THE FALL OF THE HOUSE OF ALLSOPP

From a lecture by R. G. Anderson, High Ridge, Marchington, Uttoxeter, UK on 3 March 1998 at the Annual General Meeting of the Institute of Brewing at the Bass Museum in Burton-on-Trent.

One morning in late January 1887 scuffles broke out at the doors of the London and Westminster Bank in the City as potential investors fought to get hold of a copy of this document. The prospectus for issue of shares in the firm of Samuel Allsopp & Sons. Such was the demand that copies were changing hands in the street for 2 shillings and sixpence each. Allsopps were going public and had put a price of £3,300,000 on the firm, made up of £1,100,000 each of ordinary and preference shares and debentures. In the event, the issue was 37 times oversubscribed. The lucky recipients of an allocation of shares congratulated themselves on their good fortune and soon the shares had almost doubled in value on the Stock Market. And yet, within 3 years, these same investors were demanding their money back at some of the most rowdy AGM’s ever witnessed. Allsopps had become a laughing stock and its history for the next 20 years, as it lurched from crisis to crisis until eventually falling into the hands of the receivers in 1911, made it a byword in mismanagement as probably (at least until then) the most unsuccessful brewing company the world had ever known.

What had gone wrong? Well relating the causes of this fall is the main theme of my paper tonight. But first let us briefly examine why the investing public was so keen to get into Allsopps in the first place. The company could trace its origins back to at least the 1740’s when Benjamin Wilson ran what we would now call a brewpub in High Street, Burton-on-Trent and sold a few barrels of beer to other publicans. Over the next 60 years, Benjamin and his son and successor, also called Benjamin, built up the most successful brewing concern in Burton, to a large extent through the export of their dark sweet ales to Russia, Poland and Prussia via the port of Hull.

In about 1800, Benjamin Junior took his young nephew Samuel Allsopp into the business and then in1807, following a downturn in trade due to the Napoleonic Wars, he sold his brewery to Samuel for £7,000. Samuel struggled at first as he attempted to replace the now almost disappeared Baltic trade with home trade. It was not really until 1822 when he successfully copied the India Pale Ale of Mark Hodgson, a London brewer, that things started to look up again. This pale, bright, sparkling beer was much more refreshing than the traditional, heavy, nut brown ales produced in Burton until then. The beer had found particular favour in India, hence the name, and when it reached the home market it was an instant success. Allsopps, soon followed by Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton, proved capable of producing a particularly fine example of this new beer and by the mid-l830’s the two companies controlled almost 2/3rds of the Indian export trade and had wholly displaced Hodgson by 1843. Not that the trade was in reality that big. Total annual production by Allsopp and Bass combined in the late 1830’s was only around 40,000 brls. At that time single large London porter breweries such as Whitbreads and Thrales were turning out 10 times that amount.

The real success of the Burton breweries came with the railways, which reached the town in 1839 allowing easy, efficient and cheap distribution of their undoubtedly superior product, which was backed up by a highly developed sales organisation of travellers and agents. It could be said that Allsopps and Bass were the first companies to develop beer brands. Production tripled every ten years for the two major players in Burton so that by the mid-1870’s, the combined annual output of Bass and Allsopps was over 11/2 million barrels. Every pub in Britain was virtually compelled to carry a stock of Bass or Allsopps, or perhaps Worthingtons or Salts. Allsopps, after the 1820’s, always seemed to be step or two behind Bass, Ratcliffe and Gretton but they were still phenomenally successful. The Brewers’ Journal in June 1879 was moved to state “The glories of Burton will ever be associated with the name Allsopp”. The main brewery area of Allsopps is shown in the plan drawn up at the time of the company’s flotation in l887.

Stretching from the Old Brewery on Benjamin Wilson’s original site on High Street and backing down to the river, the company’s land snaked up through the town to the cooperage in Middle Yard and across to the New Brewery abutting the railway line. The whole was connected by around 11 miles of private railway. In addition, there were the company’s maltings at Shobnall and other land amounting to about 140 acres in all. When Alfred Barnard visited Burton in the summer of 1887, when preparing his 4-volume work ‘Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland’, he marvelled at the scale of the enterprise with his eulogy to the Old Brewery (rebuilt in the 1840’s), the clock tower, the maltings at Shobnall, only being topped by his admiration for the new brewery constructed in the late 1850’s.

