Retiring won’t stop the barrel rolling out again

Last master cooper aims to keep his skills alive

AS ENGLAND’S oldest working barrel maker bowed out this week, the country’s last master cooper has vowed to keep the ancient skill alive.

And with true Yorkshire grit and a steely determination, Alastair Simms is more than ready to take up the mantel at the White Rose Cooperage, near Wetherby.

After six decades in the business, Lee Skinner, 72, from Liverpool is looking to sell-up and retire, leaving Mr Simms as the only other master cooper in England.

It is a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly and he has grand plans to ensure the ancient skill, which dates back to the Romans, doesn’t die out.

“It won’t disappear if I have anything to do with it. My mission in life it to keep it alive,” said Mr Simms, 53, who handcrafts wooden casks, vats and beer barrels using traditional methods.

“It’s strange and exciting to be the last man standing. At the moment I don’t really know how I feel.

“To be honest I think I bore people with my job because it’s all I talk about because I live and breathe it. It’s part of me.”

Two years ago Mr Simms took on an apprentice cooper, 20-yearold Kean Hiscock, from Garforth, who will spend a total of four years learning the craft.

He said: “Hopefully we will be able to take another apprentice on, and then when I get towards 60 I can spend more time out of the office.”

As part of his plan to preserve the skill, Mr Simms, who was born in Masham and now lives in Ripon, is hoping to eventually find suitable premises for a visitor centre in Yorkshire.

“That’s my plan. I will be able to talk to visitors and explain how casks are made and give demonstrations,” he said.

Coopering in England has been in decline since the 1960s, when brewers realised metal casks would be cheaper and less troublesome than using coopers.

Mr Simms said: “One of the reasons it has been dying off is that being a cooper is a trade that is handed down from father to son and nobody ever wrote anything down.”

However, wooden casks have recently been in the midst of a renaissance due to the rise of microbreweries.

Mr Simms said: “We supply to microbreweries all over the country.

“One of our biggest customers is The Junction pub, in Castleford, which has taken a total of 220 casks from us. All their beer is supplied from wooden casks.”

When Mr Simms began in the profession back in the 1970s there were still around 100 coopers in the UK. But the advent of metal casks in the 1960s saw numbers decline, resulting in the craft almost fading away but for a handful of skilled craftsmen.

Mr Simms established White Rose Cooperage, at Thorp Arch, in 2013 with the aim of keeping the industry alive in England.

“It’s not just a job, it’s everything rolled into one,” he said.

It won’t disappear if I have anything to do with it Alastair Simms, master cooper