Batty & Co of London was a pickle and sauce manufacturer. The business was acquired by Heinz in 1905 as part of their entry into the British market.
George Batty (1800 – 1874) was born in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, to a family with South Yorkshire roots. He moved to London and founded Batty & Co in 1824. Four years later he married Eliza Feast from Cheshunt, Herts.
Batty had acquired the recipes of the late Dr William Kitchiner (1775 – 1827), an eccentric but popular celebrity chef of the era, by 1834. Batty & Co produced Dr Kitchiner branded sauces, such as Salad Cream.
Batty formed a partnership with Robert Feast of Waltham Abbey, Essex, and they traded as Batty & Feast from 1836. Feast was almost certainly a relation to Batty through marriage. The merger combined Batty’s factory at 101-2 Leadenhall Street with Feast’s premises at 15-16 Finsbury Pavement, which were used as offices.
Batty & Feast employed 86 people by 1851. The firm wasn’t much smaller than Crosse & Blackwell, which employed 126 people.
Batty & Feast first introduced Nabob sauce at the Great Exhibition of 1851. The firm won the only prize medal for pickles at the exhibition. It was reported in the press that Queen Victoria showed a great interest in the Batty & Feast stand.
The partnership was dissolved by mutual consent in 1852, with George Batty taking on all liabilities. Feast retained the Finsbury offices, and Batty relocated his offices to Leadenhall Street. Batty decided to concentrate on the export trade, particularly Australia.
An independent examination in 1855 reported that Batty & Co “India Soy” comprised of “little more than treacle strongly flavoured with salt”. This was common practice at the time, but undoubtedly the company did not enjoy as high a reputation as Crosse & Blackwell. The company was fined five shillings plus costs for selling short measures of its products in 1867.
Batty & Co employed 110 people by 1861. The company produced around 80 tons of isinglass, made from fish and used for clarifying beer, in 1862.
Batty & Co employed between 50 and 100 men in 1871, the exact figure varying with the season. The company’s best known products, Nabob Pickle and Nabob Sauce, began to be advertised from the 1870s. The company claimed to have been the first to bottle calves feet in jelly, a popular product at the time.
Batty & Co declared bankruptcy in August 1874, with £34,000 in liabilities (£3.5 million in 2015). The company’s assets were said to be of “very considerable value” in The Times. George Batty died in October the same year.
The business was acquired by Slee, Slee & Co, vinegar manufacturers of Southwark, and Batty products remained in production.
In the late nineteenth century Batty & Co built a factory in Peckham. It had 38,000 sq ft of covered space and 33,750 sq ft of open space. The premises included a number of railway arches, 17 for storage and two for processing.
George Batty’s son established a similar business, Henry Batty & Co, in Edinburgh in 1884, which survived until 1926.
Batty & Co was incorporated as a limited company in 1901. The company was acquired by H J Heinz, who wanted a British manufacturing base, in 1905. The Batty brand was phased out in 1910 and its products were rebranded under the Heinz label. The Batty brand survived for a further few years in export markets.
HP is the highest-selling brown sauce in Britain and Canada. A1 has higher sales in the United States and Japan. Yorkshire Relish retains popularity in Ireland. OK sauce remains popular in China. In Japan they have their own brown sauce inspired by the English version called tonkatsu sauce.
Arguably the ur-type brown sauce was Lea & Perrins’ Worcestershire sauce. We don’t think of it as a brown sauce today, but its ingredients; molasses, vinegar, citrus fruits, tamarind, and its taste; sweet, bitter, savoury, tangy, spicy; almost certainly informed the earliest brown sauces.
The great celebrity chef of the early Victorian period, Alexis Soyer (1810 – 1858), formulated an early brown sauce, which was manufactured by Crosse & Blackwell from the late 1840s. His Sauce Succulente was described as, “thick, pulpy and of a reddish-brown colour. It contains vinegar, a considerable quantity of tomato, wheat flour, shallots, garlic, redcurrant jelly and several herbs”.
By the early 1850s the brown sauce market had been established. The products tended to include tomatoes, garlic, shallots, mushroom and walnut ketchup, raisins, tamarind, soybean, herbs, spices, and salt. Treacle and caramel were used for colour, and flour was used as a thickening agent. Some contained anchovies.
Brown sauce became popular as a byproduct of industrialisation. Meat that was imported from the country to the towns and cities was up to three days old, and brown sauce improved its flavour.
Henderson Brand introduced A1 sauce in 1862. The sauce contained tomatoes, raisins and orange marmalade.
Brand’s nephew George Mason introduced an imitation of A1 called OK in 1880. OK was thicker, and included more fruit, including mangoes and apples.
HP sauce was introduced in 1889. It is similar to A1 but thicker, and contains tamarind. Other ingredients in the original recipe include garlic, shallots, ground mace, tomato purée, cayenne pepper, ground ginger, raisins, flour, salt and malt vinegar.
HP, A1 and OK were all acquired by large conglomerates in the 1960s. HP was already the highest-selling brown sauce in Britain by this time. However its acquisition by Imperial Tobacco, one of the largest companies in the world, saw investment in new machinery at its factories and a huge increase in marketing spend. Large competitors, including Rank Hovis McDougall and Colman’s, could not compete with Imperial’s massive firepower, and one by one HP’s competitors faded away.
