South Street, which were opposite each other. The toy wheelbarrow was exactly what it says, just a very small wheelbarrow and the only rule I’ve been able to determine was that the wheel of the wheelbarrow had to stay on the ground all the way. That must have been back breaking for the two contestants because you had to crouch right down to this child’s wheelbarrow. The race continued each year until

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

1914 when sadly it stopped and I surmise that it stopped simply because the young men who were the combatants in this wheelbarrow race were no longer available having been called up for service in the First World War.

David Hitchin

In 1879 Caleb Kemp, who was the leading Quaker not just in Lewes but in Britain at the time, The Crown Hotel courtesy of John Davey chaired a meeting to support a Bill for closing public houses on Sundays. He was accompanied by clergy from All Saints, from Southover, from South Malling and Barcombe. At that point the Quakers and the Anglicans were beginning to get on and do things together. A large crowd vigorously opposed them by hissing and booing and shouting ‘No’. Some of the Quakers went for a more practical approach. In 1881 Eliza Payne, a Quaker who lived in Albion Street, paid for the building of the British Workman’s Institute which was described as ‘a public house without intoxicants open daily from 6 to 10pm, coffee, refreshments and entertaining games’. It seemed to be the only place in Lewes where you could get refreshment if you had signed the pledge. Well you might guess that a public house without intoxicants would not be successful and it wasn’t.

Charabanc excursion Fountain Inn c1920 courtesy of John Davey

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

Mathew Homewood

In 1902, the workhouse at Lewes was emptied of the few residents and they were all housed at the Chailey workhouse, and they moved in the reformatory for inebriated women. This was a national drive as a result of the Inebriates Act. They were meant to reform drunken women by hard work, routine, good diet, religion and exercise. There were so many instances of women just shouting, screaming quite often, and dancing and drawing a crowd and there was one case in 1905 when a policeman was called. A lady called Fanny Farley, a young girl, was laying in the street and he knew where she was because the crowds were round her so he fought his way through the crowds and he got to her just before another drunken woman was about to kick her. This other drunken woman was also called Fanny Farley and it was the girlâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mother so they were both drunk. In the actual article it says that the police constable with the assistance of another police constable and three members of the crowd took Fanny Farley junior home. Now either she was a really big girl or she was just so much of a handful it needed five people to take her home. In the meantime the elder Fanny Farley was still drawing the crowds because she was just shouting and jumping up and down and very drunk so they left her sort of there and they went back for her later and both of course were arrested and fined once they went to court. Above: Woman with a beer jug by Adriaen van Ostade(1670) By permission of the Trustees of Dulwich Picture Gallery. Left: Lewes Workhouse site 1874 courtsesy of www.workhouses.org

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

David Muggleton

The history of CAMRA is that it came about through what was then an oligopoly of producers dominating the market in the 1970s, or late 1960s called the Big Six. What they were concerned about was brewing keg, so cask beer had been decimated and there wasn’t much of it about and a small group of people at the time formed the CAMpaign for the Revitalisation of Ale to protect cask beer. What you get for the first time, in the 1990 Good Beer Guide or 1991/92, is actually a description of the tastes of beer, and people realise that it’s not just about saying to people “this is real ale, you should drink it because it’s good for you, because it’s a proper product, it’s a living product, it’s natural rather than being killed off”. You’ve also got, “Let’s educate people about the taste, it’s not just a working man’s,” I use the word men, in a very clear sense, “not just a working man’s drink, it can also be drunk by women, middle class people, because it’s got a kind of taste to it that you can identify and it’s as good a product as wine for example”.

Every Ironworks group at Fruiterers Arms c1908 courtesy of John Davey

Robert Wallace

I think the biggest problem was the supermarkets being able to have their beer at the front door, rather than bread, sugar. When I first came into this business, a lot of landlords would go on a jolly up for the afternoon and get a plane to Guernsey and have a slap-up meal and spend silly amounts of

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

money. That’s what they used to do, and they’d go off to the races. And they’d make a show of spending on their customers as well, you know, they could afford to do it. You didn’t buy these beers in the supermarkets. The supermarkets were tied down to opening hours and they had to pull the shutters down over the products, they couldn’t sell them all night long and I think that’s the biggest change.

The Crown Hotel conservatory courtesy of John Davey

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex

LEARNING RESOURCES

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE ONE “Most streets would have at least one brewery” The old breweries of Lewes. Key facts for children • During the Middle Ages ale was largely brewed by monks living in monasteries, such as Lewes Priory. • Many breweries were established in Lewes as the town grew. By 1850 there were nine major breweries in the town. There were also many ale houses where ale was brewed and sold. • As water was often unsafe to drink most people, including children, usually drank a weak ale which they called ‘small beer’. • Throughout the 20th C each of the traditional Lewes breweries closed down as new brewing technology was developed elsewhere. In 1986 only Harveys remained.

