Kirkstall Brewery - How 200 years of tradition came to an end

Brewing giant Whitbread announced place to shut down Kirkstall Brewery in June 1982 - ending a tradition stretching back almost 200 years.

The brewery on Broad Lane dated back to a time when dozens of tiny independent brewers supplied the inns and alehouses of the city.

Kirksatll produced wonderfully sounding ales such as 'Old Ben Draught' and the bottled beer 'O.B'J' - better known as 'Oh be joyful'

Although parts of the brewery were known to be almost 200 years old, first official records go back to 1834 when Thomas Walker was registered there in the Parish of Bramley as an 'Ale and porter brewer and maltser.'

Around 1845 it was bought by Benjamin Dawson and after his death in 1867 it was registered as Kirkstall Brewery Co Ltd.

The company bought two stemships - the Charante and the Kirkstall - and by 1898 was producing around 72,000 barrels of beer a year. Kirkstall beers were even been recorded arriving as far as Australia and New Zealand.

In 1936, Dutton’s Blackburn Brewery Ltd. purchased Kirkstall Brewery Co Ltd. and its subsidiaries, Albion Brewery (Leeds) Ltd. and Willow Brewery Co. Ltd.

Duttons sold the brewery but not the associated pubs to Whibread in 1957. Kirkstall Brewery was re-equipped, and the production of bitter and mild went up to quarter of a million barrels a year.

It closed in 1983 and Kirkstall Brewery stood empty and unused until the late 1990s when it became Kirkstall Brewery Student Village, part of Leeds Metropolitan University.

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