One of the main reasons I'm going is because of the small brewery taps like the Beacon Hotel in Sedgley and the Bull and Bladder in Brierley Hill. Michael Jackson and others have written about them but there's one question I've never seen answered. Why did small breweries and brewpubs continue to exist in the Black Country when they pretty much disappeared everywhere else in England in the twentieth century? I'd guess it's something to do with industry and geography but maybe there are other reasons too.
It may seem obvious, but the main reason was that the owners simply did not want to sell.
ReplyDeleteYou will no doubt be aware the Beacon was closed for many years.
I think the answer is simple: there a lot more of them in the Black Country than in most other regions of the country. It was only in the 20th century that large commercial brewers really moved into the area. It's also where home-breweing remained the strongest in the first half of the 20th century.
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