Allsopps certainly liked his portrayal of the company. They purchased 50 copies of Volume 1, which contained their brewery and ordered 10,000 copies of reprints of the article on Allsopps for distribution to customers etc.

The Allsopp family had coupled their brewery’s success with social advancement. Henry Allsopp, who had been the driving force in the company since succeeding his father Samuel in 1838. In the 1850’s he bought a country mansion in the village of Hindlip in Worcestershire where he was MP for a number of years. Henry was made a baronet in 1880 and created a baron in 1886 when he took the title of Lord Hindlip. His sons, three of whom were also MPs, all received a gentleman’s education at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, had their own country seats and married well. George Higginson Allsopp, for example, sometime mayor of Burton, married the 3^rd daughter of the 8^th Earl of Shrewsbury. In this the Allsopps rather outflanked the Bass’s who had tended to marry more into trade than into the real old landed aristocracy. Both families however had the seal of royal approval, the future Edward VII making his first visit to Burton in 1888 to visit Allsopps, seen here with his entourage at the brewery, accompanied by the 2^nd of his three official mistresses, Daisy, Countess Warwick.

To investors, Allsopps must have looked as solid as the Bank of England. The announcement that they were to go public followed very closely on the highly successful launch of another great brewery concern Arthur Guinness and Sons. A company, which by the mid-1880’s had taken on Bass’s mantle of the biggest brewery in the world and was seen to be prospering. But, in reality, the situation in Burton was not nearly as rosy as it was for the giant concern in Dublin. Since the mid-1870’s there had been a general turndown in trade for the Burton breweries. This was due to a number of factors, but two stand out. Firstly, the increasing ability of country brewers to produce passable copies of Burton-brewed beer, something which became easier as the public became more attuned to the new so-called ‘running beers’ then making their mark. These were lighter than the traditional Burton Pale Ale and were produced quickly, without any true secondary fermentation. They were the kind of beers everyone would recognise today - except that lightness is a comparative term. They would still have gravities in the high 1050’s. The second reason for the downturn in the Burton trade, which is linked to the first, was the growth of the tied trade which gravely eroded the sales of Burton beers which, until 1880 relied almost entirely on the free trade. Brewers throughout the country had steadily been buying up properties over the years, primarily as a protective measure and sought to exclude the products of Bass, Allsopp etc wherever possible - a strategy made possible by the improved quality of their own beer.

Not that there was any inkling of these problems in the Allsopp prospectus. This was a very artful document. It presented the company’s profits over the previous 7 years, 5 years, 3 years and in the year just finished in such a way as to show what appeared to be continuous improvement in the business. In fact, this profit improvement was entirely due to the lowest raw matenal prices in living memory over the last 2 or 3 years. What the figures did not show was actual barrelage sold. Allsopps were not peculiar in this. Virtually all breweries were - and still are - very secretive about such matters. But here are the figures expressed in the same format that Allsopps had used to display their profits. Clearly it shows a different picture, one of decline - and an extent of decline greater than Bass who had faced the same problems, and of the GB industry as a whole. Despite these figures, which of course the board knew, the company’s prospectus expressed a very upbeat picture of Allsopps position and confidently demonstrated how an 8% dividend on the ordinary shares could easily be met.

The reality was not long in being brought home to the shareholders. The first set of profits of Samuel Allsopps & Sons Ltd. covered only the half year to June 1887 and whilst not particularly impressive, produced only moderate levels of disquiet. The first full year in June 1888 was a different matter as profit was considerably down on that claimed for before the launch and was not enough to pay the 8% dividend. Things went from bad to worse in 1889 and 1890 as profits fell again. This was a direct consequence of consistently falling barrelage and was in contrast to the performance of Bass.

