The West End Brewery in Hindley Street, Adelaide, was a South Australian brewer of beer founded in the colony of South Australia in 1859 by a consortium of brewers. Its West End Ale was a popular brand and the enterprise was a successful one. The company merged with the Kent Town Brewery and Ben Rounsevell's wine and spirit business to create the South Australian Brewing, Malting, Wine and Spirit Company (later the South Australian Brewing Company), in 1888, which continued to use the West End brand.

The building in Hindley Street, known as the West End Brewery, continued to be used by SA Brewing until its sale in 1980. The factory building on Port Road at Thebarton continues to be called the West End Brewery, owing to the large sign advertising West End beer, before and after its takeover by Lion.

History

Background

West End Brewery 1880
Hindley St building (then SA Brewing Co.) 1920

Sometime around 1844, William Henry Clark, an Irish immigrant to South Australia, founded the Halifax Street Brewery;[1] an unwelcome addition to the neighbourhood due the odour and liquid discharged into Gilles Street.[2] In July 1854 Clark, with partners J. B. Spence, J. H. Parr and Edward Logue, took over Crawford brothers' Hindmarsh Brewery in order to close it down and supply its customers from the Halifax Street brewery.[3] The business continued however under E. J. F. Crawford.[4]

William Knox Simms and John Hayter operated the Pirie Street Brewery (later Adelaide Brewery) from 1851 to 1855, when Hayter left the partnership. This brewery was also not popular with those living nearby.[5] Simms took over the Halifax Street operation in March 1856,[1] then in February 1858 Clark sold the property to Henry Noltenius. In July 1858, Noltenius took in Simms as a partner, then in November 1858 sold him his interest in the business.[6]

Clark meanwhile had borrowed money from John Haimes[7] to build a new brewery on Town Acre 66 at the south side of Hindley Street, midway between Morphett Street and West Terrace. Noltenius found himself in financial difficulties, and neither Simms nor Clark could repay any of the £3,530 they collectively owed him, which resulted in his insolvency.[8] Clark moved to Victoria in 1860, and thereby evaded his creditors, and probably died there some time before 1873.[9]

1859: West End Brewery

In 1859, a consortium of Simms, Haimes, and Edgar Chapman founded the "West End Brewery" on the Hindley Street property, and invested heavily in establishing buildings, in cellar construction, and equipping the brewery with all the latest refinements.[10][11] The location had the advantage of proximity to the Parklands (less smell nuisance), the Port Road (transport of raw materials and finished product) and the River Torrens (handy for discharge of effluent).

By October 1859, W. H. Clark was advertising barrels of "West End Ale" for sale to publicans at £2/2s.[12] They closed their smaller, competing establishments, which included the Halifax Street Brewery. Simms ran the business with help from Clark's brewer John Plummer Gardner.[13]

W. K. Simms bought the company in 1861; Chapman was his partner 1865–1879. An extensive contemporary description of the brewery was published in the South Australian Register in 1868.[14] The West End Brewery proved highly profitable and Simms and Chapman became wealthy men.[15]

1888: South Australian Brewing Company

In 1888, Simms and Chapman joined forces with Edwin Smith, owner of Kent Town Brewery (formerly Logue's).[16] A third enterprise, Ben Rounsevell's wine and spirit business, joined to create the South Australian Brewing, Malting, Wine and Spirit Company.[17] Rounsevell became the managing director of the company.[18]

After various other changes through the 20th century, including the closure of the Hindley Street site[7] (with the building demolished in 1983), the company has, since 1993, been owned by Lion as the South Australian Brewing Company, and is due for closure in June 2021.[17]

Other breweries

Other breweries operating in the late 1860s included:[14]

References

  1. 1 2 "Advertising". South Australian Register. Vol. XX, no. 2946. South Australia. 12 March 1856. p. 1. Retrieved 20 May 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  2. ↑ "Health of the City". The South Australian. Vol. XIII, no. 1204. South Australia. 16 December 1850. p. 2. Retrieved 24 September 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  3. ↑ "Advertising". Adelaide Times. Vol. VIII, no. 1229. South Australia. 17 July 1854. p. 2. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  4. ↑ "The Hindmarsh Brewery". Adelaide Observer. Vol. XXVI, no. 1392. South Australia. 6 June 1868. p. 14. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  5. ↑ "Board of City Commissioners". Adelaide Observer. Vol. IX, no. 440. South Australia. 29 November 1851. p. 2. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  6. ↑ "Insolvency Court". South Australian Register. Vol. XXIV, no. 4272. South Australia. 23 June 1860. p. 3. Retrieved 14 December 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  7. 1 2 Alison Painter. "South Australian Brewing Co. Ltd". SA History Hub. History Trust of South Australia. Retrieved 20 May 2017.
  8. ↑ "Insolvency Court". South Australian Register. Vol. XXIV, no. 4272. South Australia. 23 June 1860. p. 3. Retrieved 23 October 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  9. ↑ "Adelaide in the Olden Time". South Australian Register. Vol. XXXVIII, no. 8210. South Australia. 11 March 1873. p. 4. Retrieved 23 October 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  10. ↑ "South Australian Manufactures: Simms's Brewery". South Australian Register. Vol. XXV, no. 4466. South Australia. 7 February 1861. p. 3. Retrieved 23 May 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  11. ↑ "The Imperial Brewery". South Australian Register. Vol. XL, no. 8818. South Australia. 18 February 1875. p. 5. Retrieved 23 May 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  12. ↑ "Classified Advertising". The South Australian Advertiser. Vol. II, no. 404. South Australia. 26 October 1859. p. 1. Retrieved 17 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  13. ↑ "The Late Mr. Gardner". South Australian Weekly Chronicle. Vol. II, no. 90. South Australia. 7 April 1860. p. 3. Retrieved 23 May 2017 – via National Library of Australia. Gardner was murdered by a fellow miner at the Inglewood, Victoria diggings c. 1 April 1860.
  14. 1 2 "The breweries of Adelaide and its suburbs". South Australian Register. Vol. XXXII, no. 6729. South Australia. 1 June 1868. p. 3. Retrieved 13 December 2020 – via National Library of Australia.
  15. ↑ "South Australian Brewing Company". The Advertiser (Adelaide). Vol. XXXV, no. 10722. 28 February 1893. p. 6. Retrieved 18 December 2017 – via National Library of Australia.
  16. ↑ "E. T. Smith, M.P., Mayor of Adelaide". The Wallaroo Times And Mining Journal. Vol. XVII, no. 1751. South Australia. 30 July 1881. p. 1. Retrieved 3 March 2018 – via National Library of Australia.
  17. 1 2 Richardson, Tom (13 October 2020). "End of the West End: tears flow for historic brewery as Lion quits SA". InDaily. Retrieved 13 December 2020.
  18. ↑ Fischer, G. L. "Rounsevell, William Benjamin (1843–1923)". Australian Dictionary of Biography. National Centre of Biography, Australian National University. ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 14 December 2020. This article was first published in hardcopy in Australian Dictionary of Biography, Volume 11, (MUP), 1988

Further reading

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