A HISTORY OF SURREY 



from the fact that it was drawn entirely from 

 one cask was called ' entire ' or, from the class 

 of men to whom its nourishing properties were 

 considered to be especially adapted, ' porter. 

 With the subsequent manufacture of this 

 liquor the history of the greatest of all the 

 brewing firms of Surrey has been more parti- 

 cularly identified. 



The most important event which affected 

 the brewing industry in the seventeenth 

 century was the creation of the excise duties 

 in 1643, beer being one of the first of the 

 home products to be taxed. It remained so 

 after the Restoration when the Excise duties 

 which had proved so profitable a source of 

 revenue were renewed and granted to the 

 Crown on its surrender of the ancient feudal 

 dues. The duties on every barrel of beer or 

 ale above 6s. the barrel brewed by a common 

 brewer amounted to 2s. 6^., and on every 

 barrel of 6s. or less to 6d. The distinction 

 between the holding capacity of the barrel of 

 beer and that of the barrel of ale, introduced 

 by the Act of 23 Henry VIII., was still ob- 

 served.' In 1697 the excise duties on malt 

 were first introduced and exacted in con- 

 junction with the beer duties until the repeal 

 of the latter in 1830. 



The history of the greatest of the Surrey 

 brewing firms, indeed to the present day one 

 of the greatest in the kingdom, begins with 

 the latter years of the seventeenth century. 

 Literary and to some extent political associa- 

 tions have combined to make the fame of 

 this firm world-wide, but in the history of its 

 development we have to deal also with the 

 first introduction of many of the improve- 

 ments due to modern science and ingenuity, 

 which have made brewing the highly skilled 

 industry that it is to-day. It is inevitable 

 therefore that an important place must be 

 assigned to this firm in any account of the 

 industries of Surrey.' 



The Anchor brewery of Messrs. Barclay, 

 Perkins & Co. is situated near the banks of 

 the Thames and extends right and left from 

 the Borough to Southwark Bridge. On part 

 of the site stood the famous Globe playhouse. 

 The beginnings of the brewery date back 

 well into the seventeenth century, many years 

 in fact before 1690, in which year Edmund 



' J. Yeats, Technical History of Commerce : Manu- 

 factures, 235. 



» Stat. 12 Ch. II. cap. 23. 



=> The following account of Messrs. Barclay, 

 Perkins & Co.'s brewery is based principally on 

 particulars supplied by the Company in the form 

 of an extract from Alfred Barnard's Noted 

 Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland; see also 

 the Licensed Victuallers' Gazette of 5 Jan. 1900. 



Halsey, who had begun life by running away 

 from his father, a miller at St. Albans, and 

 entering the service of Child the owner of 

 the brewhouse had in course of time mar- 

 ried his master's daughter, succeeded to the 

 business. Halsey amassed a large fortune 

 and married his only daughter to Lord 

 Cobham. Lord Cobham's peerage was in 

 those days an effective bar to his succeeding 

 to the possession of the brewery and so, upon 

 Halsey's death, his nephew, Mr. Ralph 

 Thrale, who had worked in the brewery for 

 twenty years, gave security for ;^30,ooo as the 

 price of the business. The whole of the 

 purchase money was paid in eleven years and 

 Thrale was soon making a large fortune. He 

 became sheriff of the county and M.P. for 

 the borough. He died in 1758 leaving the 

 whole of his enormous property to his son 

 Henry Thrale, who had been educated at 

 Oxford and was a man of refined tastes. He 

 married the celebrated Hester Salusbury and 

 became the friend of Dr. Johnson, who from 

 1764 until the brewer's death in 1781, spent 

 the greater part of his time either at the 

 Thrales' house at Streatham or at the brewery. 

 The year before his death was distinguished 

 by the Lord George Gordon riots when the 

 brewery was subjected to attack by the mob. 

 ' At the first invasion,' writes Boswell, 'the 

 rioters were pacified with fifty pounds worth 

 of meat and porter, and the second time were 

 driven away by the soldiers.' Mr. Thrale's 

 health at this period did not allow him to take 

 any part in the management of the business, 

 and the measures to be taken against the mob 

 were left to the manager, Mr. Perkins, whose 

 services on this occasion were recognized by 

 Mrs. Thrale's gift to him of 200 guineas, a 

 liberality, as she states in a letter to Miss 

 Burney, which did not displease her husband. 

 Henry Thrale, like his father before him, 

 was sometime member for the borough of 

 Southwark. Shortly after his death on 4 

 April 1 78 1, his widow finding the business 

 of carrying on the brewery beyond her powers 

 decided to sell it. Dr. Johnson as one of the 

 executors appears to have been much im- 

 pressed with the importance of his new office, 

 and Boswell relates a story concerning him 

 which he had of Lord Lucan and which, he 

 adds, if not precisely exact, is certainly charac- 

 teristical ; namely, that when the sale of 

 Thrale's brewery was going forward, Johnson 

 appeared bustling about, with an ink-horn 

 and pen in his buttonhole, like an exciseman ; 

 and on being asked what he really considered 

 to be the value of the property which was to 

 be disposed of, answered : * We are not here 

 to sell a parcel of boilers and vats, but the 



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