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Pub Guide

Opening Times

Opening Times is distributed to 120 pubs within the Huntingdonshire area. If you are a local CAMRA member and you would like to help distribute Opening Times to pubs near you, please contact the newsletter editor.

Issue 150 Spring 2012

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A LOOK BACK IN TIME
25 YEARS AGO

Batemans was saved after George Bateman and his family trust became sole owners of the Lincolnshire brewing concern two years after George’s brother and sister John and Helen Bateman had decided to sell their combined 60% of the family company. Batemans Victory Ale was launched in celebration of the rescue, which CAMRA attributed to ‘dogged determination’ to retain independence for the brewery on the part of chairman George Bateman, who said ‘It took two long hard years, but the process could not be accelerated. It was vital to save the beer, the pubs, the workforce and the local community’. He had talked to over twenty companies in search of a ‘white knight’, but eventually managed to raise funds to buy the company outright after securing a realistic valuation of the business and demonstrating that the company was developing.

CAMRA’s ‘Big 7 in 87’ campaign was launched as a co-ordinated attack by CAMRA and its branches on Britain’s seven big brewing groups|: Allied, Bass, Courage, Watney, Whitbread, Scottish & Newcastle and Greenall Whitley. The campaign was designed to draw attention to threats such as takeovers, local monopolies, beer prices, lager and the threat to draught mild. Co-coordinator Steve Parry asked branches to use their newsletters and campaigning events to highlight the worst excesses of the Big Seven brewers and encourage them to ‘mend their ways’.

Watneys sold its Edinburgh based Dryborough brewery and 155 strong pub chain to Allied Breweries, who closed the brewery with the loss of 29 jobs.

A CAMRA delegation visited Vaux brewery in Sunderland to protest at the company’s decision to close their Lorimer and Clark production plant in Edinburgh. Meanwhile Lorimer and Clark’s general manager Dan Kane was finalising a management buyout plan for the Edinburgh brewery.

The Watney group announced a £5m expansion of its Ruddles brewery in Rutland to meet demand for draught Ruddles County, which they anticipated would be on sale in two thousand Watney pubs by the end of 1987.

Afternoon drinking was brought in 25 years ago by a new law that allowed restaurants to serve drinks with meals in the afternoon. This was interpreted as a green light for pubs to serve drinks with meals.

Bedfordshire microbrewery Banks and Taylor opened their second London pub, the Royal Oak in Islington, on lease from Watneys.

Two real ale microbreweries were set up in China by Peter Austin’s Ringwood Brewery, to bring to forty the number of microbreweries supplied to overseas countries by the Hampshire company.
10 YEARS AGO

CAMRA challenged Prime Minister Tony Blair to bring in full pint legislation for draught beer as Leader of the House Robin Cook described short measure as a ‘clear public scandal’ and pledged the government to ‘bear down as hard as we can’. Secondary legislation for 100% pints had been drafted and was awaiting sign-off by Trade Secretary Patricia Hewitt, but Ms Hewitt announced new plans to enshrine in law the industry guideline for 95% pints. CAMRA Head of Campaigns Mike Benner reacted ‘The Labour Party has been promising a full pint since 1997 and now appears to be proposing to make it legal to serve a pint that is 5% short’. CAMRA surveys had shown that a quarter of pints fell below the 95% guideline.

St Neots CAMRA were on the bus to Bedford ten years ago for a joint social with North Bedfordshire branch at the Wellington. St Neots branch meetings in the spring of 2002 were held at the Bell, Eaton Socon and the Manchester Arms in St Ives, and the branch AGM was at the Rivermill Tavern in Eaton Socon. There were April socials at the Chequers at Little Gransden and the Prince of Wales, Hilton.

CAMRA feared the closure of many small breweries and pubs as a result of a government decision to revoke the 1990 Beer Orders, which had enforced restrictions on pub ownership by big brewers and guest beer rights for brewery-owned pub chains of more than two thousand pubs. Although no brewers then owned that many pubs, CAMRA feared that the loss of the beer orders would encourage brewery takeovers and closures, remove important regulation of tie agreements between brewers and pubs and allow restrictive covenants to prevent new owners from operating buildings as pubs.

American brewer Coors were the new owners of the major parts of the Bass brewery business, ordered by the government to be sold by Interbrew following its acquisition of Bass and Whitbread. Coors announced the closure by the end of 2002 of its Bass brewery at Cape Hill, Birmingham (formerly Mitchells and Butlers) with the loss of 320 jobs.

Benskins Bitter, originally brewed in Watford, was withdrawn in early 2002. Allied Breweries had closed Benskins in 1972 but had revived the beer as a well-liked cask beer, brewed for different periods of time at various Allied plants.

Cask Marque, the industry accreditation scheme for quality of real ales served in pubs, spread its wings with a Distributors’ Charter for the real ale supply chain. Stipulations for warehouses to adopt the charter included refrigerated storage, a rigid stock management policy and at least 14 days shelf life remaining after delivery to pubs.