Learning intentions

To understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources (including oral histories) which vary in their reliability and their richness.

Core vocabulary

Oral history, brewery, ale, primary, secondary.

Possible teaching activities •Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. •Ask pupils to create a timeline from 1700 to 2000 and plot the two dates referred to in the key facts above (1850 and 1986). •Provide time for pupils to find additional dates from the booklet and add these to their timelines, e.g. the great floods. •Provide access to research materials and ask pupils to add other relevant events of their choice from British history to their timeline. Guide pupils to look for significant turning points, e.g. the first steam train journey, Queen Victoria’s coronation, the World Wars, etc. •For homework ask pupils to obtain a key date from their own family history to add to their timeline. Resources Copies of this booklet, research materials; books, internet, etc.

•Give pupils an opportunity to explore the various resources from the booklet; oral histories, photographs, pictures, etc. •Discuss different historical sources; primary and secondary. •Provide cards with a different historical source of evidence written on each one, e.g. photographs, newspapers, oral histories, artefacts, census records, maps, diaries, paintings, etc. •Ask pupils to work in groups to order the cards in terms of how reliable they think the sources are. Groups can feedback to the class, justifying their choices. Repeat, this time asking pupils to order the cards in terms of rich they think the sources are. Again, groups can feedback to the class, justifying their choices. Resources Copies of this booklet, historical evidence cards.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE TWO “We had a brewery poised to take advantage” A revival in traditional brewing. Key facts for children • By the 1960s the majority of beer in the UK was produced in large quantities by large companies. It was stored and transported in small barrels called kegs. • Keg beer is usually pasteurised – which means heated to a certain temperature for a certain amount of time to kill bacteria. Some people argue that this leads to a less natural flavour than that of traditionally brewed ales – called real ale. • Towards the end of the 1960s many people in the UK had begun to be more interested in natural, preservative-free foods, drinks, clothing, beauty products, etc. • In 1971 a customer organisation was set up to ensure support for the brewing of real ale for those who prefer it. This is called the Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) and it still exists today. • As a result the interest in real ale began to grow. Some people bought kits to brew their own ale at home, the old breweries that had kept to traditional approaches were popular again and new micro-breweries began to emerge. • In the UK and across the world this growth has continued to the present day. There are many micro-breweries and home brewers experimenting with different flavours, ingredients and brewing processes. Beer festivals and brewing competitions are commonplace.

Learning intentions

To generate historically valid and significant questions about change and cause and to explore how people can action change.

Core vocabulary

Keg beer, real ale, campaign, traditional, micro-breweries.

Possible teaching activities • Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. • Discuss the changes over time outlined in the key facts above and in the previous section. Ask pupils to suggest the reasons for the changes, e.g. changes in attitudes, people taking action, etc. • Display cards with different question words written on each one; who, when, where, why, how. • Ask pupils to work in pairs to devise and record their own historically valid questions about changes to the brewing industry over time. These questions could be used later for research purposes. Resources Copies of this booklet, question cards.

• In relation to CAMRA ask pupils to imagine that they are responsible for instigating a campaign. Share ideas of issues that are relevant to the class, e.g. promoting vegetarianism, objecting to the closure of a local library, supporting a particular charity, etc. •Encourage pupils to work in groups to choose and use strategies to promote their campaign, e.g. by writing a persuasive letter to the Prime Minister, by creating and performing a 30 second radio advert, by designing a poster to display in public places, etc. Provide time for groups to present their work to the class. Resources Typical classroom resources.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE THREE “The bushel baskets were tipped into pokes” Hop growing and picking in Sussex. Key facts for children • Hops are the flowers of the hop plant which are used for various purposes – including to flavour beer. In the 19th C there were very many hop gardens across the South East of England. • The hop picking season fell at the end of August / beginning of September and so at this time each year people would come to the gardens ready to be employed as hop pickers. Some people were local, others travelled from further away and would stay in huts at the gardens. In some cases this was like a working holiday for families. • They were strict rules for the hop pickers and they were paid according to the weight of the hops that they picked. • By the early 1960s hop growers had begun to use machinery to pick the hops. This was quicker and cheaper than paying hop pickers to pick them by hand.

Learning intentions

To appreciate what life was like for hop picking families in the past and to construct informed and thoughtful responses to this.

Core vocabulary

Hops, hop pickers, hop growers.

