Steyning Museum Archives - Browsing the Archives

Browsing the Archives

2018 is upon us and, at this time of the year, it is fun to browse through the Museum’s archives to see whether the year is the anniversary of any particularly momentous events.

1918 was certainly momentous, of course. The dreadful War, which had taken so many Steyning men over the previous four years, was drawing to a close. However, this is a subject we shall be addressing in an exhibition later this year so we won’t dwell on it here.

Needless to say, the records for most of the anniversary years are less dramatic than those for 1918 and much more ordinary – but they do illustrate how Steyning has changed and how Steyning people lived their lives. The court records for 1468, for instance, tell us about the brewing of ale 550 years ago. The trade was tightly controlled by the aleconner, John Frensh. People – and it could be women as well as men – who sold ale, as opposed to brewing it for their own use, paid 6 pence each year for the privilege of doing so. There were four of them in Steyning for a population of a few hundred and there were two more, Alice Longe and Nigel Bennet (the town’s constable), who broke the Assize of Ale by “brewing twice”. This probably meant that the mash they had used for the first brew was put through the process again, producing a much weaker concoction. And, in contravention of another Act, Richard Pryklove was fined for selling ale by the jug and not by sealed measure. It should, apparently, have been sold by the gallon, the pottle (half a gallon) or the quart.

Continuing the brewing theme, it was not uncommon for people to have brewing equipment in their own houses. An inventory of 1618, taken after the death of one of Steyning’s blacksmith’s, John Swifte, records that he had in his possession “certayne brewing vessels, one coope and a vate” and “two quart pottes”. He also had some barley which would have been the basis of his brewing. More strangely his inventory notes that he had “one musket with the furniture”.

Moving on 50 years to 1668 John Michell, a carpenter, had a room described as his “Brewhouse and Buttery” in which, among other things, he had “eleven beer barrels and firkins, three wood bottles and one tunnel”. A barrel contained 124 pints and a firkin 72 so John Michell was well provided for. A “tunnel”? Maybe a “funnel”; it’s not a measure. Edward Fussell, in the same year, had a “Furness” [furnace] and “a brewing vate” in his brewhouse. Even the Church was involved with beer. When John Groome submitted his bill for extensive work on the church pews, on the re-shingling of the spire and for “setting up the house clock”, to the churchwardens - Goodman Devenish and Goodman Groves - he didn’t forget to claim for some beer for his workmen as well.

By 1768 (just 250 years ago) John Wheeler, who was a saddler by trade, had a much more extensive investment in brewing. He had “1 brewing copper, 1 brass furnace, 1 mash tub, 1 bucking tub, 1 tun tub, 1 powdering tub and 4 coolers”. All of these were valued together but what a “bucking tub” and a “powdering tub” had to do with brewing we’re not quite sure. We’re equally uncertain about some of the other things he kept in the brewhouse such as “a dung spud, some grabbers and a javelin”.

One hundred years later, however, things had changed. The Chequer Inn, for instance, which would once have brewed its own beer (or, in earlier centuries, its own ale), had no brewing equipment of its own. They bought all their beer from one of Steyning’s two breweries.

So, whilst the brewing of ale or beer is not exactly momentous, it is a thread which ties the passing centuries together as we browse the archives.