The Pub Chain: Courage

The idle traveller around London is still frequently exhorted to “TAKE COURAGE” by pubs (fig. 34), and even occasionally other buildings which retain their old signage. This is, of course, no mere public-spirited advice; it is advertising. Where nowadays the imperative has been hijacked by Fuller Smith Turner’s brewers and amended to “Take Pride”,¹ the original harks back to the brewery firm founded by John Courage in 1787.

Figure 34. The Amersham Arms (New Cross SE14).

History

Courage started his brewing business in a location by Tower Bridge — the Anchor Brewhouse (fig. 35) — and the company remained based in South-East London until very near the end of their existence. This first site is still there, clearly visible from the bridge, even if now it’s been turned into expensive waterside apartments.

Figure 35. Anchor Brewhouse (Bermondsey SE1), now apartments.

For 150 years, this remained the arrangement, until a 1955 merger with Barclay Perkins & Co., who did their brewing at the larger Anchor Brewery, not far along the Thames.² The story thereafter becomes one complicated by mergers and acquisitions. Five years later, Barclay Perkins merged with Simonds & Co. (of Reading), then Georges & Co. (of Bristol) in 1961, and John Smith & Co. (of Yorkshire) in 1970, though the name returned to plain Courage & Co. in this same year. Then they were sold to Imperial Tobacco in 1972, and in the mid-1980s a new brewery was opened in Reading to replace both the Anchor breweries.³

The Courage brewery was now sold to the Australian company Elders IXL in 1986, who became Foster’s Group in 1990, then merged a year later with the brewing operations of Grand Metropolitan (later to become known as Diageo), which owned Truman Hanbury Buxton and Watney Mann, two other key London players who are now extinct. This newly-enlarged Foster’s was purchased by Scottish & Newcastle in 1995 as its brewing arm, while the pub chain (under the brand Inntrepreneur Estates) was hived off and largely sold after the 1991 Beer Orders.⁴ Most recently, in 2007, Wells & Young’s have obtained the rights to brew the remaining Courage beers.

Insignia

The most distinctive symbol to be found on Courage’s tied pubs was the rooster, most of the surviving examples of which are painted gold. Generally these are found perched atop the hanging signs. A more modest version of this same symbol, on a square red plastic background, can also often be seen affixed to pub buildings. It’s also worth noting the signs often hang off a pole held together by two iron supports with five holes punched in each (as may be seen, for example, on the sign hanging off The Prince Albert, Greenwich SE10, amongst many others).

Figure 36. The Exmouth Arms (Somers Town NW1). It has all three of the features noted above.

What Now?

You can still drink Courage’s beers. Their Courage Best and Courage Directors are fairly commonly available and represent perfectly decent session ales. So, this Christmas, have a good holiday season, and remember. Take Courage.

See also:
Photos of all Courage pubs that I have on my Flickr.

Footnotes

[1] This is a reference to their London Pride ale.
[2] This brewery was located on Park Street in Bankside. It was founded as far back as 1616, purchased by Henry Thrale in 1729, and came under the control of Robert Barclay and John Perkins in the early-18th century. After a huge fire in the mid-19th century it was rebuilt, but closed in 1981 and was largely demolished at this time to be replaced by Council housing. All that remains is The Anchor pub (the “brewery tap”, a name for a pub which adjoins a brewer and dispenses its wares directly) and some outlying buildings, such as one which may have been The Golden Anchor (Borough SE1) and which retains the ‘Take Courage’ banner.
[3] This brewery is itself set to close, with the takeover of Scottish & Newcastle by InBev. CAMRA provides some reportage here in its inimitably unbiased fashion (“no one it appears wants the mass of fizzy yellow liquid…”), inadvertently bringing to our attention the fine compound noun “mega-keggery”.
[4] Details of the changes in ownership are sourced from Jack S. Blocker Jr., Ian R. Tyrrell and David M. Fahey, Alcohol and Temperance in Modern Society: An International Encyclopedia (ABC-CLIO, 2003), accessed online. There is also useful information in the Wikipedia article. The Beer Orders are discussed in my earlier post on Mitchells & Butlers, another former brewer with extensive estate holdings.

The PubCo: Mitchells & Butlers

Apologies for my very lax updating of this journal (except for the ‘recently visited pubs’ sidebar, which I keep religiously up-to-date). Let’s talk about PubCos now. I had been intending for some time to write about this, but it’s a very confusing area to distill down to a short blog post like this one — complicated not just by legal changes but by constant mergers and acquisitions, renamings and rebrandings amongst the key players. As a case study, I’ll look at Mitchells & Butlers.¹

The majority of drinkers are likely to have been into a Mitchells & Butlers establishment at some point in their drinking lives (however recently they may have started), but very few will be aware of it. Pubs tied to breweries (discussed in an earlier post) are recognisable to all (see fig. 7 in that post). Yet M&B, like many larger public-facing companies, tends to subsume its own corporate identity in a variety of brands specifically targeted to various consumer demographics, and if that sounds rather dull and lifeless then you’ll probably find their brands to be likewise. M&B own All Bar One, O’Neill’s, Nicholson’s, Ember Inns, Harvester and a variety of other outlets.

