Lewes, Sussex

A swift half

It has become clear to me that I am long overdue a visit to Sussex, a fine county packed with architectural interest, famously situated, unlike my native Cotswolds, ‘by the sea’, and home to good friends, prized even higher than good architecture! So, as my day began with a conversation about alcohol, thoughts of Sussex also led to Sussex beverages, and to the architecture of the fine Brewery of Harvey’s in Lewes.

Now, careful readers of this blog (I know there are some!) may have noticed that I have a few favourite architects who, though not among the acknowledged greats, nevertheless produced work whose qualities I admire. Not the Soanes or Lutyenses, who seem to be able to handle everything – space, form, surface, facade, light, setting – to produce buildings that are both surprising and wonderfully satisfying – but minor masters who could do one thing well, in a way that tickles my fancy. Victorian rogues like S. S. Teulon, with his bizarre OTT decoration and arresting forms and spaces; or Cuthbert Brodrick, who could do grandiose like no one else and did it, magnificently, in Leeds; or really minor minor masters, like disappointed Peter Ellis of Liverpool, who tried, it seems, to invent modern architecture 50 years too early, and apparently gave up, ignored or crushed by criticism. And then – to get to the point – there are the specialists, such as man-of-many-theatres Frank Matcham and brewery whiz William Bradford.

I’ve had cause to admire William Bradford’s work before, at Cheltenham and, supremely, at Hook Norton. How pleasant, then, to encounter his work again in Lewes, as I did a few years ago. This is the place where one of my favourite pints is produced: Harvey’s Bridge Wharf Brewery. Bradford (1845–1919) may have worked in the brewing industry before turning to architecture, but was in practice in his own right by 1879. This was also the date of his earliest brewery work, although he seems to begin with to have specialized in designing and altering pubs. He notched up some seventy brewery jobs (not all new build – many were upgrades or expansions of existing breweries), and developed his own very special style. From the outside, his breweries can be recognised by their striking roofscapes (with towers often topped with wrought-iron crowns or finials), picturesque grouping of buildings or parts of buildings, and an interesting mix of materials – if he could combine brickwork, timber framing, plasterwork, weatherboarding, and dramatic glazing patterns in one building, he did. Harvey’s Bridge Wharf Brewery (1882) is a good example of this style, which also at its best involved the use of white-framed windows in the ‘Queen Anne’ manner.

Internally, the buildings are well and practically planned and his drawings reveal not only good draughtsmanship but also a clear concern for the most efficient placing of all the varied bits of machinery and equipment used in a brewery – tanks, mash tuns, coppers, hoppers, steam engines, pipes, ducts, and cocks. The picturesque placing of his buildings and towers, then, comes more often than not from putting the different brewing functions where they worked best. That, I think, was why he was so successful, and why brewer after brewer went to him for designs.

But Bradford knew too that a striking building was good publicity.§ Many brewers put an illustration of their brewery on posters, advertisements, and bottle labels. If their premises looked the part, so much the better. Bradford’s building at Lewes looks as good as its products taste. And its owners seem, in planning later alterations, seem to have done so in a manner in keeping with Bradford’s work.† I look forward to the time when I can both see the building again, and join ‘the men that live the South Country’¶ and taste its products on their home turf.

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§ He seems to have liked an event that would make good copy. Lynn Pearson, in her book British Breweries: An Architectural History (1999), to which I am indebted, tells how in 1882, the year of the Harvey’s project, he climbed to the top of the 120-foot chimney of the Swan Brewery, Fulham, along with the brewer and contractors. At the top, they ‘christened’ the structure’s iron crown and drank ‘bumpers of champagne’. I hope they had some beer, later, when brewing had begun. 

† Some of what you see in my photograph dates from a later phase than the original Bradford building, but it is all very much is his spirit.  

¶ And the women too. See Hilaire Belloc’s poem, ‘The South Country’ for more praise of this part of the world.

Cheltenham, Gloucestershire

Bradford in Cheltenham

This is almost all that remains of the premises of the Cheltenham Original Brewing Company, which brewed beer in the centre of Cheltenham for nearly 240 years. The site is now a ‘retail and entertainment experience’, I’m afraid.

The Agg-Gardner family began brewing in Cheltenham in 1760, and the brewery in the centre of the town belonged to Sir James Agg-Gardner in 1888 when the Cheltenham Original Brewing Company was formed to manage the business. By this time the malthouse (below), the oldest building on the site and probably built in the 1860s, was already there and the brewery buildings were to the north of it. But on a summer Sunday morning in 1897 a fire started in the hop room and swept through the brewery, destroying most of the complex. The architect William Bradford (who may also have designed the malthouse) was called in to design a replacement. Brewing continued on the site for a further century, with the business eventually passing to Whitbread’s.


William Bradford was the doyen of Victorian brewery architects. He was famous for ornate designs amongst which perhaps the best examples are the Hook Norton Brewery and the Bridge Wharf Brewery at Lewes (for Harvey’s) – elaborate fantasies of multi-coloured bricks and curvaceous ironwork featuring towers that are both eyecatching and functional. By this stage in his career, however, his designs tended to be more restrained, and at Cheltenham his priorities were different. He was careful to specify fireproof construction, with the floors separated by concrete arches, for the new Cheltenham brewery – no doubt his clients were keen on this feature too.

Most of Bradford’s 1898 structure has now gone but the developers kept his tower, with its fancy ironwork. And the malthouse, with its polychrome brick walls, remains too. Low down at pavement level is a metal plate embossed with the deathless words, ‘COMMIT NO NUISANCE’, presumably addressed to those who had imbibed the brewery’s products too freely.

Southwark, London SE1

ARCHITEXTS: THINGS WRITTEN ON BUILDINGS (4)
Commit no nuisance
I first came across a sign bearing the words ‘Commit no nuisance’ on a wall in Southwark, London SE1, and realised fairly quickly that it means, in the words of one dictionary definition, ‘Do not use this place as a lavatory’. The sign – and the problem it addresses – is not unique to London. I’ve since spotted examples in other towns including Winchester and Cheltenham, where it is placed low down near one of the entrances to the former brewery, a building designed by virtuoso Victorian brewery architect William Bradford. A recent web search also revealed ‘Commit no nuisance’ signs as far afield as India and South Africa. There was probably one in Dublin, too, because James Joyce includes the phrase in Ulysses. Most of the British examples look as if they are in Victorian or Edwardian lettering; the Cheltenham brewery dates from 1898 and Joyce’s novel is set on 16 June 1904, Victorian values – and nuisances – surviving in to the 20th and 21st centuries.