Brown sauce was highly regionalised in Britain as late as the 1970s, with HP the only national player. Daddies was strong in the South West, Fletcher’s was strong in the West and East Ridings of Yorkshire, while Heinz Ideal Sauce and Hammonds Chop Sauce were strong in the North Riding. OK sauce had a large share of the London market.
From the 1970s the supermarkets streamlined their product offerings, usually focussing on the market leader and an own-label brown sauce.
Raleigh was the largest manufacturer of bicycles in the world throughout much of its history.
Frank Bowden establishes the business
Frank Bowden (1848 – 1921) was the son of a Bristol manufacturer. He trained as a lawyer, and went to Hong Kong to make his fortune.
Bowden was successful, but the Asian climate had destroyed his health by 1886. His doctor suggested he take up cycling as a remedy. After six months spent cycling on a Raleigh bike in the South of France, his health was much improved, and his commercial interest was roused.
Bowden entered into partnership with the Raleigh manufacturers, who manufactured two to three bikes a week from a small shop in Nottingham, in 1888.
The Raleigh Cycle Co was registered with a capital of £200,000 in 1896. By this time the business was the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world.
Frank Bowden went overseas to promote export sales. Whilst he was away the company floundered. Bowden returned to England and retrieved his son, Harold Bowden (1880 – 1960), from university to help him reorganise and manage the business.
Frank Bowden acquired full control of the business from 1908.
1,700 workers produced over 60,000 cycles every year by 1913. Harold Bowden was responsible for day-to-day management of the business by this time.
During the First World War the company voluntarily offered its factories to the government to manufacture munitions. Frank Bowden was made a baronet in 1915 in recognition of his service during the war.
Raleigh was one of the largest munitions manufacturers in Britain by the close of the conflict, with a workforce of 5,000.
Harold Bowden succeeds his father
Sir Frank Bowden died in 1921 with an estate valued at £475,000. Harold Bowden inherited the entire business.
Sir Harold Bowden (1880 – 1960)
There were 2,000 workers by 1924, making 400 bicycles every day, and over 100 motorcycles a week.
Unable to find suppliers to furnish it with components of sufficient quantity and quality, Raleigh became a vertically-integrated business, manufacturing every part at its Nottingham site apart from tyres and chains.
During the General Strike of 1926, 800 Raleigh workers joined in sympathy. Following the strike, Bowden introduced a profit-sharing scheme for his workforce. He wanted his employees to be proud to work for Raleigh, and believed it was essential to afford them fair treatment.
The brand and design rights of the Humber Cycle Co were acquired in 1932. The Humber cycles functioned as a premium alternative to the Raleigh brand. All production was centralised at Nottingham.
Raleigh had been overtaken in sales by the Hercules Cycle Company of Aston, Birmingham by 1933.
Sir Harold Bowden retired as managing director of Raleigh from 1938, but remained as chairman.
The war and post-war period
The Nottingham factory and it’s 9,000 employees were engaged almost entirely in producing munitions during the Second World War.
The post-war period was to prove difficult for Raleigh as it took time to rebuild the business after the war. The company had expected to enjoy the post-war consumer goods boom, but the rise of the car had a negative impact on sales. However the business had an output of one million bicycles by 1953.
Sir Harold Bowden retired as chairman in 1954.
Raleigh acquired the bicycle subsidiary of BSA of Birmingham in 1957. Production was consolidated at Nottingham.
Raleigh pioneered moped production in Britain in 1958.
Takeover by Tube Investments
Raleigh was subject to a friendly takeover by Tube Investments for £10.8 million in 1960. This represented a merger of the two largest bicycle manufacturers in Britain, which together held 80 percent of the domestic market.
Tube Investments consolidated all production at Nottingham from 1961.
Raleigh merged with Moulton in 1967, which confirmed its position as the largest bicycle manufacturer in the world. By this time the Nottingham site spanned 64 acres, and 70 percent of production was exported to 140 countries.
Raleigh was the only major British producer of mopeds, but abandoned the market to foreign rivals such as Honda in 1969.
Raleigh had a 67 percent share of the British cycle market in 1972, while foreign imports had a mere nine percent share.
Cycle sales in America boomed in the early 1970s, and Raleigh cycles, with their reputation for high quality, were in high demand. As a result, Raleigh cycle sales rose 55 percent between 1970 and 1971, leaving the company struggling to keep up with demand. Raleigh employed 8,800 people by 1975.
Ian Phillipps was appointed chairman in 1974. The finance director informed him that the Nottingham site was “the biggest white elephant in Britain”. Phillips reduced a product line of 7,000 different bicycles to around 1,000.
Raleigh had a production capacity of two million cycles a year at Nottingham in 1979, and employed 7,500. Together with other factories both in Britain and overseas it produced a total of four million cycles annually. 60 percent of British production was exported and it had a 60 percent share of its domestic market. It remained the world’s largest bicycle manufacturer.
Foreign rivals had captured a 36 percent share of the British cycle market by 1981, and Raleigh’s share had declined to 45 percent. The company’s workforce had been reduced to 4,000. Raleigh was no longer vertically-integrated, and instead imported all of its components apart from bike frames.
Following three years of consecutive losses and after reducing the workforce to 1,800, Tube Investments sold Raleigh to Derby International for £18 million in 1987. Derby’s timing proved fortuitous as mountain bikes began to enjoy strong sales growth.
Peugeot sold its loss-making bicycle arm to Derby in 1989.