Possible teaching activities • Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. • Look together at enlarged photographs of the hop pickers. Discuss what individuals might be thinking or feeling. Use pupils’ observations and ideas to add speech and / or thought bubbles to individual photographs. • As a class use the drama technique of ‘hot-seating’ to question a hop grower, a child hop picker and an adult hop picker about their experiences during a hop picking season. • Continuing the role-play approach ask pupils to work in groups to create a scene from a reunion of hop pickers. Provide time for groups to perform to the class. Resources Copies of this booklet, enlarged photographs of hop pickers.

• Invite pupils to imagine that they are a child living in London in 1932. Their family has made their annual journey to the Sussex countryside to spend a month living and working in a hop garden. Stimulate thinking by posing some thought-provoking questions, e.g. how will you feel about missing the start of school next week? • Ask pupils to write a diary entry recording the child’s experiences, thoughts and feelings. Support pupils with prompts (questions or visual reminders of previous work), scaffolded templates and / or key words as required. Resources Prompts, templates, key word cards, if necessary

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE FOUR “They used to have long, leather aprons on” Draymen and deliveries. Key facts for children

• A dray was a sideless cart pulled by horses that was used for delivering ale before steam or motor vehicles were invented. • Shire horses were often used to pull drays as they were strong enough for the heavy loads. The brewery delivery man (drayman) would also need to be strong in order to lift heavy wooden barrels all day. • During the 20th breweries began to use steel casks instead of wooden barrels to transport and store ale. These were lighter and easier to clean. • Drays were replaced by steam lorries which were in turn replaced by motor vehicles. In some cases the old brewery yard entrances became unsuitable as these motor vehicles were larger and the roads were busier.

Learning intentions

To use maps to investigate how Lewes has changed over time, noting connections as well as contrasts.

Core vocabulary

Shire horse, dray, drayman, steam lorries, motor vehicles, barrels, casks, delivery.

Possible teaching activities • Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. •Provide copies of two maps of Lewes town centre, one from the present and an old one from the early 19th C. •Ask pupils to work in groups to compare the details on the two maps. Prompt pupils to look in particular for the breweries and their adjoining roads. They should also note changes to railways, housing, open spaces and amenities. Suggest that pupils record their work in any way they choose, e.g. a list, a table, a picture. Resources Copies of this booklet, maps of Lewes – one from the present and one from the early 19th C.

• Working as a class suggest a route from the early 19th C map that a drayman might have taken through Lewes. Ask pupils to describe what he might have seen, heard or smelt on his journey. Refer to any relevant photographs from the booklet. Use this discussion as a stimulus for creating some artwork, e.g. sketches, paintings, charcoal, oil pastels, etc. • Later refer to the present day map and follow the same route. Ask pupils to describe what a modern day delivery driver might see, hear and smell on the same journey. Resources Copies of this booklet, maps of Lewes – one from the present and one from the early 19th C, art materials.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE FIVE “You can only drink singing beer and not fighting beer” Folk song and ale tales. Key facts for children • There is a historic link between folk song, agriculture and ale drinking. In the past the hard work of farming would traditionally be helped along with a song and a drink of ale. • In the 19th C many working people could not read or write and so would sing and share songs from memory. The original composers of the songs would often be unknown but the lyrics would tell stories about life at that time and in that place. • Sometimes songs would be sung in ale houses with pianos but usually the singing would be unaccompanied. • James (Brasser) and Thomas Copper were two brothers who lived in Sussex at this time and who enjoyed song sharing as a regular pastime. Brasser worked in agriculture whereas Thomas was a pub landlord. The brothers passed their folk songs down through the generations of their families and Brasser’s great-great-grandchildren still perform together to this day.

Learning intentions

To explore how song lyrics can reflect the time and place in which they were composed and how this can inform our knowledge of the past.

Core vocabulary

Folk song, agriculture, tradition, lyrics, generations.

Possible teaching activities • Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. • Organise for pupils to visit to East Sussex’s archive and historical resource centre; ‘The Keep’. • Register as a reader in advance and order a viewing of the Copper Archive. Resources Copies of this booklet.

