Can you help Maidenhead Heritage Centre piece together some of the local history of pubs, breweries and maltings? Local knowledge could help us to fix the locations of businesses that were such a part of daily life.
The internet provides many sources of information. Our aim here is to plot the sites on a map, connect them to any photographs in the collection and provide links to the main external sources of information. We’ve plotted current and former pubs as best we can from the information available, but maybe you know more?
Update 23rd May 2020: We’ve received a number of public contributions correcting and enhancing the data. Thank you. We’ve also trawled through the Heritage Centre’s photograph collection and added around 150 images to the map. We’d be pleased to host any historical images you may have.
Brewery history
There were four major breweries in Maidenhead – the Pineapple Brewery (Nicholson’s), the Bell Brewery ( Fuller, Story & Co. Ltd) and the East Berkshire Brewery (James Blumson) and Langton’s.
Cookham had a brewery on School Lane. Brewing ceased in 1837 but it continued as a maltings. Ray Mill at Boulters Lock also brewed for a while.
We learned of another brewery – H Hewett & Co. It is thought to have located in Shurlock Row rather than Waltham St Lawrence itself, but needs more research. Can you help?
A basic list of breweries across Berkshire is here.
The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) published a more in-depth history in 2013, by John Dearing. It’s a PDF file available to download. p19 covers Maidenhead.
Pub history
Pubwiki is building up an online database of pubs across the country using historical trade directories as the main source. Their work in Berkshire and Buckinghamshire has identified around 200 pubs in Maidenhead and the surrounding villages. We have been unable to plot all of them, often because the pubs closed before precise addressing became commonplace. Maybe you can help fill some of the gaps?
Links to Pubwiki: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire
Map
The Pub map is launched here or by clicking the image below.
On the interactive map, hover – don’t click – on the dots to display the pub or brewery name and any images we have. The images can be enlarged to explore them in detail – requires a sign-in (free-of-charge).
At least 22 pubs on just the High Street and Bridge Street – and we know there were others not yet plotted. Maybe the ten on King Street were more realistic for a pub crawl…
Unplotted pubs
The list of unplotted pubs may include those now known under new names. The address data is from pubwiki and may be ambiguous or incorrect.
To add a new plot, please click on the map to obtain its latitude and longitude, then send the details to webmaster@maidenheadheritage.org.uk (no, it isn’t automated!).