Basically, it was a result of the hubris and incompetence of the directors of the company led by Samuel Charles Allsopp, newly ennobled as the 2^nd Lord Hindlip on the death of his father and who had been effectively in charge of the company since about 1880. As we have noted, the growth of the tied trade had been eating away at the market for Burton beer, particularly since the 1880’s. Up until then virtually no Burton brewery owned any pubs. They didn’t need them in a period of steadily rising beer consumption as their quality products sold well. Allsopps seemed to have believed that this happy situation would go on forever. The vision of the board, which contained three family members out of eight directors, was blinkered by a glorious past. Bass took a somewhat more pragmatic view. They swallowed their pride and started in a modest way to buy some pubs of their own from around 1880 and they also, to a rather more significant extent started making loans to publicans to tie them in this way. Allsopps did neither of these things. In fact, their prospectus made a virtue of it, boasting that they had no tied estate and had very little out on loan to publicans. At the first AGM of the company in 1887, the 2^nd Lord Hindlip firmly stated that they would not buy pubs, that the tied house system was on the verge of collapse and assured the shareholders that they would benefit from the directors’ caution. Not surprisingly then, as the tied estate continued to grow and the free trade shrank, so did Allsopps volume and profits. The position was further exacerbated by the way in which Allsopps handled their share distribution. We have already noted how there had been a scramble for Allsopp shares at launch and how they had been much over-subscribed. Well, the allocation of shares had been left entirely in the hands of the London & Westminster bank who had been very generous to their city friends, but far less so to the licensed trade who were Allsopps customers. Not surprisingly, the publicans resented being left out on what they, at least at the time, thought to be a ‘good thing’. So they stopped buying Allsopps beer. Allsopps were squeezed by both competing brewers and disgruntled free trade customers.

The position of the company was further damaged because it was grossly overcapitalised. As we have seen, the company was sold for £3,300,000. But how was that figure arrived at? Well, it was made up of the tangible assets of the company, brewery buildings, casks, raw materials, stock, etc and what was called ‘goodwill’. Goodwill arose from the old practice of, when buying a business, giving the vendor a premium over and above the tangible assets of the company on the understanding that he would not set up a new business next door and take his trade with him. One paid for his ‘goodwill’. It was usual, if it was paid at all, to make the goodwill payment about equivalent to one year’s net profits. When limited liability companies came along, this was re-evaluated upwards and 2-3 times the net profits was thought of as a prudent amount. As this table shows Allsopps, when capitalising the company valued their goodwill at the extraordinary level of 8 times net profits - much higher than any other brewing company at the time. They had effectively watered the capital. They had sold too many shares. So, when it came to the crunch as the company declined, profits were not enough to cover the interest charges on fixed interest debentures and preference shares as well as paying a dividend on the ordinary shares.

By 1890, things came to a head when the dividend on ordinary stock was cut to 3 ½% - way below the 8% promised in the prospectus. The press had a field day. Punch published this cartoon illustrating the meagre return from Allsopps vat. The Standard, a financial paper, went further than this and accused Lord Hindlip and his fellow directors of issuing a fraudulent prospectus. Hindlip sued for libel and won £30,000 damages, but still the criticism continued. Another financial paper published a cartoon with the Allsopp character, looking very much like Lord Hindlip, being kicked out by the London & Westminster Bank. An illusion to the fact that the bank’s officials, who had organised the launch of Allsopps, had dumped their shares in the company at the earliest opportunity.

Not surprisingly, the AGM of 1890 was lively with charge and counter-charge passing between the platform and the floor. According to one account, chanting from the floor arose demanding of Lord Hindlip that he return to the shareholders some of the capital from the over-sold company. Indeed, as documents in the archives show, the Allsopp family had done remarkably well. The document shows the ‘division of the spoils’ between the partners. The Allsopp family ended up with nearly 11/2 million pounds in cash and shares with, unusually in such flotations, 2/3rds of it in cash. A sum much inflated by the over-priced goodwill. So, with some justification, a shareholder at the 1890 AGM demanded to know of Hindlip ‘how much are you going to give us back?’ This was taken up by the meeting and soon the whole hall was chanting ‘yes, how much are you going to give us back?’ Lord Hindlip, a rather portly but still commanding figure, rose to his feet, the noise subsided and everyone waited to hear his reply. ‘Not a damn penny’ he said and promptly walked off the platform.

