Came Upon A Child Of God

The question of the day is : "was there one child or two?". Let me start at the beginning, and the beginning is the Anchor Brewery which until 25 years ago occupied a prime site on Bankside in Southwark, London. The brewery was built in the early seventeenth century on part of the grounds previously occupied by the famous Globe Theatre of Shakespearean fame. When the brewery was eventually demolished in the early 1980s, part of the land that became available was used for the construction of a modern reproduction of the original Globe, and this has become one of the most famous sites of modern London.

It is the brewery rather than the theatre that I am interested in. A plaque set into the wall on Park Street provides a list of brewers starting with the Monger family in 1616 and running through until the acquisition of the brewery by the Courage Group in the 1950s. The brewer I am particularly interested in is Henry Thrale (who controlled the brewery in the mid eighteenth century) but in order to understand what he took over you need to understand the previous brewers. Which takes me to Josiah Child (1670-1693).

There is plenty of documentation to show that the brewery fell under the control of someone called Child in the 1660s and remained in his ownership until the 1690s when it was acquired by Edmund Halsey. But if you dig deeper than that, the agreement fades away in front of your eyes like the head on a pint of Courage Directors. In some places Child is referred to as James Child, in other places Josiah Child. Some people have Child taking over the Anchor Brewery in 1666, others in 1670. Some record his death taking place in 1693, some in 1699. Most people fudge the issue : John Pudney in his splendid 1971 history of the Courage Group talks about "Josiah, sometimes known as James, Child", whilst Alfred Barnard (the font of all knowledge on the history of British brewing) decided to skip over that particular episode in the history of the Anchor Brewery in his sonorous four volume work of 1889. 

There certainly was a Josiah Child - his life is well documented and his portrait has survived down the ages. He was born in 1630, and made a name for himself - and probably a fortune for himself - by being a firm supporter of Cromwell during the Republic. In 1655 he became Deputy of the Navy Treasury in Portsmouth and in 1658 he became the Mayor of Portsmouth, important positions given the importance of the Navy in seventeenth century Britain. He also became the MP for the seat of Petersfield in 1859. Following the restoration in 1660 he was removed from his official positions and banned from any dealings with the Navy by the new King Charles II. Nevertheless, if we are to believe the history books, by 1666 he had bought the Brewery at Bankside, Southwark, from the Mongers, obtained a contract to supply the Navy with beer (cleverly changing the name to the Anchor Brewery to reflect the nautical connections) and been recommended by the King for membership of the Company of Brewers. At the same time it appears that he had become a leading economist of the day, writing in 1668 alone two important books - "Brief Observations Concerning Trade and the Interest of Money", and "A New Discourse of Trade". Later he became a major stockholder in the East India Company and in the 1680s he became Governor of the Company. He was created 1st Baronet Child of Wanstead in 1678 and eventually died in 1699.  

The problem with this particular version of history is threefold. First, the owner of the Anchor Brewery is usually referred to as James Child rather than Josiah Child. Secondly, James Child of the Anchor Brewery is said to have died in 1696 and not 1699. And third, the next owner of the brewery - Edmund Halsey - rather cleverly acquired it by both being a decent head brewer and by marrying Child's daughter. Whilst Josiah Child is recorded as having two daughters who survived childhood, both married into the nobility and certainly not to a working brewer.

I am not sure that I have either the time or the inclination to untangle the strands and discover how many Child brewers there were. But there again, what else is retirement for? Did you know that you can download  "Brief Observations Concerning Trade and the Interest of Money" as a copyright free PDF file.  Excuse me while I go off and read it.

A Refreshing Brew With A Hint Of Coriander And Ginger

Regular NFN readers will have noticed that we have not made any Podcast awards for 2008. If the truth be told, the judging panel - Amy, my wheaten terrier, and myself - became a little dispirited last year when our highest award went to the Channel 4 News Morning Report show. After announcing the award - with more than a dash of hubris - on their website they then closed the show down a couple of months later. For the news, we now depend on the Guardian Daily podcast, but it's not getting an award because of the annoying number of times it repeats the URL of its website.

However, Amy and I have recently found a podcast which informs us and entertains us during even the longest, and often wettest, of our walks. It is a splendid example of how a small group of enthusiasts can launch their own "radio station" and broadcast to the world. Step forward Pacific Brew News Radio.

The radio station is run by a handful of beer enthusiasts on the west coast of America. The last few programmes have been hosted single-handed by a guy called Rick Sellers who is frighteningly knowledgeable about beer, but wonderfully infectious in his enthusiasm for the subject. In the most recent programme he drinks, and reviews, a glass of Rogue's Half-e-Weizen on air and you want to rush out and buy a bottle (this is difficult because, to the best of my knowledge it is unavailable this side of the Atlantic). He talks about the San Diago Brewers Fair and you want to buy an airline ticket. He describes some hidden beer enthusiast's bar he has visited and he makes you want to drop what you are doing and find the nearest decent pub.

The remarkable achievement of the podcasts is that they have the capacity to be so boring and so insular, and yet they are just the opposite. Even if you are not particularly fond of beer - in which case I grieve for you - I defy you to listen to one of the shows and not be tempted to try a sip of whatever elixir they are praising. So, Pacific Brew News Radio has to win my Podcast of the Month Award. I only hope that in bestowing the award I do not condemn it to the same fate as Channel 4 Morning Report.

A Rummage To Fight Off The Pangs Of Hunger

Having run out of shirts that fit me, I am trying to keep on a diet at the moment. The trouble is that food is not just an essential fuel, it is also a diversion. It provides many of the punctuation marks in life's daily story. In the past, this function would have been partly fulfilled by a pipe of baccy (oh!, tobacco how I miss you). When tobacco went, the full stops and commas of my day would be represented by fruit pastilles, or chocolate biscuits, or buns. I know I should adopt a new set of representative grammatical symbols made up of healthy fruits, but with such a prospect I am tempted towards the punctuation-free style of some of the more avant-guard writers. But I have retained the paragraph-break of my day : in previous ages this would be the pipe-scrape and refill with fresh pungent tobacco (Tobacco did I tell you how much I missed you?) or a fresh hot toasted tea-cake. Now it is a rummage.

I have always been a keen rummager. Searching old cupboards in the hope that I might discover some forgotten piece of the past. I find time travel relatively easy. I can be transported back 40 years or more by the chance discovery of an old photograph, a discarded letter, or a crumpled press cutting. Today, whilst trying to get through the mid-morning hunger-pangs, I discovered an old book.

"A Century Of Progress" was published by Joshua Tetley, the Leeds brewer, in 1923 and looks back at the first hundred years of the firm's history. It's a lovely book, finely printed, beautifully illustrated, and, it would appear from a quick internet search, quite rare. According to a pencilled note on the front page, I was given it by two good friends of mine 21 years ago. Towards the end of the slim volume there are a collection of black and white photographic plates. The following example is a view of the 17 4-ton wagons owned by the brewery.

The frontispiece of the book has the following dedication :

1823-1923

This Souvenir of a Century is dedicated to all friends whose goodwill has been won and kept through long years of business. The Past comes not back again save in the mirror of memory. The Present spreads its banner over us. The Future saith, like the old Rabbi, "The best is yet to be."

Tetley's remains in name but it is now part of the international Carlsberg group. On reflection, perhaps the old rabbi got it wrong.