• In advance choose three contrasting songs with appropriate and story-telling lyrics – one of which should be an old Sussex folk song. For example a current chart-topping song, a song from a Broadway musical of the 1950s and a song from the Copper family collection. • Listen to the songs each in turn at least twice. (If recordings are unavailable just share the written lyrics instead.) • Ask pupils to work with a talking partner to identify key phrases, to discuss the story being told and to identify any mood or attitude being conveyed. Key words could be recorded on a mind map. • Provide time to share and discuss ideas making comparisons between the three songs and what they tell us about the time and place in which they were composed. Resources Recordings / lyrics of three contrasting songs – one of which should be an old Sussex folk song.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

LEARNING RESOURCE SIX “Licensing laws encourage more respectable public houses”

Changes in drinking culture. Key facts for children • Drinking culture has changed, and continues to change, over time in various ways and for various reasons. • In 19th C Lewes different people would visit different ale houses. For example some ale houses were popular with the well off, others would be where the farmers and drovers would meet. • The term ‘ale house’ was gradually replaced by ‘public house’ (pub). Pubs were gathering places where people would come to drink, to socialise and to play pub games. Groups and societies (such as the bonfire societies) would also hold their meetings in pubs. • Drunkenness was often a problem and many people supported temperance - drinking in moderation. They criticised excessive alcohol use and linked it to crime and ill health. • New licensing laws encouraged more respectable public houses. Many of the older, smaller public houses closed down. • In the latter part of the 20th C more women and middle class people could be found in pubs. Live music in pubs became more commonplace as did serving food and, later, showing sport on large-screen TVs. • In the present day many homes have their own home entertainment systems and many supermarkets and off licences sell alcohol.

Learning intentions

To develop an awareness of the effects of alcohol and to explore different attitudes to alcohol in the past and present.

Core vocabulary

Culture, drunkenness, temperance, prohibition, alcohol, licensing.

Possible teaching activities • Support pupils in reading some of the relevant oral histories from the booklet and / or read some extracts to pupils. • Revisit some of the previous learning / activities covered with pupils. • Ask pupils to work individually to create a 10-question quiz on the brewing industry in Sussex. Suggest that they include a variety of questions (e.g. multiple choice, true / false). • Provide time for pairs to carry out and mark each other’s quizzes in pairs. Resources Copies of this booklet.

• Ask pupils to consider and research the effects of drinking on people’s health / bodies and on their feelings / behaviour. Work together as a class to discuss and record effects – categorising them into positive and negative. • Ensure that pupils fully understand the terms ‘temperance’ and ‘prohibition’. •Divide the class into three groups in preparation for a class debate. Instruct one group to advocate temperance, one to advocate prohibition and one to advocate drinking freely. Provide time for groups to compile their argument before holding the debate. • Encourage pupils to instigate a conversation about alcohol awareness at home for homework. Resources Research materials; books, internet, etc.

Ale Tales: A social history of brewing in Lewes and across East Sussex.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS We would like to sincerely thank the following people and organisations for their generosity in terms of participation, support and/or funding our project and booklet Our Ale Tales Kickstarter contributors: The Ashby family Michael Beer Helena and Graham Benge Sam Carroll Hugh Corley Melita Dennett Stuart Elms Jerry Emery Nick Fairclough Pamela Finch Jerome Michael Franklin-Ryan Malcolm Grant Luci Hammond Richard Jolly Margaretta Jolly Alex Matwijiszyn Elizabeth Ogiyama Bob Oliver Mark Riley Marco Rondelli Sarah Paul Sumner Helen Sykes Cath Tajima-Powell Simon Taylor Ale and Hearty Steering Group and Volunteers: Liz Allsobrook Nicola Benge Anita Broad Michelle Brooker Hugh Corley Jean Gaston-Parry Sophia Harvey Linda Hooper Susan James Miles Jenner Martine Laine David Louis Ian McLelland Isobel Milton David Muggleton Liz Owen Rod Patterson Kirsty Pattrick

Fenya Sharkey Roger Stamp Cath Tajima-Powell Ruth Thompson Michael Turner Jill Yeates Organisations, businesses and individuals: Action in Rural Sussex (AIRS) The All Saints Centre Isilda Almeida-Harvey The Apron and Anchor Fay Barker Bills Restaurant Bow Windows Bookshop Chaulaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Indian Restaurant The Copper Family John Cheves Dark Star Brewing Company John Davey East Sussex Libraries and Information Service East Sussex Records Office (ESRO) Friends of Lewes Harveys, The Sussex Brewers Hamsey Community Primary School East Sussex Libraries (Hastings) The Hearth Bakehouse and Pizzeria Heritage Lottery Fund Heritage Open Days High Weald Dairy Cheeses Elizabeth Hughes Jerwood Gallery Langhams Brewery Laportes Restaurant Lewes District Seniors Forum Lewes History Group Lewes Leisure Centre Lewes Library Service Lewes Patisserie The Old Needlemakers Cafe Ben Paley The Patchwork Dog The Snowdrop Inn South Malling CE Primary School Spoken Memoirs Tom Paine Printing Press