Sunset

Well, let's hope so

On a site beside the river Rea, in a residential corner of Birmingham. Perfectly ordinary that we would go out for a meal, but a slightly odd view from the table. In fact, we are on a small industrial estate, where one of the units houses one of the three breweries in this city district. The brewery has a tap room, the tap room has outside tables, an area is cordoned off for a singer/guitarist (an eclectic mix: from 'King of the Swingers' to Belle and Sebastian!), beside it a pop-up kitchen (struggling to maintain a menu without access to electricity, for some reason). So, in the end, a modern recreation of the beer-houses, where beer was originally brewed and served on the premises, before there were public houses and taverns and breweries with their own estate of pubs for retail sale. History gone full circle

It's odd to have this small industrial enclave in an area that is otherwise residential, parks and retail shops. Puzzling until and unless you stumble across the stone in a scrubby corner on the edge of the site - a mill-stone. Three water corn-mills were recorded on this site in the late 17th century, milling wheat and rye (which required different stones). The mills remained throughout the 18th century, but were replaced by a metal works in the early 19th century, developing into sword-cutlery, bayonet making and gun-barrel manufacture. By the turn of the 20th century, these had, in turn, been replaced by a rubber factory. This still existed in 1964 as The Avon India Rubber Company, but was replaced by the current estate in the 1970s

So 350 years of history, dating back to the siting of a mill beside a slightly faster-flowing section of the river, led to us sitting beside a steel fence, in an anonymous industrial setting, to enjoy a (well above average) mac 'n cheese and a pale ale brewed on the other side of the wall, listening to a passable cover of Natalie Imbruglia. City life