West Country Brewery Holdings: a snapshot of British brewing in 1960

We keep an eye out for ephemera relating to brewing and pubs and were pleased to stumble upon this bit of prestige bumph by West Country Breweries from 1960. You might not have heard of West Country Breweries. We certainly hadn’t. That’s partly because it only existed for about four years. It was formed by a merger between The Stroud Brewery Company and Cheltenham & Hereford Breweries in 1959 and popped out of existence in 1963 when Whitbread acquired the operation and renamed it Whitbread Flowers. In 1960, though, it was very much a going concern and its owners were keen to signal how jolly well they were doing, and had been doing so for centuries, and would likely continue to do so for many years to come. An excellent investment. Hence this publication, 200 Years of Brewing in the West Country, a 40-page booklet, approximately A4 sized, with embossing and gilding on the cover and very posh, textured paper throughout. (Which made it very hard to scan, by the way, hence the grotty…