The shareholders, somewhat miffed by this, set up a committee to enquire into the affairs of the company. But it was to no avail and the committee’s report found nothing definite against the company. They noted the goodwill effect again and encouraged the company to continue in the policy it had belatedly started in 1888 of purchasing public houses to try and secure a decent tied trade. Or at least the majority of the committee endorsed this view. One member refused to sign the report noting that they had only spent some 6 hours in Burton and that the chairman of the committee of investigation had spent most of the time discussing sporting dogs with the Hon. George Allsopp. Perhaps the shareholders got the board of directors they deserved.

Allsopps problems were further exacerbated in 1890 by an unexpectedly high level of returned beer. Returns in those days seem to have been normally around 1-2%. In the summer of 1890, Allsopps returns reached double figures. It is interesting that when this was raised with the company’s executive committee by the chemist Dr. George Harrow, the head brewer, a Mr. Stirk, replied that he had it all in hand and really it was nothing to trouble the board about. The trouble was officially put down to an inferior batch of Moldavian and Chilean barleys. However, this does not seem to have been the whole story.

Subsequent reports in the Allsopp minute books record that Harrow had instigated a regime washing casks with bisulphite of lime, suggesting a micro problem. whatever the truth, Mr Stirk, the head brewer, was replaced within a year.

It would all seem to have been too much for Lord Hindlip, who resigned his position as chairman in October 1890, and retired to his country seat in Worcestershire.

A new chairman was found relatively quickly in Mr. Henry R. Grenfell, an elderly but well-respected banker, who joined the company early in 1891. Gradually, assisted by low raw material prices, reduction in working expenses and the general revival of beer consumption which began in the early 1890’s, Grenfell managed to restore some hope back to the company. At least the profits covered the fixed interest shares and debentures and, by 1895, they were paying 6% on their ordinary shares. Some financial commentators considered that Allsopps had ‘turned the corner’ and could once more be ‘reckoned with as a successful go-ahead commercial enterprise’. This assessment however, was far too optimistic. The company was still doing barely half the volume of trade that it had done in the late 1870’s, and was thus carrying a great deal of surplus capacity. Grenfell had also virtually given up the short-lived attempt to buy pubs and build up a tied estate. The improvement in profits was accordingly on a fragile base.

By 1895 Grenfell had retired and been replaced by an Allsopp, this time the Hon. Arthur Percy Allsopp, 7^th son of the first Lord Hindlip, Henry Allsopp. Percy was aged only 34 when he became chairman. He had been on the board from his mid-20’s. He was much travelled young man educated in the, by then, traditional Allsopp manner of Eton and Cambridge. In his 5 years as chairman, he was to display a lack of facility for business which surpassed even that of his elder brother and was to lead to the Times newspaper describing his activities as a ‘debauch of reckless finance’. Percy was a young man in a hurry. He identified, quite correctJy, that Allsopp’s basic problem was a lack of tied houses in a world that was becoming increasingly tied. His brewery was running at around half capacity and he needed to fill it. When Percy became chairman, the company had 92 pubs, which had cost a total of £173,000 and by the time he departed in 1900 they had 415, purchased at a cost of over £1 .7m. For the first 2 years of his chairmanship he showed some restraint, perhaps held in check by the Managing Director, one Maxwell Tod, but when this chap left in 1898, Percy became both Chairman and MD and bought with abandon. The extent of Percy’s purchases is even more remarkable in retrospect. I have plotted Allsopps total direct purchase of pubs during the 47 years of their existence as a limited company between 1887 and 1934 under various chairmen.

It turns out that Percy, in his 5 years in charge, purchased 54% of the company’s total stock of pubs in terms of money paid (this does not include pubs purchased by acquiring breweries, which we will come to later). Not only was there a heavy outlay on pubs but trade loans also shot up, trebling during Percy’s reign. Altogether on purchases and loans for pubs he spent £3.5 million

These vast investments could of course, in the absence of any reserve funds, only be financed by raising more capital, by issuing debentures and shares, for which perhaps surprisingly there was a ready market. The company’s capitalisation, already seen to have been excessive, was doubled in 5 years to reach nearly £8 million. When asked at the 1899 AGM how he could justify this, Percy merely noted that ‘we are sowing that we might reap’. Prophetic words.