Corporate History

The company which currently exists under the Mitchells & Butlers name was essentially created by the Beer Orders of 1989² — before then, the M&B name hadn’t been in use since 1961, when the brewery founded in 1898 was acquired by Bass. The Beer Orders decreed a break-up of the large estates formerly tied to breweries, to create a new hegemony for ‘independent’ pub companies (PubCos).³ The incentives which were offered quickly saw a split between the brewing and the management operations within what had become known by that time as Bass Charrington,⁴ as the managing directors realised the greatest profit was to be had from the latter, and so the group split into Bass Brewers and Bass Taverns. While the former was eventually sold to global brewing conglomerate InBev, the latter renamed to Six Continents and then again to M&B in 2003, taking the company back to its original name, but in a vastly different guise.⁵

Managed Pubs vs Leasehold

M&B isn’t the largest PubCo — that honour falls to such companies as Punch Taverns and Enterprise Inns. Unlike them, however, all of its 2000 or so properties are managed, as opposed to Punch and Enterprise, who are largely leaseholders (though Punch has a managed division called Spirit Group, with over 1000 properties). A managed pub is one where the landlord is provided by the owner of the pub. As such, there tends to be a greater uniformity across managed pubs.

The Mitchells & Butlers Pub Brands

Certainly it can be difficult to tell apart any given pub within the named brands in M&B’s portfolio. A typical example of an O’Neill’s has a distinctive blue facade (fig. 23) and inside will have Caffreys and Guinness front and centre on the bar, but will otherwise efface the more distinctive elements of a real Irish pub (you won’t hear many sing-alongs to partisan songs as the evening wears on, for example).⁶

Figure 23. O’Neill’s (Islington N1).

Nicholson’s are probably the most popular of the bunch, as they are found in central locations and pitched squarely to tourists and after-work drinkers. You can’t move around far in the West End without hitting one of their distinctive pubs, embossed with gold lettering and ornate hanging signs, again featuring plenty of gold-leaf (fig. 24).⁷

Figure 24. The Porcupine (Covent Garden WC2).

The All Bar One outfit crops up all over London, and is distinguished by their hanging baskets above the windows, as well as (again) prominent golden lettering (fig. 25). These are more wine bars than pubs and focus on catering to city workers in prominent locations generally near tube stations and in commercial locations.⁸

Figure 25. All Bar One (Holborn WC2).

Their other brands, such as Harvester (e.g., The Falcon, Falconwood SE9) or Ember Inns (e.g., The Railway, Hornchurch RM12), tend to be found more often in suburban areas or in the countryside, and so are less prominent in the London drinking environment.

However, whereas these pubs are marked by a distinctive brand and consistent design, Mitchells & Butlers — unlike, say, Punch Taverns’ Spirit Group⁹ — has a more fractured profile. Apart from the brands listed above, there are also unbranded M&B pubs. In a way this may be illusory, since the company retains some internal classifications: one style of unbranded pub, described as an “affluent residential-area pub”, is called Castle, for example. In its corporate strategy, M&B states that they “strive to… respond to changing… consumer expectations by evolving [their] brands and formats”, and indeed many of their pubs have been refitted over the years. For example, a number of O’Neill’s in more aspirational areas have been repositioned to cater to an increasingly affluent customer base, as in the case of The White Hart (Crystal Palace SE19, fig. 26) or The Market Tavern (Mayfair W1).¹⁰

Figure 26. The White Hart (Crystal Palace SE19).

With the changes which have taken place in the social and financial landscape over the last few years (the smoking ban of 2007 and economic difficulties as a result of the so-called ‘credit crunch’), this kind of change will probably only continue to occur.

See also:
My photos of Mitchells & Butlers pubs that I know about, on Flickr (includes former M&B pubs, as well as closed ones).

Footnotes:
[1] If any publicans or experts in this field are reading, please do use the comments to correct or clarify the no doubt manifold errors. It is not my intention to discuss the current financial situation or future prospects for M&B, nor to specifically criticise their brand (beyond a bit of low-key grumbling about corporate blandness).
[2] The Beer Orders were later revoked, removing the limit on pubs tied to breweries (a move that at the time essentially affected only Scottish & Newcastle’s managed pubs division, though they later divested a large number of their properties to the Spirit Group).
[3] Sadly, like many legislative changes, the new laws haven’t particularly helped pub landlords themselves, as publicans’ lobby groups such as Fair Pint will attest.
[4] When they acquired M&B in 1961 the group became known as Bass, Mitchells & Butlers, but renamed again in 1967, upon taking over the London brewer Charrington, to form the new company, finally dropping Mitchells & Butlers from their title.
[5] The information in this paragraph is largely sourced from the Mitchells & Butlers website.
[6] For more, see my set of O’Neill’s pubs on Flickr.
[7] For more, see my set of Nicholson’s pubs on Flickr.
[8] For more, see my set of All Bar One bars on Flickr.
[9] The Spirit Group has a consistent gold leaf design and lettering across most of its properties (The Goat Tavern, Kensington W8, provides a clear example of this).
[10] For more, see my set of Castle unbranded pubs on Flickr.