A couple of years ago, I ran a training course on international beer styles and one of the beers I included was Nigerian (Foreign Export) Guinness. During the ‘lockdown’, I came across a bottle that hadn’t been used in the tasting and at 7.5% ABV, it had aged nicely. This experience, plus the mention on the radio of a book called An Oral History of the Park Royal Brewery (by Tim Strangleman) prompted some reflection that it is probable that many newcomers to London would not be aware that Guinness once brewed their stout here.
It is now 87 years since the building of the Guinness Brewery at Park Royal in West London began. At that time, Guinness was exporting a million barrels per annum from Dublin to Britain, so setting up a brewery in Britain made commercial sense. At its peak, in the 1960s, the Park Royal was producing a staggering 1.6 million barrels of stout; this was some eight times more than other large breweries at that time.

No money seems to have been spared when considering how to build the brewery. The architect is usually quoted as Sir Giles Gilbert Scott, famous also for both the Battersea and Bankside Power Stations (the latter now being Tate Modern). However, the C20 Society imply it was actually a joint architectural project with Alexander Gibb and that ‘it was essentially Gibb who created the shape of the huge but decoratively restrained environment for Guinness’ 1,500 workers’.
It took around three years to build. The brewing buildings, all one hundred feet high and built of distinctive brown brick, were inter-connected with bridges and created ‘an imposing silhouette making it a West London landmark’. The site was extensive and the attitude paternalistic. There was a dining room where, at one time, the workers experienced silver service meals and the grounds included gardens, sports fields and facilities such as a bowling green and tennis courts for the workers. This was thought to be essential in getting the workforce to return to normality after WWII.

The site wasn’t however the only way that Guinness differed as a business from most breweries of the time. The company has never owned a pub in Britain, although it did get involved in a pub project with McMullens in Hatfield in the late 1950’s. This was an interesting venture with the objective of creating a ‘model’ pub with facilities for the local community and came at a time when Guinness was also trying to improve training for pub and cellar management.
Guinness sold its beer through other brewers; this was a time before we had pub owning businesses. In 1933, they sold 80% of their beer through other breweries’ tied houses and over half of this was beer which Guinness supplied in bulk for them to bottle.

The beer was mainly bottled Extra Stout and Guinness grew its market share in Britain from 5.4% in 1933 to 7.9% in 1956 in less than twenty years after the opening of Park Royal. But gradually the market changed and lager became increasingly popular. Guinness jumped on the bandwagon in 1961 with Harp Lager, a consortium that originally included Courage, Barclay & Simonds, Bass, Mitchells & Butlers and Scottish & Newcastle. There were dedicated breweries set up in Alton (1963) and Edinburgh (1971). Sales of lager soared from 1% in 1960 to 50% in 1989 at the expense of ales and stouts, with returnable bottles dropping to less than 20% of sales in the 1960s.
The dominance of Harp lager (which had 25% of the market in the late 1960s) gradually reduced however and the last pint of British Harp was brewed by Wolverhampton & Dudley in 2003. The Park Royal Brewery was to follow suit two years later. By this time, brewing in the original large brewery had already been abandoned and Guinness was brewed at a small modern brewery within the site.
There were efforts and protests made to keep the iconic buildings; after all, a number of industrial buildings of note have had successful changes of use. The protests included the C20 Society, who put the factory forward for statutory listing. However, although English Heritage supported the request, the Department for Culture, Media and Sport turned it down and issued a Certificate of Immunity.
The buildings were demolished in 2006 but the memory of the Guinness Park Royal Brewery lives on and can be best left to an anonymous quote from a former employee (from the www.forbidden-places.net website), ‘Benefits included free meals, a great social club, sports facilities, help with mortgages, free allocation of Guinness or Harp lager on special occasions such as birthdays and a profit sharing scheme, which was paid out to me six months after I left. The irony was that my final job was in planning, where investigations were being made as to the viability of closing the St James Gate Brewery in Dublin. No mention of closing Park Royal in the early 1970’s. Wonderful employer who really cared for their staff. I was one of the rare leavers who had every attention of going back but never did. My father thought it was the biggest mistake I ever made. He was probably right’.
Today, both Harp and Guinness are brewed at the modern Dublin Brewery.
Christine Cryne