The lease on the Nottingham factory expired in 2003. Raleigh relocated production to the Far East, which reduced manufacturing costs by 25 percent. The bikes are still designed in Nottingham. The company sold 850,000 bikes and employed 430 staff in 2011.
Raleigh was sold to Accell for £62 million in 2012.
Bass was one of the largest hospitality companies in mid-1990s Britain. The company had successfully introduced popular chain pubs such as All Bar One and O’Neills earlier in the decade.
Dave & Buster’s was a burger bar/video game arcade hybrid. Bass opened its first D&B in Solihull in the West Midlands in 1997. A second outlet was opened in Bristol in 1998 at a cost of £12 million. The outlets were large (40,000 to 60,000 square feet) and located in out of town locations.
A third outlet was scheduled to open in Thurrock, Essex, but never did. Bass had also explored sites in Croydon and Leeds.
Bass did not invent the D&B concept, and merely held the UK franchise. Bass withdrew from its franchise agreement in 2000 and closed the two outlets. The chain still exists in its native America.
John Crossley & Sons of Halifax was the largest carpet manufacturer in the world throughout much of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The business eventually declined as cheaper imports arrived from overseas, and the factory was closed in 1982.
Establishment and growth
John Crossley (1772 – 1837) was a hand weaver of carpets in Halifax, Yorkshire. He was promoted to mill manager. Crossley went on to lease a modest-sized mill at Dean Clough, eventually buying the property outright.
John Crossley died in 1837, and his three sons, John Crossley, Joseph Crossley and Francis Crossley took over management of the business. John Crossley & Sons had 300 employees and the fourth largest mill in Britain.
John Crossley was the general manager, Joseph was in charge of the machinery and Francis was the commercial mind.
Francis Crossley was responsible for the rapid expansion of the business throughout the mid-nineteenth century. He pioneered the development of steam-powered carpet manufacturing, which afforded the business an enormous cost advantage. Licensing the use of their patents to other carpet manufacturers brought in substantial revenues from royalties.
Francis Crossley (1817 – 1872), c. 1862. Image used with kind permission from the National Portrait Gallery.
John Crossley & Sons operated the largest carpet factory in England by 1848. By this time the business held a Royal Warrant to supply Queen Victoria. Carpets were retailed in Halifax and also supplied to London and Liverpool, with a substantial export market in the United States.
Many of the Crossley family values were inspired by their Congregationalist faith. Unusually for the time, Francis Crossley operated a policy of paying women equal wages to men for doing the same job.
Largest carpet manufacturer in the world
John Crossley & Sons was the largest carpet manufacturer in the world by 1862.
The business was transferred to a joint-stock company from 1864, with the primary aim of allowing its 3,500 employees to become shareholders. 20 percent of the company was sold to the workforce at preferential rates. John Crossley & Sons was perhaps the first large industrial business to provide a profit-sharing scheme for its staff.
John Crossley & Sons was the largest publicly-quoted industrial company in Britain by 1868, with an ordinary share capitalization of £2.2 million (about £220 million in 2014). 5,000 people were employed.
The company boasted annual carpet sales of £1.1 million by 1872, including exports to the United States valued at nearly £500,000. The buildings at Dean Clough Mill covered 20 acres, where concentration of production at a single site lowered costs.
John Crossley & Sons was one of the largest manufacturing companies in the world by 1877.
John Crossley & Sons employed 3,770 people in 1903.
John Crossley & Sons employed about 5,000 people at the largest carpet works in the world in 1923.
During the Second World War the company was largely engaged in cotton spinning (identified by the government as an essential industry) from its mill in Rochdale as well as the carpet export trade.
Post-war developments
Around half of production was exported in the post-war period, with Australia and New Zealand representing the largest markets.
John Crossley & Sons merged with Carpet Trades, one of the largest carpet manufacturers in Kidderminster, in 1953. The two companies continued to be managed separately.
The former Meredith & Drew factory at Brighouse near Halifax was acquired in order to produce the new, lower-cost, tufted-style carpets. The carpets were sold under the Kosset brand, using American marketing techniques.
John Crossley & Sons was the largest carpet manufacturer in Europe in 1968.
John Crossley & Sons-Carpet Trades merged with the Carpet Manufacturing Company of Kidderminster to form Carpets International in 1969. The company was the largest carpet manufacturer in the world, with 29 percent of United Kingdom sales. Company headquarters were transferred to Kidderminster. Kosset and Crossley were the leading brands.
Imported carpets, largely from Belgium, Denmark and the United States, grew to take the majority of the market between 1970 and 1980. Amidst competition from imports and an economic recession, Carpets International suffered heavy profit losses between 1980 and 1982. Between December 1979 and August 1983 the workforce was reduced from 6,071 to 2,800. The uneconomical Dean Clough Mills site was closed in 1982, and although 800 staff were relocated to other sites, 400 jobs were lost.
Carpets International entered into administration with the loss of 1,200 jobs in 2003. The company blamed increasing imports and a growing preference for wooden laminate-style flooring.
Little Chef dominated roadside catering in Britain, and inspired a rival, Happy Eater, which it was later allowed to acquire.
Happy Eater was established by Michael Pickard in 1973. Michael Pickard had managed Little Chef, but had been dismissed, supposedly following a personality clash with its owner, Sir Charles Forte.
Pickard established a rival to Little Chef in May 1973 with a 60-seat Happy Eater outlet at Ripley, Surrey. Two further sites were opened that year, one near Ashford in Kent and one near Crawley in West Sussex.
