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News
19th century brewery excavated
A team of archaeologists has been excavating the site of Lincoln’s old Crown Brewery before the area is turned into a public transport hub.
Crown Brewery’s maltings house as it was in the 1970s
Currently the site of the city’s bus station, the area is set to be renovated in a multi-million pound project but local archaeologists have been allowed to move in before construction work begins in earnest.
As reported by Lincolnshire Live, the new transport hub will cover what was once part of Lincoln’s foremost breweries, which covered an enormous area from Norman Street (where the bus station is located) down to the River Witham.
Lincoln has a long association with malting and brewing, in no small part due to its role as an important centre for grain storage. Grain warehousing, malting and brewing was the city’s chief industry until it was overtaken by engineering in the late 19th century.
Crown Brewery became Lincoln’s largest brewery by the mid-19th century and the part of the city now largely covered by the bus station, post office and city main square were once the brewery’s maltings, warehouses, stables, stores and brewery itself.
Its development was substantially increased by its proximity to the railway station which opened in 1845.
Acquired by Arthur & Betram Hill in 1894, Crown Brewery ceased operations in 1923. It appears the company merged with Cutlack & Harlock in Ely, in neighbouring Cambridgeshire in 1930, which itself ceased brewing in 1969.
A Great Northern Railway guide book of 1861 describes the Crown Brewery as producing “some of the finest ale in the world The proprietors spare no cost, and use every exertion to keep the best ale and stout”.
In addition to the brewery’s old well and foundations of some of its buildings, archaeologists also discovered a medieval rubbish dump filled with bits of pottery, broken roof tiles and animal bones and wild boar tusks. At this time part of the site appears to have been a bog outside of the city walls making it an excellent place (to the medieval mind) for a rubbish dump.