Visit the Shut up about Barclay Perkins site

The classic idiotically-conceived mega-brewery. Thought up by a chairman without brewing experience (who believed any beer could be brewed anywhere) and constructed by chemical engineers. How could it possibly have gone wrong?

The idea was that the whole of England and Wales would be served by just two breweries: Cape Hill and Runcorn. Beer brewed in Runcorn would be shipped by train to a depot in Stratford, East London. The train would later return to Runcorn with empties.

It was a personal project of H Alan Walker, chairman and chief executive of Bass Charrington. A man with, to put it mildly, a rather autocratic management style. Despite many in the company having misgivings about the plans, no dissent was allowed. The chairman made it very clear than anyone raising objections would be sacked.

After some delays, the brewery opened in 1974. With all the company’s breweries in Lancashire closing as well as the Charrington brewery in Mile End to make way for it. For some reason, the packaging plant was built far away from the brew house meaning beer had to be moved between the two through a very long pipe. Not exactly an efficient way of operating.

At the time, Bass Charrington was weirdly keen on having most of the brewing kit outdoors. Not just conical fermenters, but even the brewhouse itself. Something they had already done at Tennent’s Wellpark Brewery in Glasgow.

As soon as the brewery opened, it ran into problems. On the one hand, it struggled to replicate the beers from the existing breweries. And on the other, it had terrible industrial relations, leading to repeated strikes.

CAMRA weren’t great fans, as the brewery produced no cask beer. And had entailed the closure of a string of regional breweries: Barrow, Blackpool, Burnley, Liverpool, Manchester, Aberbeeg, Fernvale and Mile End. It left the group with no brewery further south than Birmingham.

Eventually, they did manage to sort out the problems at the brewery, albeit too late:
"The beer was improved by rebuilding the brewery along orthodox lines, and the beer became acceptable for what it was, and not a pretence of being something else. Just as everything was going quite well the depression in the brewery trade descended, and there was too much brewing and canning capacity."
"The Brewing Industry 1950 - 1990", by Anthony Avis, 1997, page 109.
The brewery closed in 1993. Fewer than 20 years after first coming onstream.



More...