The business drew inspiration from the Howard Johnson’s chain of restaurants in the United States. Happy Eater was the first roadside restaurant chain in Britain to principally target the family market. Happy Eater outlets had children’s menus and baby-feeding facilities as well as superior play area facilities compared to Little Chef, both inside and outside.
By 1980 there were 17 restaurants, and the company needed expansion capital. Courage, the national brewer, acquired a 52.7 percent stake.
The company had a turnover of £8 million in 1983-4, which rose to £11.8 million for 1984-5. By 1986 there were 61 outlets and the company employed 1,430 people.
The majority of outlets were situated in South East England, East Anglia, the Midlands and along the A1. In 1986 only one outlet was franchised, the rest being owned or leased. Outlets could seat between 70 and 110 diners.
In 1987 the chain was acquired by Trust House Forte, the owners of Little Chef, for £14.2 million. In 1988 the chain peaked with 90 outlets.
The Prime Minister, John Major, notably dined at a Happy Eater in 1991. For this he was mocked by some in the media as an uncivilised buffoon, but others praised his demonstration of the common touch.
In 1995 the chain was described in The Observer, The Guardian and Scotland on Sunday as “downmarket”.
The first six months of 1995 saw 14 outlets rebranded as Little Chef, leaving fewer than 50 Happy Eaters remaining.
In 1996 Little Chef was acquired by Granada, a conglomerate which operated motorway service stations. In October 1996 it was announced that all remaining Happy Eaters would either be converted or closed down. The brand ceased to trade in 1998.
Huntley & Palmers became the largest manufacturer of biscuits in the world.
George Palmer (1818 – 1897) was born to a Quaker farming family in Somerset. His mother was a cousin of Cyrus and James Clark, founders of the well-known shoe manufacturing business.
George Palmer (1818 – 1897)
George Palmer was apprenticed to an uncle as a miller and confectioner in 1832. In 1841 he entered into a partnership with a cousin by marriage, Thomas Huntley (1802 – 1857), who owned a firm in Reading, founded in 1822, which sold high quality biscuits across much of southern England.
Huntley and Palmer took over a disused silk factory on the bank of the Kennet & Avon canal in 1843. Palmer introduced steam power and mechanisation to the business. With engineer William Exall, Palmer introduced the first continuously-running biscuit machinery in the world in 1846.
Huntley & Palmer employed 500 people by 1850. Sixteen tons of biscuits were produced every week by 1851, with distribution across England.
When Huntley died in 1857, annual turnover of the firm was £125,000 (around £12.5 million in 2014). George Palmer bought out Huntley’s son and took into partnership his brothers, Samuel and William Isaac Palmer, the former managing the London office and the latter running the factory.
Huntley & Palmers was producing thousands of tons of biscuits every year by 1865. Ship’s biscuit was a major product. The firm responded quickly to consumer demand: following the success of the Pearl biscuit introduced by rival Peek Frean of Bermondsey, Huntley & Palmers introduced their own version within a matter of months.
800 men and boys were employed by 1865. By this time Huntley & Palmers had introduced a compulsory employee sick fund, and provided a reading room at a small cost to subscribing workers.
Huntley & Palmers employed nearly 1,000 people by 1867.
The second generation of the Palmer family took over the management of the business from 1867-8. By now the business was easily the largest biscuit manufacturer in the world. Around 25 percent of production was exported. Sales grew as afternoon tea became a middle class tradition.
Nearly 2,500 people were employed by 1872.
The Thin Arrowroot biscuit was introduced from 1884. The Breakfast biscuit, an unsweetened alternative to toast, was introduced from around 1892.
Nearly 400 varieties of biscuit and cake were produced by 1892. Leading product lines included the Ginger Nut, Milk, Empire and Colonial biscuits. During peak periods, close to 5,000 men and women were employed.
Joseph Hatton (1837 – 1907), the editor of the Sunday Times, suggested that George Palmer could be described as the “father of modern Reading”. The huge population growth of the town was largely due to the biscuit industry.
By the 1890s the Huntley & Palmer name was one of the best known brands in the world.
George Palmer died in 1897. That year the firm produced 23,000 tons of biscuits and recorded a turnover of over £1.25 million (c. £142 million in 2014).
Watney’s Red Barrel had become the highest-selling keg bitter in the world by the mid-1960s. The beer’s relaunch as Watney’s Red in 1971 represented one of the most notorious failures in brand management in recent British history. What went wrong?
The birth of Watney’s Red Barrel
Watney, Combe & Reid was formed by the amalgamation of three London breweries in 1898. Production was concentrated at the Watney brewery at Mortlake, and the Reid and Combe sites were closed. Watney, Combe & Reid was the third largest brewer in the British Isles, behind only Guinness and Bass.
Watney, Combe & Reid was the second most highly valued public company in Britain in 1905, and members of the founding families grew hugely wealthy. Charles Combe (1837 – 1920) died with a net estate valued at £956,139, or over £374 million in 2023 prices. Claude Watney (1867 – 1920) left a net estate valued at £498,461 (approx. £195 million in 2023).
Watney, Combe & Reid introduced the Red Barrel as their in-house trademark from 1930.
A Watney’s Red Barrel beer font. Image used with permission.
