Banks’s and Butlers, brewing rivals

GETTING to the pub this year has been a rare treat, and even once they let us back in they were chucking us out early.

Here’s hoping that by the time we go to print we’ll still be able to enjoy a pint at the local.

If we can, Banks’s are

one of the few age-old Black Country brewers whose wares you would still be able to sample, and here are a few of their beermats from, we think, the 1950s or ’60s.

They were discovered, all in perfect condition, at a local antiques fair earlier this year by Halesowen reader Robert Hickman.

Best

The light-hearted beermats promote Banks’s Ales as giving you ‘Extra Lift, and Banks’s Bitter as ‘The Best Drink Any Time’, while also wishing

customers a Merry Christmas from a suitably redcheeked Santa Claus, as his reflected self pours him a bottle from the other side of a mirror.

Back then beer was mostly a working man’s drink, and any ladies who fancied an ale would usually opt for a half.

Not so these days though. The girls are just as likely to enjoy a pint as the boys – as American superstar singer Katy Perry demonstrated a few years ago when she played at Birmingham’s LG Arena. During a break between songs she raised a pint, in a proper Banks’s glass, to the audience, took a deep glug and launched straight into the next number.

Delivery

And she must have been paying the Black Country pint more than lip-service – she ordered another delivery for her show the following night.

Let’s hope Taylor Swift will be necking a pint of Holden’s and Lady Gaga a bottle of Batham’s next time they take to a Mid

lands stage.

Sadly, neither she nor anyone else will be swigging Butlers – Banks’s Wolverhampton rivals have long since gone. But Robert Hickman was lucky enough to find a memento of their bitter on another beermat that was among those he picked up, this one barrelshaped, and proclaiming their beer the Pride of the Midlands.

Frozen in time, the original Butler’s Brewery in Wolverhampton. This is the laboratory photographed in 1997, five years after the brewery closed, long after it had been absorbed into Midlands rivals M&B

Right: American singer Katy Perry wets her whistle with a pint of Banks’s Mild (picture: Instagram)

Banks’s Bitter may have been ‘the best, any time, but Butlers was the Pride of the Midlands

And a Merry Christmas from your favourite brewery

The Banks’s Lion and latin motto, Fide et Fortitudine – Fidelity and Fortitude

Diamond-shaped beermat for Banks’s Brown Ale

The best drink, bottled or draught

Banks’s could give you extra lift