This ‘dash for growth’, if it was to work, required that the investment be matched by increased sales. But it wasn’t. Sales went up, but not by much, only 88,000 brls (17%) between 1895-1899. This was enough to increase profits sufficiently to cover interest payments and allow the payment of a modest ordinary dividend. But it was all an illusion. Looking more deeply at the profits, one finds that return on capital employed had actually fallen dramatically during Percy’s chairmanship clearly indicating that too much was being paid for the properties compared with the volume of trade they were providing.

So what kind of properties did Percy buy? Well anything he could get his hands on, from very modest properties for about £1,000 in Pembroke Dock, Wales and off- licences in Castle Gresley, pubs in Burton such as The Cricketers (does anyone recognise it?) to larger establishments in Wigan at some £20,000 or even further north, the Forth Hotel in Newcastle-upon-Tyne for £25,000 (=£2 million today).

Prices which The Economist was to call ‘insane’ noting that Allsopps bought pubs ‘with a folly no other brewery matched’. But Percy didn’t stop at buying pubs. He also bought restaurants, a wine company in Jersey and, most spectacularly, Southend’s answer to Blackpool’s Winter Gardens, The Southend Kursaal. This is shown in the property ledger as having cost some £86,000 although other sources would suggest the total cost was closer to £200,000 (Description of Kursaal follows - trotting track, 2,000 dancer ballroom, menagerie etc.). He also bought the pub next door to the Kursaal for good measure, for £34,000.

And it wasn’t just in the purchase of property that Percy was innovative. In October 1899 Allsopps opened a lager brewery in Burton. Well what they actually did was to renovate the ‘Allsopps Old Brewery’ in Burton High Street, which had been mothballed for some years. Percy having travelled the world to assess the best method of making lager rejected the lengthy European system and instead went for a process and equipment purchased from the USA which involved rapid production of a chilled and filtered product with a total processing time of under 3 weeks complete with C02 collection and re-use for carbonating. Total capacity of the brewery was 60,000 brl which, by my reckoning, would be going on for about 1/2-2/3rds of the total UK lager market of the time.

Percy was nothing if not imaginative and, in retrospect, for good or ill, his ideas were way ahead of his time. Centre Parcs and ersatz Anglo-American lager all in the same year of 1899. But his policies led to economic disaster. When the end came it came quickly. In 1900 there was a reversal in the upward trend in barrelage. This was enough to set the house of cards tumbling. By April it was obvious that the profits were not enough to cover the promised dividend.

Percy went to the bank (well three banks actually) to try and borrow money to pay the dividend. Not surprisingly, he was turned away and, to the dismay of the rest of the board, who seemed to have little idea what was going on, he resigned - officially due to ill health. Subsequent investigations indicated that Percy had not only been incompetent but also dishonest. But with a repayment of some £12,000 and the transfer of a pub in Worcester worth £34,000 (which was Percy’s ‘personal’ property) to the company the threat of legal action was withdrawn.

After the spectacular failure of Percy’s regime, the next 10 years of Allsopps history before they, perhaps inevitably, fell into the hands of the receiver are something of an anti-climax. Re-evaluation of the company’s assets showed a deficiency of some £1,430,000 and after some squabbling with the shareholders, this amount was eventually written off the capital, although the notoriously high goodwill remained. Otherwise, it is a sad but familiar tale of falling barrelage, a loss of c. 30% between 1900 and 1905 followed by further falls to under 400,000 brls until eventually by 1910 the company was selling less than Worthingtons, a company which, 30 years earlier, had sold only 1/6^th of Allsopps barrelage. By then however, Allsopps were in a very different line of business to both Worthingtons and Bass. 30 years earlier, all three had been primarily famous for their pale ale. By 1910, pale ale was only a minor part of Allsopps volume. The majority, nearly 60%, of their output was mild. In fact, they produced as much lager as pale ale. This had been achieved, if this is the right word, by considerable advertising in lager (examples).

