Mew Langton – probably the Isle of Wight’s most famous brewery – had 144 pubs dotted around the Isle of Wight at its zenith, around 1 for every 1,000 inhabitants.
It has even been claimed that Mew Langton produced the world’s first canned beer here on the Island. However, this claim is unproven.
The Mew Langton story begins in the late 18th century when Benjamin Mew and his brother formed a partnership called Mew & Co. Brewers, with a brewery in Newport and a further one across the Solent in Lymington.
After Queen Victoria had built her home at Osborne, Mew & Co was granted a Royal warrant in 1850 to supply Queen Victoria when she was in residence on the Island, and their Newport plant was given the honour of being renamed the Royal Brewery. The company continued to supply the Royal Household until the death of George V’s death in 1936.
Walter Langton joined the firm, forming a limited liability company, Mew Langton & Co Ltd in 1878, injecting new capital into the business. In 1893, a new malthouse was built, adopting methods revolutionary for its time.
In 1920, the Newport brewery purchased Henry Charles & Walter Sweetman’s George Street Brewery in Ryde with 21 houses for £30,240 – £1,225,000 in today’s money.
It has been claimed that towards the end of the 19th century, Mew Langton developed a then-revolutionary way of storing beer in screw-top cans instead of the more traditional bottles (the world’s first canned beer!). It was said that the brewery located in Newport, was in an ideal position to serve the military close by in Portsmouth.
Canned beer was required to keep beer fresh by storing it under pressure with a layer of carbon dioxide. Glass bottles were often too fragile. Beer destined for India in particular would often arrive flat. Therefore, the newly developed India Pale Ale in cans was sent instead.
However, other sources suggest that canned beer was not produced by Mew Langton until 1937, with the first beer cans being made in the United States at the end of prohibition in 1933. The first British canned beer was said to been made by the Felinfoel Brewery in Wales in 1935.
Mew Langton used several boats to transport beer from their brewery up the Medina to locations around the Island and across the Solent. The brewery’s final vessel was the XXXX, built in 1948 and named after Mew Langton’s prize-winning ale, which became the last brewery-owned vessel in Britain.
The company continued to develop after World War II. The bottled beer store and bottling hall were rebuilt, and many of its pubs were altered and improved. Sadly, the increased use of motor transport meant the last of the brewery horses being retired.
Mew Langton’s bottled XXXX and Nut Ale had the honour of winning prizes at the Brewers’ Exhibition at Olympia in 1960 and 1964.
Despite its continued success (it was making £160,000 profit annually), in 1965, Mew Langton accepted a £1.5million merger offer from Strong & Co Ltd of Romsey (£250million in today’s values). In 1969, bottling and brewing ceased at Newport, and the Royal Brewery became a distribution centre. Strong’s then became part of the Whitbread group.
Whitbread’s started to rationalise the pubs on the Isle of Wight. The Newport brewery operated as a distribution centre until 1978 when it closed. By that time, of the 144 pubs once owned by Mew Langton, only 40 remained.
The Royal Brewery was sold to the Council, which did nothing with it. The building became a playground for local children. In 1979, the Royal Brewery caught fire, in the biggest conflagration the County Town had seen in living memory.
It was suspected that shady developers had wanted to see the building gone. However, children playing with matches would be a more likely explanation – planning permission to demolish the brewery had already been granted, so setting the building on fire would have made little sense.
The former Royal Brewery on the corner of Holyrood Street and Crocker Street has now been tastefully converted into accommodation.
Were you one of the Newport residents that witnessed the fire in 1979? Let us know in the comments…
