Copyright © 2004 the Brewery History Society
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Journal Home > Archive > Issue Contents > Brew. Hist., 113, pp. 57-60 |
The Times, they are a Changing |
The past few years have been a period of change for the Society with a number of key figures retiring from office after long-term service. We featured the retirement of President Geoffrey Ballard in the Newsletter at the time, but it is important that we should also record our gratitude to one or two other members who have either stepped down, or changed role, having made an outstanding contribution to the Society.
Whilst we are sad to loose their skills and day-to-day contribution to their former role, they all still take a keen interest in the workings of the Society and are still a valuable source of advice and experience.
Taking them chronologically:
Ian served with distinction as Chairman and committee member for a great many years, drawing on his long experience in the industry and particularly in marketing. He is a prolific author with a number of side interests beyond brewery history, particularly steam railways, and has contributed a great many articles to the Journal over the years. I am very glad, indeed relieved, to say that Ian has promised to continue to do so in the future. Apart from providing articles, Ian also picked up the reins when we needed a temporary editor many years ago, before Ken took over.
Ian is now devoting more time to his wonderful home in the former E. Gardner and Sons' Little Coggeshall Brewery in Coggeshall, Essex (as photographed in Tony Crosby's Survey of the Brewery Heritage of Essex in Journal 111) - you will recall that Ian and Norma generously invited members to a tour once the conversion was completed. Soon after completion, this stunning house was hit by the great floods but, undeterred, they rectified the problems and have since applied their energy to sorting the local flood relief project.
Ian is also a trustee of the Dunmow Maltings project and is involved in local history projects.
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Michael steered the Society for most of its existence, either as Chairman or Secretary, and worked with Richard Symonds to re-launch and rejuvenate the Society after a moribund spell some 20 or more years ago.
Over the years Michael has used his great expertise and experience of similar organisations to ensure that the BHS is built on a sound foundation and this has stood us in good stead as we approach our third of a century.
Michael has been a generous provider of illustrative material for the Journal over the years, and continues to do so. He also managed to find time to write the superb book of early advertising material in the PRO – Time Gentlemen Please.
Typically, having decided to stand down, he deferred this for a year to avoid the Society having to deal with such a significant change at the same time as changing President. In spite of being very busy as Mayor of Witham, Michael managed to ensure that he spent the year carefully hading over the Secretary's role to his successor, Michael Jagger.
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The position with Ken is somewhat different to that for Michael and Ian in that he is still a member of the committee, looking after publishing. Although he has handed over the editorship of the Journal to Tim Holt, Ken still very actively supports Tim, especially during this handover period, and is also now able to devote even more of his time to the production of the Society's books.
Ken produced the Journal single handed for 13 years, as well as having acted as the assistant editor before taking over. During his tenure of office Ken transformed the Journal, building on the work of his predecessors who had each made significant marks themselves. It is fair to say that Ken's work has defined the public face of the Society and this has had a tremendous impact on our professional image. It is striking how many members include thank you letters enthusing about the Journal with their subscriptions every year.
Ken has done a phenomenal amount of work over the years in designing, preparing and publishing our books and I am absolutely delighted to say that he will continue to do so.
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Gentlemen, we thank you all for your tremendous service to the Society over very many years.