Bold as brass reminder of old malt company
BUGLE reader Keith Horton recently acquired at auction a reminder of an old Black Country firm in the form of an impressive brass desktop inkstand.
It is from the firm of Samuel Thompson and Sons and represents their Midland Maltings at Smethwick. Presumably, this would have sat on the desk of the company director, perhaps one of the several Samuel Thompsons who ran the firm in the 19th and 20th centuries.
The business was founded by George and in 1805, with Samuel’s three sons later joining the firm. A brief account of the business appears in the 1998 book The British Malting Industry since 1830 by Christine Clark (published by Hambledon Press):
“By the 1850s, the family were malting at Oldbury, Smethwick and West Bromwich; they had acquired a mill, two small local breweries and others at Wolverhampton and Uttoxeter, besides several public houses. The partnership was dissolved in 1872, with Samuel (1815-92), the second son, subsequently continuing the malting side of the business. His experience in brewing continued to influence the character of the enterprise. Expansion was rapid and by 1914 the company, producing 70-80,000 quarters of malt a year, was numbered among the leading sales-malting firms. But whereas Thompson’s competitors in the eastern counties had invested in large, centralised maltings, growth was achieved simply through acquisition of numerous small concerns scattered throughout the west midlands, the Welsh borders and the west country. Several hundred customers – small country brewers and home brew pubs – were supplied with local malt made from locally grown barley.”
The brass inkstand lists the locations of the company’s maltings: Lincoln, Walsall,
Smethwick, Ironbridge, Shrewsbury, Birmingham, Newark-on-trent, Bristol, Taunton, Westbury, Holcombe, Trowbridge, Bedminster and Peterborough.
These undertakings brought the family great wealth. In 1847 the second Samuel built for himself a grand villa in Smethwick that he named Uplands. By 1914 the third generation Samuel Nock Thompson was the boss of the business. He was something of a dignitary in
the Smethwick area, serving as a justice of the peace and in the First World War he held the rank of major and was the vicepresident of the Smethwick Red Cross; in 1923 he unveiled the war memorial at Smethwick Old Church, where he was churchwarden.
The company was one of the founders of Associated British Maltsters in 1929.
Can readers tell us any more of the recent history of this firm?