Former Flower & Sons Brewery, Clopton Road
The brewery dates from 1831 and closed in 1967, following a takeover by Whitbread.
© Copyright Graham Hoggand licensed for reuse under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic Licence. Originally uploaded to www.geograph.org.uk
Flower and Sons used to have a brewery in the heart of Stratford-upon-Avon.
I started working for them in 1968. The company was then owned by Whitbread who decided to close the brewery but still keep a distribution depot and office, The office was a converted pub in College Lane which was knocked down and flats were built on the site.
Flower’s lasting legacy (arguably bad) was the invention of keg beer. Flower’s Keg was the first keg beer on the market.
Does anyone have any memories?
Comments
My father spent all his working life with Flowers (& later Whitbread). I can recall as a child in the 1960s the smell in the town when the brewery was malting.
My Uncle Bill worked at the brewery I think from the end of the war till around 1970. I also worked there stacking beer crates coming of the line, his name was Harwood and he drove one of the trucks. I have lived in Australia since the 70s and this has brought back many memories of Stratford for me
I too worked at Flowers Brewery in the early ’60s. I knew Bill Harwood, went to school with Brian Lampitt, great footballer, should have gone far in the game. Hope is still around? Maybe he remembers me?
My Uncle worked for Flowers for over 25 years and then went on working for Whitbreads when they took over the brewery, We have so many items that he has saved over the years that he worked for them, including cards from the Flowers family. Its absolutely amazing. He’s now 97 and still going strong and we often sit down and talk of the days he worked for Flowers and Whitbread.
Yes, by far the largest employer in Stratford-upon-Avon and free beer in the ‘Office Tap’ in Brewery Street under the office block, the site of the original Brewery offices. When the railway from the North arrived in Stratford-upon-Avon its terminus was in Birmingham Road c. 1860, the brewery moved to a site next door. Instead of using the now redundant canal system goods were moved to and from the brewery by rail. Readers from a different era may remejmber the former Brewery Street premises as Kendalls who were brewers chemists. Old OS maps have the bridge in Clopton Road over the canal titled Brewery Bridge.
I just bought an old barrel with p7232 Flower Stratford On Avon to the base and I believe it to be from the brewery.
Is this the building, I wonder, where I saw an RSC production of the Brecht/Weill musical “Happy End” in January 1986?
Does anyone have any memory of a Martin Mullally working at the brewery?
I have a bottle of Flower & Son Strong No 1 Ale dating back to the VE celebrations in 1945. It has 11/5/45 Bill written on it. Bill was my late wife’s father William Welch. On this day I took it out of storage to have a look at it. Just wondering if anyone would be interested in this piece of history.
I worked for a short time at the brewery back in 1966. As a temporary worker I carried out a number of tasks, principally the loading of the barrels on to the brewery wagons. Cleaning out the yeast tanks was a great job because of the smell, and the money, but picking up dead rats was one the least favourite of jobs I did. I remember the staff canteen and their spam batches…marvelous
I remember walking past it every day on my way to school, Greenhill street junior 63 to 67 and then Hugh Clopton High School 67 to 71
I knew a lady in London called Jane Flower. I knew her family had a brewery in the West Country. Mostly for me was the family’s connection to the Anglo Catholic movement
My father worked for Flowers brewery as a lorry driver delivering to all the pubs around the country that Flowers supplied. That was in the mid to late fifties.
I can also remember at night time the brightness of the green illuminated ‘Flowers’ sign at the top of the brewery building.
The regulars drank their first pints of Flower’s Keg in the Wadham College, Oxford, Beer Cellar, sometime in 1954-55. They were delighted with the novelty—but not for long. With a profound sense of loss, I drank my last pint of true Flower’s Bitter at the Dirty Duck in quite recent years.
Brian Perkins, I am a descendant of the family. I live in America and I am very interested in the bottle.
I also used to walk past Flowers Brewery every day on my way to the Croft Prep School when we lived in Clopton from 1944 to 1946, and I can remember looking through the window and seeing the barley sprouting on the flower ready to make the malt. I used to be friendly with a boy named Peter Fell, who used to live in Vincent Avenue, but lost touch when my parents moved to Berkshire in 1946. In those days one of our play areas was the old brickyard Quarry, which I believe has been completely filled in and redeveloped!
I worked at the Whitbread Flowers distribution office in College Lane in the early 1980s. The building had been a pub and was converted to offices in the 1970s.
We sometimes used to visit the Sportsman pub in Bull Street round the corner at lunchtime. Does anyone remember personnel who were based there? I remember Nick Collins, Les Goddard, Doreen (Receptionist),
My family owned a free house pub in Wimbledon called the Hand in Hand which made its name selling Flowers ale.
Popular was bitter, old ale and Shakespeare ale, only sold in half pints as it was very strong.
Flowers also provided the sign which was of course William Shakespeare.
Happy memories
The brewery was of the Birmingham Road the tallest building in the town it had a glass panel the hight of the building showings a staircase known as the dragons back the once produced a beer called dragons blood
I first came to England in 1965 as a graduate student at the newly formed University of Warwick. I became friends with the college barmen and through them obtained a set of 6 half-pint mugs and 7 pint mugs directly from the brewery. I took them back to California as a gift for my mother, a retired English teacher who had a passion for anything to do with the Bard, The mugs have never been used and retain the gold band on the rims as well, of course, the image of Shakespeare. Would anybody be interested in purchasing my collection?
I knew the manager of the brewery in Stratford-upon-Avon in 1955 and every Saturday night a group of us drank buckets of beer into the early hours of Sunday. Can’t remember the managers name, can anyone help?
Add a comment about this page