From trainee chemist to master brewer – Walter Showell’s Crosswells Brewery
WALTER Showell was born in Birmingham in 1832, where he spent his formative years with his aunt at Ashted Row.
He started his career as a trainee chemist and moved to Oldbury, where he joined Charles Tonge as an apprentice at his chemist’s shop in Birmingham Street.
In 1854, he married Sarah Harthill, the daughter of a master miller, which led to a career change. With his background as a chemist, he began collaborating with his father-in-law, Joseph Harthill, in his malting business. With his financial backing, he soon established the small Victoria Brewery in Simpson Street, Oldbury, not far from the Dog & Pheasant. Walter’s beer recipes were popular with local drinkers and the business expanded.
During this period, he bought a large piece of land next to the Great Western Railway line in Crosswells Street, Langley Green, which included Crosswells Springs, which early monks had called “The Wells of the Cross”.
In 1874, he constructed his new brewery here, which was such a success that in 1881 he built a new maltings at Langley, next to the Titford Canal and railway. A second 90-quarter brewery was added in 1884 with further extensions a year later.
The brewery had its own company band, fire brigade and fire engine. In 1884, the company was
formally registered and in 1887 Walter handed over control to his son, Charles.
The beers from Crosswells Brewery were advertised as “ales brewed from the choicest malt and hops, and the purest water in existence, have so won their way into popular favour that the Crosswells has become a household word”.
Wholesome
There was a good range of beers, including fine and superior dinner ales, table beer, mild, bitter and pale ales, “palatable, wholesome and invigorating” beers, brown stout and porter, best and strong old ale.
The nearest tied house to the brewery was the Crosswells Inn in Station
Road, Langley, previously kept by local agent William Smith, and acquired in 1890.
The company expanded their outlets to supply beer to the Black Country and Birmingham, and in 1889 acquired Taylor’s Hockley Brewery, adding another 40 tied houses in Birmingham. A year later, they acquired Sarah Marsland’s Brookfield Brewery in Stockport, but this exposed the company to some risk in supplying beers to more remote locations.
In 1894, Showell’s acquired the Brewers Investment Corporation, which doubled the number of pubs owned in Birmingham, and moved the head offices to Great Charles Street in Birmingham. The canal between
Langley and Birmingham provided an efficient transport link between the brewery and a new distribution warehouse based at Crescent Wharf, off Broad Street, where 6,000 casks of ale could be stored.
Decline
By 1896, they also had a brewery at Ely in Cardiff, but they had to sell the Stockport Brewery for £250,000 due to a financial crisis. Further acquisitions in London and the South-west proved to be rather ambitious, which along with the downturn in the country’s economy, led to the decline of the company. In 1898, their London pubs were bought by Reffell’s Bexley Brewery, with a series of financial difficulties and prosecution.
By 1900, Showell’s were widening their markets, by supplying beer and stout to the Egyptian army of the Khedive, delivering
15,000 barrels of beer a year. At the shareholders’ AGM in the same year, it was reported that the company was in good health, paying 15% dividends over the last four years and with annual net profits of over £92,000 (equivalent to over £7 million in today’s money). Around this time, Harry Twyford was one of the main directors of the company. By the end of the Victorian era, Showell’s had developed into a large regional brewery with a tied estate of almost 200 pubs.
In 1901, Walter Showell passed away at Stourton Hall, the family home near Kinver, aged 68, leaving a wife and daughter.
At that time, he was a household name in Oldbury, since he had done so much for the people he lived and worked with.
He had taken a prominent part in public life, becoming chairman of the Local Public Health Board and Board of Guardians. He had built a small church in Rounds Green, and contributed to the cost of the new parish church at Langley and the repair of the chancel at Kinver Church. He also helped to establish the Hospital Saturday Movement in Oldbury. Although most of the
Walter had travelled brewery buildings were widely, and was one of the demolished, some remain first to ascend Mont as part of a distillers company Blanc. In making Langley gin! 1885, he had In 1944, Langley Maltings stood unsuccessfully was sold to Wolverhampton as a & Dudley Breweries candidate and until 2006 was for parliament one of the few remaining and, at traditional floor maltings. the time of Listed as a historic building his death, he (Grade II), it remains was an a prominent canalside feature, Alderman but was seriously on Worcestershire damaged by fire in 2009 and is on the top of the County Victorian Society’s list of Council. endangered buildings.
By 1912, So, although Showell’s the company Crosswells Brewery has was feeling the long gone, many of the pinch, with declining profits company’s pubs remain, of barely £9,500, mostly often with some original associated with the high features of the brewery, cost of brewing materials. and still serving an excellent In 1914, Walter’s sons sold pint of beer. the company to Samuel With acknowledgement Allsopp & Sons (Burtonon-trent), to Tony Hitchmough, along with its Joseph Mckenna, Colin 194 pubs and 30 offlicences. Harris and the Brewery History Society.
At the final shareholders’ meeting the accounts showed an apparent turnaround in profits, recorded as £65,224. The brewing plant was put up for sale in 1918, and the Crosswells Brewery closed shortly afterwards. Samuel Allsopp leased all the pubs to Ind Coope & Allsopp who used the brewery as a depot, and by 1961 had become Allied Breweries, and by 1993 part of Carlsberg-tetley.
Gin