A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



him arc to be found in Surrey and Sussex. 

 Another founder was Thomas Janeway, who 

 left the Whitechapel firm to set up in busi- 

 ness for himself at Chelsea. He was fairly 

 successful, and his bells dating from 1763 to 

 1785 include those of old Chelsea Church, 

 Kensington, Edgware, and Hornsey, peals of 

 eight at Battersea and Blechingley, and many 

 other bells in Surrey and Sussex. 13 His busi- 

 ness, like that of Thomas Swain, does not 

 appear to have continued after his death. 



Robert Patrick married Sarah Oliver, grand- 

 daughter of Thomas Lester of the White- 

 chapel Foundry, 13 and started an opposition 

 business in Whitechapel, being some time in 

 partnership with one Osborn of Downham, 

 Norfolk. He cast the bells of St. John at 

 Hackney and St. Botolph Bishopsgate, and 

 the peal of eight at Reigate, which bear the 

 date 1784. C. Oliver, a bell-founder in 

 Bethnal Green, cast a peal of bells for the 

 church of Worth, Sussex, in 1 844. 



BREWING 



In the Middle Ages when ale was the 

 general drink of all classes, brewing was a 

 necessary and often domestic industry, and few 

 records of local courts are without some 

 reference to its regulation. When, however, 

 brewing became an extensive trade, and 

 especially after the gradual change of taste 

 which substituted hopped beer for the old 

 English ale, we have few notices of any 

 interest relating to brewing in rural Middlesex 

 until comparatively modern times, though, as 

 hereafter mentioned, a number of breweries 

 are known to have existed near the river bank 

 east of the Tower as early as the I 5th century 

 and perhaps before. The history of the 

 licensing and regulation of ale houses belongs 

 rather to Social and Economic History. 

 William Hucks, who represented Wallingford 

 in Parliament, was a well-known brewer of 

 the 1 8th century. He was brewer to King 

 George I, and paid that sovereign the doubtful 

 honour of setting up his statue on the summit 

 of the steeple of St. George's Church, Blooms- 

 bury. This occasioned the following satirical 

 quatrain : 



The King of Great Britain was reckon'd before 

 The head of the Church by all good Christian 



people, 



But his brewer has added still one title more 

 To the rest, and has made him the head of the 

 steeple. 



William Hucks was one of the principal 

 inhabitants of the parish of St. Giles in the 

 Fields, and of the new parish of St. George 

 Bloomsbury, formed out of it in the year 1 73 1 - 1 

 He filled various parochial offices from 1689 

 to the separation of the parishes, was receiver 

 of the subscriptions for building the work- 

 house, and took an active part in rebuilding St. 



Giles's Church. Parton attributes to him the 

 well-known anecdote of the interview of 

 King Lewis XV with the ' chevalier de malt ' 

 which is generally associated with Humphrey 

 Parsons the East Smithfield brewer. 3 



On his death on 4 November 1 740, he 

 was succeeded by his son Robert Hucks. 

 The site of the brewery is not known, but it 

 appears to have been near the junction of 

 Shaftesbury Avenue and Charing Cross Road. 

 Mottley, who wrote (under the pseudonym of 

 Robert Seymour) a Survey of London, published 

 in 1 735, gives a list of the streets and lanes in 

 St. Giles's parish. 3 Among those included in 

 ' the first part of the old town ' are ' Brown's 

 Gardens and therein Two Brewers Yard.' 

 This is probably the site of the brewery, and 

 the surrounding localities point to its position 

 as indicated above. 



The firm appears from the following note 

 in the Annual Register for 1758,* to have had 

 a branch establishment in Pall Mall : ' 3oth 

 May. At a store-cellar in Pall Mall, Mrs. 

 Hucks's cooper, and a chairman who went 

 down after him, were both suffocated as sup- 

 posed by the steam of 40 butts of unstopped 

 beer.' In the beer tax returns of 1760 

 ' Huck ' occupies a position eighth on the list 

 with an output of 28,615 barrels. 6 



Hucks had a brother, also a brewer, in 

 partnership with Smith Meggot, whose busi- 

 ness was in Stoney Lane, Southwark, the firm 

 being recorded in Kent's London Directory of 

 1738 as Hucks and Meggott. 



The Black Eagle Brewery at Spitalfields of 

 Messrs. Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co., 

 Ltd., is one of the oldest in London and covers 

 an area of over 6 acres. The founder was one 

 Thomas Bucknall, who in 1669 erected a 



" Tyssen, Ch. Bells of Suss. 43. " Ibid. 40. ' See post, p. 172. 



1 John Parton, Some Acct. of the Par. of St. Giles ' Op. cit. ii, 767. ' Op. cit. 96. 



in the fieldt (1822), 392-3. ' Alfred Barnard, Noted Breweries, i, 209. 



1 68 



