Wednesday 7 July 2010

What a difference a pump makes!

Can you imagine? This was the old Culverden Brewery, owned by E&H Kelsey, just off the St Johns Road in TW. Right behind the 2 petrol stations just opposite the church stood this magnificent tower brewery. A brewery stood on this site for approximately 230 years. This building was eventually closed and demolished in the early 1960's to be replaced with a telephone exchange.

Before there were electric pumps to move liquids around more easily the brewers of yesteryear just used gravity. Tower breweries were the norm so that the process started at the top with water and flowed down the building before eventually leaving the ground floor as beautiful beer.

A brewery like this would have been almost totally self sufficient with a maltings on site, coopers to make the barrels. E&H Kelsey Brewers also owned upward of 100 pubs locally.

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