Page 17 - Oundle Life May 2024

BEER
MONEY
A brewery tale...
© Tray image credit: www.brewerytrays.co.uk and © North Street image credit: Paul Coles at www.oundleinpictures.org.uk
It started in 1775, when a farmer’s son from nearby Stoke Doyle started a small brewery in North Street. His name was John Smith, and the business he founded would eventually transform Oundle.
The first brew was ready on
September 23rd and the Napoleonic prisoner of war camps at Norman Cross near Peterborough would prove to be the making of the new brewery. Between 1798 and 1800 John Smith’s brewery would supply no fewer than 9,000 barrels of ale to the camps.
It was enough to make the Smith family rich and, after the founder’s son (also called John) took over the running of the brewery, it became so successful that the Smiths soon owned all the grandest properties in Oundle.
By 1837 John and his nephew, Richard Tibbitts, were trading as ‘Smith & Tibbetts:
Brewers, Maltsters, Timber, and Coal Merchants. In order to stamp out any competition
on the brewing front, the firm bought the Oundle Union
Brewery in 1853 and closed it down. Smith paid just £5,400
for the Union Brewery, which had been built just 17 years earlier at a
cost of £30,000.
The Smith brewery was the only major
The Smith brewery was the only major business in Oundle at that time
business in Oundle at that time and, as such, the town’s main employer.
As business continued to thrive, John Smith and his extended family bought up most of Oundle, including several licenced premises, one of which was The Talbot Hotel.
After Tibbetts died as sole proprietor of the Smith’s brewery in 1860, it was bought by yet another John Smith. He
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ran the business until his death in 1916 but, sadly, he had no son to pass the brewery on to.