History of Carling brewery

It was in the year 1818 that a 21-year old Yorkshire farmer named Thomas Carling arrived in Upper Canada to establish a farm. He served as a volunteer in the 1837 Rebellion and started his brewery in 1843 using a recipe from his native Yorkshire. His home-brewed beer was a great local success and the Carling company was established in London, Ontario in 1840.

The brewery consisted of two potash kettles and a horse to turn the grinding wheel. In a short period of time, he was employing six men, along with his two sins Will and John, age eighteen and twelve, as helpers.

His sons nurtured the business, built a new brewery in 1879, which burned down shortly thereafter and then recovered to create a joint stock corporation in 1882 called The Carling Brewery & Malting Company of London Ltd. Over the rest of the century, Carling enlarged its sales agency network into a coast to coast operation,

Many years later the brewery was acquired by E.P Taylor’s Canadian Breweries Ltd., which became Carling O’Keeffe, thereafter merging into Molson, which would become Molson-Coors. Under Taylor, Carling Black Label became the world’s first beer brand to be brewed on a mass international scale. In Canada, he promoted Black label as his flagship lager from the 1930s onward.
History of Carling brewery

The creation of Charrington United Breweries

Charrington United Breweries was the creation of Edward Plunket Taylor. Taylor had built up Canadian Breweries by a series of mergers between 1934 and 1954 to a dominant position in Quebec and Ontario. Aiming to enter the European market with his leading brand, Carling lager, he formed a trading agreement in 1953 with the Hope and Anchor brewery of Sheffield.

In 1960 Taylor combine Hope and Anchor with Scottish lager brewer, John Jeffery and Co., of Edinburgh and Hammonds United Breweries and these three were reborn as Northern Breweries before name changes to United Breweries. Taylor rapidly built up United Breweries into a group with 2,800 pubs within two years.

In 1962, United Breweries merged with London brewers, Charrington, the company being then was known as Charrington United Breweries.

Charrington United Breweries Ltd was registered as a limited liability company to undertake the merger of Charrington & Co Ltd and United Breweries Ltd by an exchange of shares.

In 1963, this company bought J. and R. Tennent, the Glasgow lager brewers, a move that heralded the birth of Tennent Caledonia, the largest lager brewers in Scotland.

The company also acquired Offilers’ Brewery Ltd, and Dunmow Brewery Ltd, in 1965: and Massey’s Burnley Brewery Ltd in 1966.

To complete the merry-go-round, Charrington United Breweries merged with Bass, Mitchells and Butlers in 1967, to give the huge combine Bass Charrington. It created Britain’s largest brewing group, Bass Charrington with 10,230 pubs.
The creation of Charrington United Breweries