Watney, Combe & Reid was the first British brewer to successfully introduce a draught “container beer” in 1931. Unlike cask conditioned beer would only remain fresh for days, container beer was filtered, pasteurised and stored under pressure with carbon dioxide, which allowed it to retain its condition for months. The beer could withstand tropical heat and a lengthy shipping period, which rendered it ideal for export. The product was soon available in outlets where cask beer could not be sold, such as Royal Navy ships, Cunard liners and Middle Eastern oil fields.
Watney’s Container Bitter was introduced to the domestic market from 1935. It was initially sold at the East Sheen Lawn Tennis Club, where its improved shelf life was to prove ideal for the intermittent trade of a sports club. Sales were expanded to other clubs and hotels.
Watney’s Red Barrel is rolled out
Simon Harvey Combe (1903 – 1965) was appointed chairman of Watney, Combe & Reid in 1950. He was a forceful figure who had shot his way out of German captivity during the Second World War and been awarded with the Military Cross.
Following the war a large proportion of the managers of free houses had neither the time nor the experience to correctly handle cask beer, and quality had suffered. Customers increasingly turned to bottled beer, which, although more expensive, offered more consistent quality, and accounted for one third of beer sales by 1953. Catering to this trend, Watney’s Red Barrel was introduced as a bottled pale ale from 1950.
Meanwhile Watney, Combe & Reid began to expand outside of its London heartland. Tamplin & Sons of Brighton, with 400 public houses in Sussex, was acquired in 1953. Henty & Constable of Chichester, with 253 licensed premises in Sussex and Hampshire, was acquired in 1954.
Flowers Breweries of Luton and Stratford upon Avon launched Flowers Keg in May 1955. It was the first container beer to be introduced to the mass market, and popularised “keg” as a generic term. Flowers initially distributed the beer to free trade outlets across London and the South East of England with insufficient sales to stock cask beer, such as golf clubs and private parties, or public houses with insufficient cellar space. Demand for Flowers Keg was to prove surprisingly high, and the product was soon distributed across the brewery’s tied estate and sold to rival brewers.
The success of Flowers Keg convinced Watney, Combe & Reid to introduce the keg version of Red Barrel to British public houses from 1956. It was brewed with Norfolk malt and Goldings hops, and was naturally matured for several weeks. Sales initially targeted free trade outlets, and cask beer continued to dominate the tied estate.
Watney, Combe & Reid acquired Mann, Crossman & Paulin of Whitechapel to form Watney Mann in 1958. The merger allowed the group to reclaim its position as one of the largest brewers in Britain, and strengthened Watney’s position in hitherto underrepresented markets such as Essex, Luton and Coventry. Production was concentrated at the Mortlake and Whitechapel breweries, which were modernised.
Watney’s Red Barrel was the most widely-distributed keg beer by the late 1950s, aided by the brewery’s large tied estate of 3,670 public houses and extensive free trade accounts.
Watney Mann fights the takeover threat
Charles Clore (1904 – 1979) had become a pioneer of the hostile takeover in Britain in the early 1950s. He acquired companies with undervalued property assets which he then sold and leased back or redeveloped. Clore commented, “in some businesses the profits earned show that existing assets are not being employed in the fullest capacity… [no] business can afford to have its resources remaining stagnant.”
Clore’s attempt to acquire Watney Mann for £27 million in 1959 represented the largest takeover bid in British history. Clore planned to modernise the “smoky, smelly, barnlike premises” of Watney Mann by introducing comfortable seating, removing the distinction between saloon and public bars, and improving the food offering. Pubs in areas with high footfall, such as city centres, would be sold off and converted into shops.
The directors of Watney Mann, descendants of the founding families, were horrified. According to TIME magazine, Clore was “the first outsider ever to challenge the clubby, clannish old families who dominate British brewing through a tangle of interlocking directorates”. The Evening Standard commented on the threat, “it threw the whole brewery world into confusion. Here was an outsider trying to storm his way in. It must not be allowed to happen”. Simon Combe was convinced that Clore would “redevelop all the properties and close the breweries”, and that his workforce would lose their jobs. He derided the bid as, “preposterous … deplorable for the brewing industry and a disaster for Watney’s”.
The takeover attempt was to ultimately prove unsuccessful, but it became apparent that Watney Mann was not immune to the threat of market forces. The management team were galvanised. The company property portfolio was reassessed for the first time since 1929 and valued at £34 million. The Stag brewery site at Pimlico was sold off for £6 million. Watney sped up plans to modernise its tied estate of public houses, and Milner Gray (1899 – 1997) was hired to design a new corporate identity.
Watney’s Red Barrel grows and cask ale is phased out
Watney Mann continued to expand by acquisition in order to meet demand for additional brewing capacity, and to secure more outlets for Watney’s Red Barrel. 1960 saw the acquisition of Phipps, with 1,171 licensed premises within a 60-mile radius of Northampton, for £11 million, Ushers of Trowbridge with 900 licensed premises for £4 million and Wilson & Walker of Manchester, with around 1,124 public houses, for nearly £11.5 million. Watney Mann ended the year as the largest brewing group in Britain, with around 6,600 licensed premises.
Keg beer sales grew, initially at the expense of bottled beers. Customers, particularly the young, appreciated the consistent taste, and it commanded a premium price and superior profit margins. Watney’s Red Barrel was heavily advertised, and was the highest-selling keg bitter in Britain by 1961, with estimated annual sales of around 150,000 barrels, mostly concentrated in the South of England and London.
