'In March 1792, the Gloucester Journal advertised the forthcoming sale of 'one of the most complete breweries outside London'. Could this be the earliest known record of Cirencester's most important brewery - a business that would later become the biggest industrial complex in Cirencester and the largest employer in the town? The Brewery played a vital role in the regional economy until closure in 1949, but the date of its foundation is a little more difficult to place. With the Cirencester Brewery's own records dating rather uncertainly from 1798, Joyce Moss examines the evidence for its development'.
Tag: revolutionary france
The Severn District Sea Fencibles 1803 to 1810
Although the greatest popular movement in Georgian Britain was probably that formed around military volunteering during the wars against Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, historians have written comparatively little on the subject and even when an attempt has been made the maritime volunteers have hardly ever commanded more than a few vague paragraphs. This is unfortunate as an examination of pay lists in the Public Record Office, letters in the Bristol Record Office and the columns of contemporary local newspapers have revealed a useful amount of information. John Penny investigates this shadowy corps, put in place to protect the Severn Estuary against possible French naval incursions.