But even with this advertising lager never amounted to more than 40,000 brls and Allsopps became so associated with lager in the public’s mind that their pale ale trade was virtually thrown away leaving a bulk of less profitable mild. For a time they tried to exploit the growing bottled beer trade, even purchasing the Vauxhall Brewery in London to bottle for them, but although they made some inroads in this way, the bottled trade was much less profitable than the draught.

Allsopps also continued, on a more limited scale, their less than successful policy of pub purchases. Percy’s pubs had been widely spread from Plymouth to Newcastle, from Barrow-in-Furness to Dover. This, of course, led to increased distribution costs which really started to bite from 1905 onwards. Purchases by those who followed

Percy were also suspect. In 1908, for example, 24 Black Country houses of the Manchester Brewing Company were purchased for £74,000 but all were abandoned when in receivership in 1911. In retrospect, Allsopps’ pub purchases can be seen as a disaster throughout the life of the company. In all, by my count, Allsopps directly purchased 844 pubs in 47 years and had resold 319 of these by 1934, only 63 of which were sold at a profit with a mean selling price of less than ½ the mean purchase price.

Allsopps real problem, however, in the 1900s was the falling volume of sales and there was only one feasible solution. They could not buy enough pubs to fill their brewery; therefore they must ‘merge’ with another brewery and ‘tip’ the volume of that brewery into their own.

In 1905 this almost happened when terms were agreed for a 3-way merger with the Burton Brewery Company and Salts Brewery in Burton who were also in trouble. However, despite 12 months of negotiation, no agreement could be reached with the debenture shareholders of the two smaller companies. Similarly, in 1910, merger with Ind Coope was on the cards but again fell through for similar reasons. There were even talks with Bass in 1910 but the Bass directors could not agree on a price to take over Allsopps. Meanwhile, things had gone from bad to worse. Profits continued to fall and, in fact, for years Allsopps had been running at a deficit unable to cover interest charges by their profits and had not paid an ordinary dividend since 1900.

They tried all sorts of ways to get over, or at least camouflage, the problem, changing the dates of the financial year in 1907 for example, from when the documentation in the accounts becomes increasingly murky, but all to no avail. Eventually, by July 1911, the debenture shareholders, in order to prevent complete loss of their investment, insisted that receivers be appointed. To be fair to Allsopps, they were not the only Burton brewery in trouble. Between 1888 and 1911, the number of breweries in the town had fallen from 31 to 17. Only Bass’s (relatively) continued success and Worthington’s rise under the ruthless management of William Manners disguised the fact that Burton’s supremacy had ended in the 1890’s. But there was no disguising that the house of Allsopp had fallen.

By rights, I suppose I should end there to be true to the title of my talk. But nobody likes an unhappy ending so I will briefly relate the next stage in the Allsopp saga. Receivers were appointed in the person of Sir William Barclay Peat, founder of the firm of Peat Marwick. Peat was to stay on as chairman of Allsopps in the reconstructed board of 1913 and appointed as MD an experienced brewery manager from Alloa, then in his mid-40’s, one John Joseph Calder. Calder and Peat were to perform the miracle and transform Allsopps into a profitable company in the next 20 years.

This was not achieved, however, entirely by management brilliance and a complete restructuring of capital, but also contained an element of luck, if the First World War can be described as luck! This graph shows a plot of brls sold compared with the value of that barrelage for the period 1910-1925 for Allsopps. It illustrates the important effect of the war. Going into the war, the average gravity of beer was c. 1052. Coming out of it, the average gravity was c. 1030. What is more, the price had risen enormously due to excise duty increases. This may look like a recipe for disaster and, indeed for some it was, as many breweries went to the wall. But those who survived came out of the war selling weak beer with much lower raw material costs and an improved profit margin. Allsopps were one of those breweries. They didn’t sell any more beer in 1920 than they had in 1910 but it was worth 4 times as much to them. Calder had the nous and nerve to build on this and for most years in the 1920’s built up profits in a declining market.

He also, by a policy of buying other brewing companies such as Halls of Oxford, the Lichfield Brewing Company and Strettons of Derby, managed to lift Allsopps market share by 1933 to a level not seen since the 1880’s, although by then 75% of Allsopps production in Burton was mild and less than 2% was true India Pale Ale. Here he is with Barclay Peat and the other directors of the company in 1929.