Watney’s Red Barrel became the first nationally-distributed draught beer in Britain. The success of keg saw the introduction of rival beers from the national brewers, including Whitbread Tankard, Worthington E, Younger’s Tartan Special, Double Diamond and Courage Tavern. Keg accounted for six percent of the total beer market by 1964.
Watney Mann held 34,000 free trade accounts by 1963. Cask beer had been phased out from the 2,000 tied houses in London and the South of England by the end of 1963, and the Manchester and West Country houses were earmarked to follow.
Watney’s Red Barrel was successfully introduced overseas. A higher strength version with an ABV of 5.2 percent was exported to northern France and Belgium from 1962. Nearly 5,000 barrels of Red Barrel were exported to Northern Europe in 1965. A modified version of Watney’s Red Barrel, reformulated to suit the American palate, was introduced in the United States from 1963 and was sold in 100 outlets by 1967. Licensed production of Red Barrel commenced at the Murphy’s brewery in Cork, Ireland, from 1966.
It was claimed that Watney’s Red Barrel was the highest-selling keg beer in the world by 1966. Peter Crossman (1908 – 1989), who had succeeded Simon Combe as chairman of Watney Mann, predicted that cask beer would be extinct by 1978. This view was echoed by A G Manners, the chairman of Bass, who commented, “people today want a beer which they know is standard and always in proper condition- which they cannot always get today in cask beer”.
Watney Mann continued to expand by acquisitions throughout the 1960s, in an effort to build a business which had truly national scope. The takeover targets included the Morgan Brewery of Norwich (1961); Bullard & Sons and Steward & Patteson of Norwich (1963), with 1,800 public houses for £16.5 million; and Drybrough of Edinburgh (1965), with 140 tied houses, for £2 million.
Peter Crossman became convinced that the British beer market was saturated, and decided to expand into continental Europe. The Delbruyers brewery of Chatelet was acquired in 1966 and the site was used to brew Watney’s Red Barrel. This was followed by the acquisition of Brasseries Vandenheuvel of Brussels with 1,740 outlets (1968) and Maes with 700 outlets (1969) to position Watney Mann as the second largest brewer in Belgium.
Watney Mann announced plans to centralise production at its breweries in Mortlake, Manchester, Norwich and Edinburgh in 1970. The Trowbridge, Whitechapel and Brighton breweries would be closed. Production of cask ales had largely ceased by this time, and local names would be phased out in favour of the Watney brand. A range of 80 beers in 1969 had been rationalised to 35 by 1971.
Watney’s Red Barrel is replaced by Watney’s Red
Watney’s Red Barrel volumes peaked in 1969. Sales then entered into decline and fell behind rivals Double Diamond and Whitbread Tankard. Double Diamond offered greater consistency than Red Barrel, as it was only brewed in one place: Burton upon Trent, and it was believed that its sweeter taste and higher strength rendered it more appealing. Meanwhile it was claimed that Red Barrel suffered from inferior marketing.
For Julian Crawshay (1923 – 2009), a marketing director for Watney Mann, “a beer developed for the 1950s is not right for the 1970s”. A spokesman for Leo Burnett, the Watney Mann advertising agency, described Red Barrel as “a golf club beer, all bitter and sharp”. Watney’s Red Barrel would be replaced by a new product which would appeal to the growing 18-35 demographic. Leo Burnett account manager Gordon Barrett emphasised, “the flow of continuity really had to be punctured quite severely”.
Watney’s Red was introduced in April 1971 following two years of development and experimentation with 30 different recipes. It was a “completely different beer”, crafted to be darker, fizzier and slightly sweeter. Watney Mann marketing director Giles Myrtle described how the new beer offered “a better palate”, with more body, a smooth mouthfeel, a creamy head and good lacing.
Watney’s Red was designed as a session beer, with greater drinkability and less of an aftertaste. Julian Crawshay explained, “we were looking for the customer who settles in his local pub and drinks eight or ten pints in an evening”.
For writer Frank Baillie the beer was “well balanced … with a burnt malty characteristic”. Meanwhile The Economist opined that the new product tasted “bland”. Journalist Roger Protz recalled that it tasted “like liquid Mars bars”.
A Watney’s Red Revolution print advertisement from 1971. Designed by C.R Holland.
The product launch for Watney’s Red was supported by a £500,000 television and poster campaign. Controversially, portrayals of Castro, Khrushchev and Mao were used alongside with the tagline, “long live the Watney’s Red revolution”. Cowl conversion on 30,000 Red Barrel keg dispensers cost a further £100,000. Pub interiors and exteriors were painted red in order to promote the new beer.
Watney Mann claimed that Red was “the most successful” new beer introduction “for years”.’ Watney’s Red initially enjoyed a 15 percent sales boost against Red Barrel, and was the brewery’s most profitable beer, although Watney’s Special Bitter sold in slightly higher volume. Around 350,000 barrels of Watney’s Red were produced in 1972, accounting for between 20 to 25 percent of Watney Mann sales.
The public backlash
Watney Mann was subject to a hostile takeover by Grand Metropolitan, the owner of Truman’s Brewery of London and a host of hospitality concerns, for £405 million in 1972. At the time it represented the largest takeover in British history. The acquisition placed Grand Metropolitan in control of over one third of London’s public houses.
