A Brief History.
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The Brewers' Company is one of the oldest livery companies in the City of London and ranks fourteenth in the order of precedence established by an Act of the Court of Aldermen in 1515. The earliest surviving reference to an organised group of brewers in the City of London was in 1292. However, it was not until 1437, when Henry VI granted the brewers the first of the Company's eight royal charters, that they were incorporated as a Livery Company with the title of 'The Wardens and Commonalty of the Mystery of Brewers of the City of London '. Before then, the brewers were known as 'The Gild of Our Lady and St Thomas the Martyr'. No one quite knows why St Thomas à Becket was chosen as the Brewers' patron saint. Possibly it was because when Becket went to France in 1158 to secure the hand of Princess Margaret for Henry, son of Henry II, he took among his gifts two wagons loaded with ale. An alternative tradition is that pilgrims on the way to Canterbury to worship at Becket's shrine drank a great deal of ale which increased brewers' profits so much that they felt it appropriate to dedicate themselves to him out of gratitude. The connection with Becket was directly incorporated into the Company's first grant of arms in 1468, when Becket's arms were impaled with those of the Company.

The earliest history of the company can only be deduced from City Letter Books but the Company is fortunate in having a fairly unbroken run of minute books and other records from the 15th century onwards, including a memorandum book kept by William Porland, Clerk to the Company from 1418 - 1441. This book is particularly interesting because it contains some of the earliest examples of official written English. Porland originally recorded the Company's business in Latin or French but in 1422 it was decided that the Brewers should follow the example of Henry V in using English for official records, not least because many Brewers did not 'in anywise understand' Latin and French. The memorandum book also provides evidence of the long standing enmity between the Brewers and the Lord Mayor, Richard Whitington, who persistently fined the Brewers or threatened the Master and Wardens with imprisonment for, among other things, taking too much water from the Chepe Conduit, artificially increasing the price of malt, and overcharging for beer. Moreover, Porland records, Whitington complained that the Brewers' had fat swans at their feast on the morrow of St Martin when he had none at his. Whitington's revenge was apparently to make the brewers sell their beer at 1d a gallon all the following day.

Relations between the Brewers and the City continued to be uneasy for two centuries. A running dispute concerned the high prices charged by brewers. In 1551, the Brewers were even banned for a time from membership of Common Council for repeatedly ignoring the Lord Mayor's attempts to control prices.

In early times the Company had complete regulatory control over brewing and brewers in the City of London . The industry was an important one in the Middle Ages as water in the City was not fit to drink. A Maid of Honour in the time of Henry VIII was allowed 8 gallons of ale a day and if she was particularly thirsty she was allowed a further gallon. Like most other Livery Companies, the Brewers' Company also concerned itself with charitable work and as a trustee of philanthropic endowments. Of these, the two major foundations, which survive today, are those of Richard Platt and Dame Alice Owen.

In 1597 Richard Platt, who was Master of the Company in 1576 and again in 1581, endowed a school and almshouses in Aldenham near Elstree and made the Company trustee of his benefaction. The Company has administered the Platt Foundation ever since and, although the almshouses are no more, continues to be closely involved with Aldenham School.

Dame Alice Owen was brought up in Islington. In her youth she went walking in fields where archery was a common and officially encouraged recreation. One day, having bent down to milk a cow, she narrowly escaped death when an arrow pierced her hat. In gratitude for her survival, she vowed that if she were ever in a financial position to do so she would endow some charitable foundation. Fortunately she outlived three wealthy husbands, the first of whom was a Brewer, the second a Mercer, while the third, Judge Thomas Owen, was allegedly the man who had shot the fateful arrow. She was therefore able to fulfil her vow shortly before her death by funding almshouses and a school in Islington. She entrusted these and land in Islington to the Brewers' Company. The almshouses have long gone but the school, which had a phased move to Potters Bar between 1972 and 1976, still exists as a co-educational comprehensive school. The Company continues to manage the estate in Islington which supports the school and education in Islington.

Until this century, many non-brewers were admitted to the Freedom of the Company. Often, this was to enable those whose trade was not represented by a Livery Company to practise their craft within the City. For example, the founder members of the Society of Spectacle Makers were originally Freemen of the Brewers' Company who, with the consent of the Company, were translated to the Society when it was incorporated in 1634. Sometimes non-brewers were admitted to render them eligible to enter their children for Aldenham. Until comparatively recently, Aldenham School was only open to sons of Freemen of the Company. The Company therefore commonly admitted widows to the Freedom to enable them to send their sons to Aldenham.

With the growth of the big brewing companies and the increasing involvement of Government Departments in the regulation of the trade, the power of the Brewers' Company in the brewing industry declined. The Company,however, remains closely involved with its trade. Today membership is confined to nominated directors of brewing companies and the Company is actively involved in supporting the brewing industry in London and the South East through an affiliated trade association. Apart from its trade interests, the Company continues to fulfil its responsibilities in respect of its many trust funds.

The Hall 

The Brewers were one of the first Guilds to have a Hall of their own. The earliest reference to their Hall, which stood on the same site as the present one, occurs in the records of the Chapter of St Paul's Cathedral in 1403. William Porland's memorandum book reveals that by 1422 Brewers' Hall was regularly let out for use by other City Livery Companies, Guilds and other groups including the "footballpleyers", one of the earliest known references to football. Among the other Livery Companies named by Porland are the Armourers, the Girdlers, the Barbers, the Cooks, the Founders and Glaziers.

The first Hall, described in the early seventeenth century as 'a fayre house' by the historian John Stow, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London in 1666. A second Hall was built on the same site between 1670 and 1673: in the interim period the Brewers regularly used Cooks' Hall for functions. The costs of the new Hall were met partly by members' subscriptions and partly by pawning virtually all the Company's plate and other treasures which were, alas, never redeemed. Bombing in 1940 destroyed this Hall.

The present Hall was completed in 1960. It was designed by Sir Hubert Worthington, R.A. The function rooms are panelled in pine and English oak. The plasterwork of the ceilings is enriched with a modelled bank of hop leaves and barley as emblems of the Brewers' trade. The Coats of Arms in the Livery Hall are those of the Company's benefactors and of the City of London . The Company's arms, which have pride of place, represent the second grant of arms to the Company in 1544, in which it was deemed politic to replace the previous direct association with St Thomas à Becket with a more cryptic reference. The arms bear a crest of a Moorish maiden holding three barley ears in each hand. Tradition has it that Becket's father Gilbert, a City Merchant, was captured by Barbary pirates on one of his voyages. A Moorish maiden helped him to escape and subsequently followed him to London , where she married him, thus becoming Becket's stepmother. The other arms displayed in the Hall are, starting from the right of the Company's arms, those of the Corporation of London; Sir Samuel Starling Master in 1661 and Lord Mayor in 1669; Dame Alice Owen (1547-1613); St Thomas à Becket; Charles II, in whose reign the second Hall was built; Harry Charrington, Master in 1812; Samuel Whitbread, founder of the company that bears his name, who left bequests for poor brewers; Richard Platt (1528-1600); and James Hickson (1607-89), who founded a school, which no longer exists, and almshouses