By John Mills, Lindfield History Project Group

On Lindfield High Street in 1914, there were five public houses: The Bent Arms, The Red Lion, The Stand Up Inn, The Tiger Inn and The White Horse, all selling beer obtained from commercial breweries, mostly in Brighton and Lewes. But one hundred years earlier, the village’s pubs were either brewing their own beer or being supplied by The Lindfield Brewery.

Beer was produced from barley, sugar, hops, yeast and water (known as ‘liquor’ in the industry). The barley was made into malt in a malthouse by soaking it, allowing the seeds to sprout, and then drying it in a kiln to stop the sprouting. The malt, once ground, was mixed with hot water to convert the starch to sugar, and the now-sweet liquid (the wort) was boiled with dried hops, cooled, and passed into a fermenting vessel. Yeast was added, which, feeding on the sugar as fermentation proceeded, converted the sugar to alcohol. After a few days, excess yeast was removed and the resulting beer was left to mature before being put into casks or bottles.

In the 1700s, Lindfield had a malthouse, where the United Reformed Church now stands, and at one time a hop kiln, much later replaced by the house at 78 High Street. Some houses had brewhouses (or brewing rooms), for home brewing from malt, but most brewing in Lindfield village would have been carried out in the outbuildings of its inns.

Wholesale commercial brewing arrived in Lindfield after 1784, when a Brighton brewer, Richard Lemmon Whichelo, bought Malling Priory, a private house. On part of its large garden, between The Bent Arms and the back of the house, he erected brewery buildings around three sides of a yard. The distinctive half-H-shaped configuration of the buildings appears on a map of 1792. Later, only part of Malling Priory was used by the brewery, and the remainder was let to other tenants. In the early 1800s it was known as the Brew House..

Whichelo’s main residence and brewery remained in Brighton. From 1800, he first tried to sell, then let his Lindfield brewery, with two pubs attached; he also owned The White Lion (now Bent Arms) and Ryecroft (52 High Street) – the first site of the Red Lion.

In 1801, the brewery was advertised as the only one within 12 miles of the village, “with a new-erected malthouse, convenient store-rooms, vault, stabling (and) large yard…..The business of the brewery is done with little expense; the work being done by a horse mill, where the malt is ground, the liquor is pumped up, and the worts into the copper (boiling vessel), all at one time.” In this mill, or ‘horse gin (engine)’, a horse walked in a circle, pulling a timber arm linked to gearing which operated the pumps and grindstones.

Henry Clerk, brewer, rented the brewery in 1803, in 1806 selling the remainder of his lease and the contents of the house and buildings, including ‘old beer, porter, malt, hops, vats and casks, two draught horses’.

Hughes and Co., partners in the Storrington Brewery, were the new tenants, and ran both breweries until 1815, when they went bankrupt. An Eastbourne coal merchant and brewer, Richard Buckley Stone, who lived for a time in Lindfield, became tenant from 1815, using the brewery also for his coal business. In 1819, he also went bankrupt.

Whichelo, still the owner, died in 1818, leaving The White Lion and brewery to his son Matthew, a wine merchant. He promptly, but unsuccessfully, put them on the market, then let them in 1819, advertising that ‘there are a great number of free Public Houses in the neighbourhood of Lindfield, with which considerable (brewery) business has been done’.

A new partnership, (William) Durrant and (Thomas) Wileman, then rented the brewery, both local men, ‘common- (commercial wholesale) brewers and maltsters’. Between 1824 and 1827,John Bent, a gentleman, bought several houses in Lindfield, the brewery and The White Lion, changing the pub’s name to The Bent Arms.

Wileman and another partner had left the partnership by 1825. William Durrant, who also had a High Street grocer’s and draper’s (cloth) shop, where the Co-op now stands, continued the brewery on his own. During his occupancy, part of the Brew House was let to his niece Miss Ann Baker for her boarding school for young ladies.

In 1833-34, William Durrant too went bankrupt, having to sell his properties, but kept the tenancy of his shop. Bent let the brewery to Gosling Philp and Richard Philp, common-brewers and partners, but when the first dropped out and the second was bankrupted in 1838, the brewery was again left untenanted.

From 1839, Henry Adolphus Baber briefly rented the brewery, he and all subsequent tenants until 1885 describing themselves as maltsters, rather than brewers. Apparently, brewing at the ‘Old Brewery’ had ended.

Baber was also a corn and coal merchant; the buildings and yard continued for coal merchant’s stores, and presumably the malthouse for malting. The Bent family properties were put up for sale in 1885, and the brewery demolished in 1886, to be replaced in 1890 by the present semi-detached houses, 92-94 High Street.

William Durrant may have seen a gap in the local brewing market appearing around 1839-40, buying a house and butcher’s shop (known as ‘Morlands’) at 53-55 High Street (Eye Care Practice and Mansell McTaggart). In 1840-41 he again described himself as a brewer, together with his son Edward, and by 1842 had built a small brick-built brewery behind Morlands (now converted into two cottages, Old Brewery and Old Brewery Cottage, 49-51 High Street). Morlands became William Durrant’s new grocer’s and linen draper’s shop.

William died in 1848. In 1845, Edward Durrant was running the ‘new’ Lindfield Brewery and did so until the end of his life (1902). After the redevelopment in 1854 of the corner of Denmans Lane with five terraced houses (41-47 High Street, pictured), Edward leased the northernmost house and opened it as the Brewery Tap beer shop, under William Barlow, also a boot and shoe maker. The beer shop proprietor was licensed to sell beer and cider only, for consumption on or off the premises.

The ground floor premises of the early beer shop were small (The Stand Up now occupies three of the five houses in the terrace). The story goes that Edward Durrant considered that if workmen had a glass of beer standing up, they returned to work, but if they sat down over it there was no knowing when they would return; and so the beerhouse, without chairs, became known as The Stand Up Inn.

In 1879, the brewery offered a Family Bitter Ale for one shilling (1s/ 5p) per gallon (8 pints), and in the 1880s home-brewed ale from eightpence (8d/ 3½p) to 1s 6d per gallon, a Light Dinner Ale and London porter, stout and double stout. Later, prices were 2d to 8d a quart (two pints), the cheaper beer being known familiarly as ‘apron washings’ (slang for porter).

Behind Morlands, where the Durrant family continued their grocery shop until the 1970s, there was another horse gin under an octagonal roof, which was used for the brewery’s pumping and machinery.

When Edward Durrant died, the Lindfield Brewery carried on under his widow and son, Fanny Sara and Bartley Durrant, until 1906, when it closed. Her name, and Licensed Brewer, can still be seen on a timber beam in The Stand Up. In 1909 Ballard & Co., of the Southover Brewery, Lewes, bought the brewery, but besides supplying the beerhouse with their 1910 Premier Ale and Coronation Ale, did not restart brewing there.

After being damaged in the 1987 great storm, the horse gin eventually collapsed, but thanks to the Durrant family and by dint of strong co-operative local efforts, the gin was re-erected behind The Red Lion in 1995.

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