But, even for Calder there were only so many suitably sized brewing companies available for take-over and, in 1934, he and the MD of Ind Coope, Neale Thompson, decided upon merger. And, ironically, as Ind Coope & Allsopp rose, Bass, Ratcliffe & Gretton fell. Ind Coope and Allsopp, by the 1950’s, was the most successful brewing company in Britain under Sir Edward Thompson who, with his brother Neville, showed that innovation tempered with business sense could work, whilst ultra-conservative Bass slipped year by year witil they were eventually saved from ignominy by take-over by Mitchell and Butlers of Birmingham. By which time, Ind Coopes, having dropped the name Allsopp in 1959, he had taken the ultimately unfortunate step of merging with Tetleys and Ansells to form, what was by 1963, called Allied Breweries. But that is another story!

Instead, I thought perhaps you might like to know what happened to the Allsopp family. Well, if you travel to Hindlip in Worcestershire, you will get some of the answers. There, in the churchyard, is the family tomb of the Allsopp family, in which are buried Henry, 1^st baron, his wife Elizabeth and various of their children, including George Higginson Allsopp and Percy Allsopp. In the church are memorial plaques to all of these plus the 2^nd Lord Hindlip of 1890 AGM fame, who died in 1897 having had more success on the turf than I did in brewery management. His horse, Limasol, won The Oaks in 1897. George, who continued as an Allsopp director until his death, died in 1907 and Percy, having served as mayor of Worcester for the 3^rd time in 1908, 8 years after leaving Allsopps and being declared bankrupt in 1912, died in 1929. His palatial house on the outskirts of Worcester was used as a convalescent home for officers in the First World War and later became a convent. The Kursaal incidentally, Percy’s pride and joy, was a great success by the time of his death having at last been sold by Allsopps to an American showman in 1910 for £25,000, it became the most successful amusement park on Britain by the 1920’s. A popular limerick of the time being:

A Southend young lady named Hannah

Possessed a peculiar mannah

To the Kursaal she went

And when the evening she’d spent

She said, ‘Lor, wot a lot for a tannah’

The last Allsopp I can find evidence of having anything to do with the brewery was the 3^rd Lord Hindlip (Charles Henry) who, in 1930, was approached by the company to make introductions to the directors of the Lichfield Brewery Company.

When Allsopps took over that company he was paid £1,000 for his services. Hindlip Hall, which stayed in the family until 1949 is now the headquarters of the West Mercian police. If you ask nicely, they will let you in and, there opposite the lifts, are portraits of Samuel Charles (2^nd Lord Hindlip) and his wife. If you wish to seek out further memorabilia on the Allsopps, at nearby Hindlip College there are busts of Henry Allsopp and his wife Elizabeth. And nearer to home, there is always the Andressy Bridge erected by G.H. Allsopp. And there is even living memorabilia in the 6^th Lord Hindlip, great-great grandson of Henry. The current baron, aged 57, is chairman of Christies and is perhaps best known to the public as the auctioneer of Princess Diana’s dresses in New York last year.

And now it is time I was finishing. But, in view of recent events within Allsopps descendent breweries, I thought it might be fun to briefly list some similarities between the firm of Samuel Allsopp and Sons Limited and Carlsberg-Tetley Brewing Limited.

(Review).

And finally, to show that history is a living subject, a picture of one of the only two men still living, I know who were employees of Samuel Allsopp & Sons Limited. Mr D.D. Wallace who entered Allsopps laboratory in 1931, was appointed to the brewery staff two years later and went on to become the most renowned brewer in the town. The other man is in the audience, Mr. Reginald Carrington-Porter of the Estates Department, who joined Allsopps in 1932 and who still comes in every Monday and Wednesday afternoons to look after the archive. Reg is the only person who knows where things are in the strong-room beneath ‘B’ block. Without him, I would never have found the things I have talked about tonight and I would like to dedicate my lecture to him.

Dr. Ray G. Anderson is a scientist at Carlsberg-Tetly Breweries, and a well-known amateur historian.

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