On 17 September it will be twenty years since John Young, the chairman of Young & Co’s Brewery, passed away. CAMRA’s London Region continues to salute his memory with the John Young Memorial Award but I thought that a more in-depth recollection was warranted.
Mr John, as he was usually known, will always be remembered for declining to join the growing trend among brewers to switch to keg beers, deciding that the majority of the brewery’s output would remain cask conditioned. This had a significant effect on the emerging real ale movement in the 1970s. Sadly, he died while the last ever batch of Young’s beer to be brewed at Wandsworth was in the fermenting vessels. It is said that beer from this last batch was served at his funeral.
Shortly afterwards, brewing was transferred to the Eagle Brewery in Bedford under a partnership with Charles Wells & Co, which proved to be short lived. Young’s head brewer, the late Ken Don, did his best to match the beers, in particular by using the Young’s yeast but, as he pointed out at a tasting session that I attended, the beer could never be the same because they used conical fermenters at Bedford and very different water. The Eagle Brewery took its water from natural wells in the area whereas Young’s had used Thames Water tap water, which they ‘burtonised’. After various manoeuvrings, the current versions of the beers are now brewed by Carlsberg Britvic at the former Marston’s Albion Brewery in Burton-on-Trent.
John Young was born in 1921. His parents, William Allen Young and Joan Barrow Simonds, both came from well-established brewing families. Mr John was educated at the Nautical College in Pangbourne, so it was expected that he would join the navy. He decided to become a pilot and served in the Fleet Air Arm during the Second World War. By the time he was stood down in 1945, aged 24 and with the rank of lieutenant commander (equivalent to a major in the army), he had flown 25 different types of aircraft from six different aircraft carriers. He then continued his education at Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, obtaining a degree in economics.
At first, he pursued a career in shipping but, in 1954, he and his brothers were summoned to join the family firm. In 1964 he succeeded his father as chairman. He was still in post at the time of his death. Mr John had a very ‘hands on’ management style, making regular visits to the pubs in the brewery’s estate. Although he was at heart a traditionalist, he knew that the company had to move with the times. A lager was brewed (although the first attempt, Saxon, was pretty awful) and children’s rooms were added to many pubs.
Young’s were famous for using shire horses to pull their drays in the local area. This was down to Mr John who was a great enthusiast for working horses and helped save the shire breed. He was president of the London Harness Horse Parade from 1957 to 1968 and of the Greater London Horse Show from 1972 to 1974. Mr John was also heavily involved in charity work. He chaired the National Hospital for Nervous Diseases and supported the National Society for Epilepsy, raising significant funds for both. He was awarded a CBE in 1975 and was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1986.
We have recently made several mentions of the Young’s 135 Club. Those who did the tour will know that the pub most distant from Wandsworth was the Fountain in Plumpton Green, Sussex. It was not easy to get to; until recently, trains only stopped there to serve race meetings. It became a Young’s pub in 1965 and only because it was close to where Mr John lived and he wanted a local selling his beers. It passed into the hands of Punch Pubs when the Ram Pub Company was sold. Punch Pubs have now put it up for sale, as they have done with a number of the pubs that they acquired in this deal. Local campaigners have set up a Community Benefit Society to acquire it for the village and this has received support from Queen Camilla, who grew up in the village. Given that he was very much a Royalist, I’m sure that Mr John would be delighted that the current queen was helping to save his local.
In the course of preparing this article, the news came through of the death of Mr John’s son, James Guillaume Allen Young, at the age of 74. James happily followed his father into the family business and was deputy chairman of the company at the time of Mr John’s death. James might have been expected to succeed him but instead he left the company to follow a very different career. James shared his father’s love of animals and set up an alpaca farm, Moonsbrook Alpacas Ltd, near the family home in Wisborough Green, West Sussex. We send our condolences to his family and friends.