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) pressure group had been established in 1971. CAMRA rallied against the rise of keg beer, which it argued lost much of its flavour due to the process of filtration and pasteurisation. Robert B Semple Jr of the New York Times reported:
Public Enemy Number One for CAMRA is Watney’s, in part because the standardized exterior of a Watney pub, with its bright red background and white lettering, seems to CAMRA to typify the kind of corporate thinking that produces the homogenized beer sold within.
Watney Mann initially denied that CAMRA had any influence at all. A company spokesman characterised CAMRA members as a “cranky bunch”, and cited market research that supposedly demonstrated that the public preferred keg beer.
Watney’s paraphernalia on display in Carry On Abroad (1972)
Watney’s Red sales began to decline following a successful launch, and volumes remained stubbornly behind those of Double Diamond. The recipe was adjusted twice to increase ABV and original gravity in 1973. Richard Boston (1938 – 2006), a beer writer for The Guardian, derided the tactic as “desperate”, and argued that “Watney’s themselves are becoming uncomfortably aware that people don’t like their beer”.
A “word-of-mouth campaign [had] degenerated Watney and its products; a campaign that started as a whisper and built up to such a roar that some observers felt that the very existence of Watney as ‘a name’ was at stake”, wrote Kenneth Gooding of the Financial Times.
The impact of cost-cutting
Why did Watney Mann become the target for the most virulent criticism from CAMRA? There is evidence to suggest that Watney beers really did taste worse than those of their competitors.
An anonymous former head brewer of a Drybrough subsidiary told The Scotsman, “it had got to the stage in the industry where we were brewing by committee. The market research men said what they wanted, then the accountants and everyone else. It seems the brewer’s palate came a long way down the line”. John Keeling, who worked as a laboratory technician for Watney Mann during the 1970s, echoed this view, arguing that the company, “seemed to manage by formula and brew beer by formula. What drove them was how to use science to make beer cheaper, not better”.*
The evidence of cost-cutting is clear. The company brewed with a grist of up to 50 percent raw barley with added bacterial enzymes in an effort to lower production costs from 1971. The proportion of raw barley had been increased to up to 70 percent of the grist from 1973.** The beer was also subject to excessive pasteurisation, and was, according to Keeling, “well oxidised by the time it reached four weeks, to be honest … the predominant flavour at shelf life was oxidised beer. But [Watney’s] didn’t seem to care about that, because they weren’t as interested in flavour.”***
Watney Mann responds
Concerned by criticism of the company, as well as by falling sales of its flagship beer, Grand Metropolitan installed Anthony Tennant (1931 – 2011) as marketing and sales director for Watney Mann in late 1973. Following a market research study Watney Mann acknowledged that the introduction of Watney’s Red had “backfired”. Marketing director Stephen Lewis explained, “people felt that we had over-rationalised our products after taking over smaller breweries”.
Tennant withdrew marketing support for Watney’s Red from 1975, and Ben Truman Export Draught was offered as an alternative premium keg bitter. Double Diamond and Whitbread Tankard continued to lead in sales, and Watney’s Red had fallen behind Worthington E, Younger’s Tartan Special and Courage Tavern by 1976.
Tennant introduced Watney’s Fined Bitter, a cask beer served under pressure, to the London tied estate in early 1976. A Watney’s spokesman commented, “this is a commercial move, not a labour of love. There is now a demand for traditional beers and we are climbing aboard the bandwagon”. The beer was later renamed Stag.
In a bid to rescue the company’s reputation local brands such as Tamplin’s, Usher’s and Wilson’s were revived, and greater autonomy was devolved to nine regional subsidiaries from September 1976. Scheduled brewery closures at Trowbridge and Halifax were reversed. Pub exteriors were now painted “varying shades of anything but red”, reported the Vancouver Sun. Efforts were made to reach out to CAMRA.
In 1977 a Watney’s spokesman admitted, “we used to think it was good to be big. Today we think it’s good to be small”. Watney’s London Bitter, a traditional unpressurised cask bitter, was introduced in 1978. Plastic and chrome public house interior decoration began to be phased out in the late 1970s. New pub signs emphasised local and traditional beers.
Red is dead and the re-emergence of cask beer
Following years of low sales, Grand Metropolitan announced that Watney’s Red would be discontinued in May 1979. “In the end the majority of pubs still stocking it were selling under 10 gallons a week”, admitted a Watney’s spokesman.
The fate of Watney’s Red was “a constant warning to over-zealous marketing men in any industry who try to push traditional consumer tastes too far, too fast”, argued David Manasian in Management Today.
Cask ale was sold across half of Watney’s tied estate by 1979. The company produced 14 different cask ales by 1980. Webster’s Yorkshire Bitter was introduced from 1982 and became the core cask ale brand. Pressurised cask beer had been phased out by 1983.
The Red Barrel corporate logo was discontinued in 1982. Watney’s Red Barrel continued to be produced for overseas markets, where the brand lacked the noxious reputation it had developed in Britain, including the United States and Belgium, where it had become the highest selling pale ale by 1984.
Grand Metropolitan acquired Ruddles Brewery of Rutland in order to increase its presence in the cask ale market for £14 million in 1986. The brewery received a £5 million investment in order to double output, and a further £1 million was spent on advertising the brand.
Watney Mann exits the brewing industry
The Belgian brewing interests were divested for £28 million in 1986. Drybrough, with 187 public houses, was sold to Allied Lyons for £48.5 million in 1987.
