Brewing beer, a cut throat business...

Derelict Thursday

Not the most obviously derelict site to blip, perhaps, but one whose history is such that it definitely qualifies.  

Apparently the competition in the brewing industry was (once upon a time) so intense that it was a cut throat business.  The office in which I work was once part of the Courage Bristol Brewery, as is the building in the picture, or rather, the remnants of it.
   
Apparently the late 17th century was the age of the microbrewery.  Dozens of small breweries reputedly flourished and in 1702, one of them, by Bristol Bridge, was owned by the Mayor, Sir John Hawkins. This business was the ancestor of the Bristol Brewery, which went on to produce George's and eventually Courage's beer. 

In 1730 the brewery was bought by wealthy slave merchant Isaac Hobhouse.  I am afraid that Bristol's shameful history is that it was once one of the centres of the slave trade in the UK. Isaac's sons John and Henry built the Porter Brewery that went on to be the basis of the Courage Brewery site in Bristol.

Brewing stopped on the site many years ago now. When I first worked in Bristol I remember that you always knew when they were brewing - from the smells.  Some people didn't like the smell of the brewery, but I rather did. I was lucky enough to do a couple of brewery tours before they stopped brewing beer in Bristol.

The Courage Company (along with others) did some terrible things to the  pub and beer industries in the UK.  But I grew up in this part of the world and remember Courage Ales and their pubs with a certain rose tinted fondness.  I don't miss them, the micro brewery revival has revitalised beer brewing and in beer drinking terms I would not want to turn the clock back.  

But the remnants of the brewery building in the photo, listed and preserved, may yet form the historic frontage for a more mundane development of residential flats.  For the time being though, and indeed for the last decade or thereabouts they have been derelict, desolate and waiting for rebirth,

I've arrived home very late and have just finished this blip with a minute to go before the witching hour - cutting it very close.