» Brewing in Cheltenham
ONCE upon a time there was a perfectly pleasant pub called The Gamecock in a handsome Victorian building on the corner of St Margaret’s Road and Monson Avenue in Cheltenham.
In the late 1960s this was knocked down and replaced by a hideous concrete tower block, a style popular with corporate concerns then as now, in which the West Country Brewery had its offices.
It installed a pub on the ground floor, at first named the Gamecock, then later the Brewery Tap, which like most pubs of the era had all the character of an abandoned nuclear bunker.
Time passed and West Country Brewery was swallowed up by Whitbread, which made the hideous concrete tower block its own HQ.
In May 1990, Whitbread moved out of these ugly surroundings. They stood empty until 2004 when the demolition men moved in and reduced the grotesque former headquarters to rubble, an act thought by many people to have improved the appearance of the area greatly.
But then the planners and architects had the last laugh, as they so often do.
They built a multi-storey car park on the site. Opposite what was one of the least architecturally worthwhile structures ever inflicted on Cheltenham was the town’s brewery in Henrietta Street.
Perhaps you’ll recall the all pervading fragrant whiff that settled on the town centre when brews were being brewed. The aroma, like Marmite, was one you loved or hated.
On cold days, steam swirled from the drain covers in the streets around the brewery, as drains do in old gangster films set in New York.
Until it moved to Hesters Way in the 1960s, Cheltenham Grammar School (boys only in those days) was the brewery’s next door neighbour.
There were rumours that enterprising pupils would nip over the wall of the playground, load up with bottles from the brewery’s yard, then take their spoils to the off licence to collect the threepences on the returns.
The first brewery in Henrietta Street was founded in 1760 by John Gardner. It grew to become the largest of the town’s five breweries in operation a century ago. Near the old gas works (now Tesco) at the junction of Gloucester Road and the High Street was the Albion Brewery.
Warwick Place (between Winchcombe Street and Portland Street) was the address of Pointer’s Brewery, while Dowle’s and Simmond’s brewing establishments were also located in the town centre.
What’s left of the Henrietta Street brewery, topped by its curious pagoda which was constructed in 1898, stands in the development now called The Brewery Quarter.
From the tippler’s point of view the 1970s were to the brewer’s craft what the Bay City Rollers were to prog rock.
“Gloucestershire is a poor county for real ale,” was the sad assessment of the county’s brewing heritage in the 1976 Good Beer Guide.
Only two brewers were in operation then, supplying four real ales. Should your pub-going memory stretch back that far, you’ll recall that the delights offered on tap over the bar by the great majority back then were Double Diamond, or Whitbread Trophy Bitter.
The first, claimed its advertising, worked wonders. The second, said the ads, was the pint that thinks it’s a quart.
Both were made by robots in cavernous corporate production centres and tasted like it.
At Henrietta Street, Whitbread IPA was the last of the company’s products to be produced. On closure production switched to Cardiff and aficionados reported that the taste changed with the move.
Many thanks to Geoff Sandles (www. gloucestershirepubs.co.uk) and Joe Stevens