Grand Metropolitan sold its brewing interests to Courage for £316 million in 1991. Watney’s branded products such as Special Bitter, Special Mild, Pale Ale and Brown Ale had been discontinued by the mid-1990s. Red Barrel continued to be sold in the United States until the mid-1990s. Red Barrel remained available in Belgium, France and Spain into the late 1990s.
What remains of Watney Mann? Watney’s Scotch Ale survives in Belgium, and Mann’s Brown Ale remains available throughout Britain.
Postscript
What is the lesson of the history of Watney’s Red? It is a cautionary tale of what can happen when marketing and cost-cutting become overly powerful. What ultimately matters with a drinks brand is that its taste resonates with the customer base. Brands die when company management loses sight of the fundamentals.
Further reading
* The blogs of Boak & Bailey and Ron Pattinson are invaluable sources of Watney Mann information.
* The Red Barrel: a history of Watney Mann by Hurford Janes (1963)
W H Smith had almost 1,300 branches, a turnover of over £1.1 billion and just under 15,000 employees in 2013.
Early history
Henry Walton Smith (1738 – 1792) established a news stand on The Strand, London, in 1792. Smith died just a few months later and was eventually succeeded by his son, William Henry Smith. The business became involved in distributing newspapers throughout the provinces.
W H Smith opened his first railway station bookstall at Euston in 1848. Railways were the booming industry of the period. W H Smith had bookstalls on all the major railway lines, and many secondary lines, by the 1860s. W H Smith and its main newsagent rival John Menzies, were the first large-scale retail chains to emerge in Britain.
The business became a partnership when William Henry Smith was joined by his son, William Henry Smith II.
The Smith’s bookstalls became a national symbol in Victorian England. Annual turnover had surpassed £1 million (c. £115 million in 2014) by 1888.
Inevitably, the railway companies became greedy and began to demand extortionate rents from the highly profitable news stands. Smith’s realised that its bookstalls received about half of their business from non-train users. Worried about its dependence on the railway companies, Smith’s began to open stores on high streets from 1905.
8,285 people were employed by 1911. In 1914-5 turnover topped £2 million (c.£200 million in 2014), and reached £4.2 million (c. £220 million) by 1924-5.
W H Smith opened their first branch overseas in Paris in 1903. Brussels followed in 1920 and in 1936 the Queen Mary liner got its own branch.
In 1929 the partnership was registered as a private limited company in order to pay the death duties of Freddy Smith.
By 1933 Smith’s had 48 wholesale branches, 311 bookshops and 1,400 bookstalls. The company employed around 13,500 people and was one of the single largest employers in the country.
Smith’s goes public
By 1947-8 turnover was £10.4 million (£355 million). In 1948, W H Smith was valued at £9.75 million. William Smith, 3rd Viscount Hambleden, died that year, and his stake in the company was valued at £8.2 million. Smith’s was forced to go public in 1949 in order to fund the 75 percent death duty owed to the government.
The Canadian market was entered in 1950, when the first shop opened in Toronto.
In 1955, 18,104 people were employed at the company.
In 1951 there were 944 railway stalls, but by 1971 this number had fallen to 319. This reflected a trend towards high street outlets, which were larger and more profitable. In the 1960s outlets of a previously unprecedented size were opened in Bradford, Brighton, Stockport and Nottingham.
Smith’s ran a private library service until 1961. It was never particularly profitable, but the company reasoned that it attracted visitors to the stalls, who often bought other items. Lower book costs and the rise of the public library spelled the end for the venture. However, the loss of the library trade was more than made up for by Smith’s taking on gramophone records and cassette tape sales.
Smith’s employed capital of over £21 million in 1965 (around £365 million in 2014). By 1966 the company had 19,547 employees.
W H Smith was one of the fastest growing British companies during the 1970s.
In 1992 the W H Smith Group employed 29,320 people worldwide, including around 26,000 in the UK.
By 1996 the company had a turnover of £2.7 billion and 33,000 employees.
In 1996 the head office was mostly relocated from London to Swindon in order to reduce costs.
Today, around half of Smith’s units are in “travel” locations (railway stations, airports, motorway services) and half are located on high streets.
Smith’s had almost 1,300 branches, a turnover of over £1.1 billion and just under 15,000 employees in 2013. There were over 1,700 stores by 2020, mainly driven by international growth.
The leading brown sauce in Britain is HP. The leading brown sauce in the US is A1.
Broadly speaking, A1 is a cross between HP Sauce and Worcestershire Sauce. HP is sharper and thicker, whereas A1 is a little more fruity. You can find the imported American sauce in larger Tesco supermarkets in the UK. It pairs well with beef, especially in casseroles and meatloaf.
A1 is a British invention, introduced by Henderson William Brand in 1862, when he was co-manager of the cuisine at the International Exhibition in Hyde Park. He submitted the sauce before the Royal Commission for use in the Exhibition’s restaurants. The Chief Commissioner reportedly declared the sauce to be “A.1.”
Gilbert Heublein (1849 – 1937), a German-born spirits distributor resident in Connecticut, visited England and encountered A1 sauce. He was impressed, and after much effort he acquired the exclusive US distribution rights to A1 sauce from 1894. He gained the US production rights from 1916.
A1 was phased out in Britain in the 1970s, forced out of a crowded brown sauce market which included HP, Daddies and supermarket own-label nationally, as well as OK, Heinz Ideal, Hammonds and Fletcher’s Tiger Sauce at a regional level.
The brand is currently owned by Kraft in the US. In Britain, the trademark is currently owned by Premier Foods.
