A HISTORY OF SURREY 



businesses, a sufficient indication of the suc- 

 cess of the methods employed by the Surrey 

 manufacturers, who have been amongst the 

 pioneers in establishing the reputation of 

 ' British vinegar,' as the malt product is nowr 

 generally termed. The operations of some 

 of these firms are not confined to vinegar 

 making. Of Sir Robert Burnett & Co. as 

 spirit rectifiers we have already spoken, whilst 

 Messrs. Beaufoy & Co. have long been noted 

 for their manufacture of British wines and 

 mineral waters, and are now also shippers of 

 foreign wines and spirit blenders. 



A further proof of the importance the 

 vinegar industry of Surrey has for long 

 maintained is seen in the amount of stock 

 each of the above mentioned firms had in 

 hand in July 1844, when the duty on vine- 

 gar was repealed, as compared with that held 

 by the largest makers in other parts of the 

 kingdom. These quantities were as follows : 

 Messrs. Pott, 746,139 gallons; Sir Robert 

 Burnett, 578,437 gallons; Messrs. Beaufoy, 

 552,072 gallons ; and Messrs. Slee, Payne & 

 Sice, 368,182 gallons. Only one of the 

 forty licensed vinegar manufacturers in other 

 counties could vie with these firms in im- 

 portance, Messrs. Willis & Co. of Old Street 

 Road, who had 589,714 gallons. The 

 greatest makers out of London were Messrs. 

 Hill, Evans & Co. of Worcester, whose stock 

 was 291,689 gallons.* 



The business of Messrs. Pott was established 

 so long ago as 1 641 by a Mr. Rush, in whose 

 family it remained until 1790. For some 

 years the works were carried on by Mr. 

 Rush's widow, and Manning and Bray com- 

 ment on the remarkable fact that at one time 

 three of the greatest trades in England were 

 carried on by three widows, Mrs. Rush's 

 vinegar manufactory being one of them. 

 The buildings were in Castle Street, South- 

 wark, on part of the Bishop of Winchester's 

 park, and were held of that see on leases for 

 life. In 1790 Messrs. Robert & Arthur 

 Pott became proprietors of the works. 

 Their family had for seventy years pre- 

 viously carried on a similar manufactory in 

 Whitechapel, and this business was trans- 

 ferred by them to the Southwark premises, 

 which were considerably enlarged and fitted 

 up with new apparatus.^ In 1844, as we 

 have seen, this firm could claim to have the 

 largest stock in hand of any vinegar maker in 

 England. The incorporation of Messrs. 

 Pott with Messrs. Beaufoy & Co. has taken 

 place only within the last two or three years. 



' Brayley and Britten, loc. cit. 



' Manning and Bray, Hist. ofSurr. iii. 590. 



In the history of Messrs. Beaufoy & Co. 

 of South Lambeth we have to deal with one 

 of the oldest established and most imporunt 

 of existing Surrey firms.* The oldest and 

 still the largest department of this firm's 

 business is the manufacture of vinegar, but 

 their manufecture of British wines was only a 

 little later in its origin and is of considerable 

 extent and interest. 



The manufactory was established in 1 730 

 by Mr. Mark Beaufoy, a member of the 

 Society of Friends and a distiller at Bristol, 

 who is said to have been so shocked at the 

 frightful effects of intoxication then so gener- 

 ally prevalent that he relinquished that lucra- 

 tive business. The original site of the works 

 was on 3 acres of ground known as Cuper's 

 Gardens, which now form the southern ap- 

 proach to Waterloo Bridge. The land had 

 belonged to Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundel, 

 and by him is supposed to have been granted 

 to Jesus College, Oxford, of which College 

 Messrs. Beaufoy became the tenants.* Mark 

 Beaufoy first established the works as a malt 

 vinegar manufactory, he having according to 

 the tradition first learned the process in Hol- 

 land. He had however a great difficulty to 

 encounter in the want of ' rape ' wherewith 

 to construct the filters to fine and flavour the 

 vinegar. In Holland the vinegar makers 

 were supplied with the refuse from the raisin 

 wine manufacturers, but in England there 

 was no such source of supply, and he was 

 compelled to purchase raisins, and, after ex- 

 tracting the saccharine and mucilage of the 

 fruit so as to leave only the solid parts of the 

 raisin or the rape, to throw away the liquor. 

 This waste of raisin juice attracted the atten- 

 tion of Dr. Fothergill, the Quaker physician, 

 who pointed out to Mark Beaufoy how wine 

 might be made from it, and advised him to 

 commence it as a branch of manufacture. 

 This Mr. Beaufoy did, and entered his name 

 at the excise as a maker of sweets. The 

 manufacture of raisin wine was however a 

 revived art, for in 1636 Francis Chamber- 

 layne had obtained a patent for the making 

 of wine from the raisins or dried grapes of 

 Spain and Portugal.* The difficulty of obtain- 

 ing foreign wine during the protracted con- 

 tinental wars of the eighteenth century greatly 



' The following account of Messrs. Beaufoy & 

 Co.'s business is based on information supplied by 

 the Company in its own printed pamphlet supple- 

 mented with references to contemporary author- 

 ities as to the conditions of the manufactory at 

 different periods. 



* Nichols, Hist, of Lambeth, 77. 



5 Pat. II Chas. I. pt. II, No. 14, printed in 

 Rymer's Faedera (orig. ed.), xix. 716. 



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