 |
Return:-
|
Mitchells & Butlers Brewery, Cape Hill, Smethwick Mitchells and Butlers can be traced back to Henry Mitchell and William Butler, and their respective businesses in the 1860s. Henry Mitchell (the second, 1837-1913) joined his father in business at The Crown Inn, on Oldbury Road in Smethwick, and on his father's retirement in 1861, became the licensee. The venue proved too small for Mitchell's ambitions though, so in 1866 he built the Crown Brewery on land adjoining his inn, enabling him to take requests for his beers from elsewhere, which hitherto he had been unable to do. He supplemented his produce from small maltings in West Bromwich, Smethwick and Birmingham. By 1872 the brewery was trading as Henry Mitchell & Co. and was so successful that Mitchell purchased 7 acres of land at Cape Hill and there built a brewery in 1878. Through Mitchell's keen business sense and the quality of his ales (one known as 'The Standard Shilling Family Ale'), the business prospered and doubled in size. In 1888, Mitchell took Herbert G. Bainbridge as a partner and in the same year the firm became a private limited company, to help fund the building and renovating of public houses, which was part of Mitchell's vision of the Company as both brewery and publican. Both sides of the business did well: in 1889 the Company won a gold medal at the Paris international beer festival for the quality of its ales and stouts, and by 1892 it had control of over 200 public houses. The quality of public houses was a concern of Mitchell's, resulting in his ethos of 'fewer and better', a premise that was reflected in the establishment of the Birmingham Property Company in 1897: a consortium of local brewers which used a voluntary compensation scheme to encourage the surrender of licenses on run down inner city public houses. This later became compulsory nationally, and Mitchell (and Butler) embraced this new modernised licensed trade. In 1898 the business was amalgamated with that of William Butler of the Crown Brewery, Broad Street, Birmingham, and took on the name Mitchells & Butlers Ltd. William Butler (1843-1907), had worked in the pub trade at the Old Crown Inn in Birmingham, and had later taken possession of the London Works Tavern in Grove Lane, Smethwick in 1866. He had proved such a success here that he was able to go into partnership at the Old Crown. Like Mitchell, Butler saw the limits of brewing solely for his own pub and expanded to sell to others, eventually establishing a new commercial brewery (Crown Brewery) on the Old Crown Inn site. The better facilities (including water supply) at Cape Hill, persuaded Butler to move his business there on the merger. The brewery was renamed Cape Hill Brewery and the company emblem of a crown (for both companies) was changed to a leaping deer. As a result of the success of the merger, the site was enlarged in 1900 to sixty acres and in 1914 to ninety. The following years also saw M&B acquire many other companies, including Vulcan Brewery of A. Homer Ltd (in 1899), J. Evans in Perry Barr (in 1900), Cheshire's Windmill Brewery in Smethwick (in 1913), Holder's Midland Brewery in Birmingham (in 1919), J. Jordan and Co. in Oldbury (in 1920), T. Russel and Co. in Wolverhampton (in 1932), Highgate Walsall Brewery Ltd, in Walsall (in 1939), Thatcher's Bristol Brewery Ltd. in Newport (in 1949), Darby's Brewery Ltd. in West Bromwich (in 1951), Atkinson's Brewery Ltd. in Birmingham (in 1959) and W. Butler and Co. in Wolverhampton (in 1960). In 1961, M&B merged with Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton Ltd. of Burton, to form Bass M&B, and in 1967 with Charrington United Breweries, to form Bass Charrington, subsequently shortened to Bass PLC. Mitchells & Butlers remained, however, the principal trading name within the Bass Group's UK business for many years.
|
©peh