Whitefield Brewery Co. Ltd
Whitefield Brewery Co. Ltd, Higher Lane, Besses o' th' Barn, Whitefield, Greater Manchester.
Founded 1845. Registered November 1896 to acquire the interest of Arnold Daly Briscoe. Merged with the Barber & Co's Longsight Brewery, Manchester, the Stamford Brewery Co. Ltd. and the Lee Home Brewing Co. Ltd. of Oldham 1899 to form Whitefield Breweries Ltd.
Name changed to above March 1901. Compulsory winding up order made March 1905.
List of Whitefield Brewery Co. Ltd Pubs
WHITEFIELD BREWERY by Graham Eyles
The Whitefield Brewery was founded in 1845 on Higher Lane, Besse o'th'Barn, Whitefield, some 400 yards from the Prestwick Brewery. It supplied many of the beerhouses and public houses in the area with the Trade Manual for 1880 listing the brewer as Thomas Ramsbottom and by 1883 as one John Brookes.
However, in 1878 events started to take place that would involve the brewery in a scandal that hit the headlines in 1905 and brought about the brewery’s closure. The scandal principally involved the Longsight Brewery, the John Willie Lees Brewery of Middleton Junction and the Whitefield Brewery.
To understand fully we need to start at the beginning with the Longsight Brewery. This stood on Ducie Street, off Stockport Road and was founded by Thomas Barber in the 1850s, later becoming Barber and Company and was acquired by one Daniel Irvine Flattely in 1868. Barber and Company was retained as the trading name, indicating that the company probably enjoyed a good reputation.
When Flattely died in October 1897, his trustees valued the brewery at £90,000 and set about finding a suitable buyer.
During September 1898, John Willie Lees negotiated with Flattely’s trustees, the final terms being £77,500 for the business, £1,658 for book debts and £3,829 for stock in hand making a total of £82,987. A deposit of £7,750 was then paid. Lees managed the business for a time, but ill-health forced him to move to Blackpool for a rest.
It was while he was in Blackpool that meetings with a representative of the Whitefield Brewery began. The whole truth about the subsequent events may never be known, as there were two versions, one from Mr Lees and one from Arnold Daly Briscoe, manager of the Whitefield Brewery.
According to Mr Briscoe, an agreement was reached to form a company with the merger of the Longsight Brewery business with the Stamford Brewery of Ashton-under-Lyne, Lee Home Brewery of Oldham and the Whitefield Brewery Co Ltd of Bess o'th'Barn. However, Lees later maintained that such a merger was never mentioned only that he thought the Whitefield Brewery was interested only in buying the property.
What is certain is that Whitefield Brewery was heavily in debt, although they offered some £30,000! It was intended that the flotation of the new company would provide the needed capital. Unfortunately for them, the shares were under-subscribed and the new company was formed still in debt.
At some stage, John W Lees was told about the formation of the new company. As he had agreed to accept £40,000 of the original purchase price in shares of the Whitefield Brewery (according to Mr Lee), he then agreed to them being in the new company and also joined the Board as Chairman. The firm was eventually registered as Whitefield Breweries Ltd.
In the company prospectus, it was claimed that the combined output from all the breweries would be 450 barrels per week and this figure was used to calculate the expected profit. It was also claimed that the company owned property valued at £153,297, free from all mortgages or other charges. Both claims turned out to be false.
In 1903, a shareholder’s committee was formed to examine the company's affairs. This resulted in a winding-up order in March 1905, and a charge of fraud under the Directors’ Liability Act at Lancashire Chancery Court. The only way J W Lees could avoid prosecution was to settle with the plaintiffs. He agreed to pay 12s 6d per share and the charges were withdrawn. Throughout the hearing, Lees claimed that he had no hand in writing the prospectus and had suffered as much financial loss as anyone else. Despite the settlement, Lees didn’t do to badly. The Law Debenture Corporation, who had taken possession of the Whitefield Brewery’s property when the interest on a £105,000 loan remained unpaid, sold property valued at £231,000 back to Lees for just £115,000.
Bibliography:
- A History of Joseph Holt, Neil Richardson
- A History of Prestwich Pubs, David Rowlinson
- Manchester Breweries of Time Gone By, Alan Gall
- A History of Whitefield Pubs, Glenn Worth
An assortment of images of the brewery
The brewery in 1998
The brewery in 1998
The brewery in 1998
