Strange tales: the Maiwand Lion and Reading’s brewing past

Visitors to Forbury Gardens in Reading may be familiar with the impressive ‘Maiwand Lion’ monument but do they know its brewing links?

The enormous – at 16 tons one of the biggest cast iron sculptures in the world – and rather magnificent lion statute was cast in 1886 to commemorate the fallen men of the Berkshire regiment who took part in a famous last stand at the Battle of Maiwand in during the Second Anglo-Afghan War in 1880.

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The battle (which took place on 27 July) was one of the great imperial disasters of the 19^th century and was the subject of numerous paintings and other works in the years immediately after.

The battle, although having faded somewhat from more modern memory, was so famous at the time that Sir Arthur Conan Doyle based Dr Watson on the Berkshire’s medical officer who was wounded at the battle. When Holmes and Watson meet for the first time and the sleuth deduces Watson’s recent return from a far flung corner of the empire and a wound sustained there, it is this he is talking about.

The Berkshires were effectively wiped out at the battle, losing 329 men out of 500 (or perhaps under 300, the numbers vary) and losing their colours (flags) in the process. Although a military disaster, the courageous last stand of the colour party in particular (even the Afghans praised their bravery) was seized upon as a symbol of British fortitude and widely celebrated.

The regimental trust commissioned the memorial and George Blackall Simonds was chosen as the sculptor. Rumours that he committed suicide after some old ‘Africa hands’ disparaged the lion’s gait as incorrect are, in fact, incorrect. Not only is the beast’s posture sound but Simonds lived on until 1929 and made many more sculptures along the way.

Tragically, his last piece was the war memorial dedicated to the men of the 2nd South Wales Borderers killed in the First World War, a casualty list that included his son, also called George.

Not only was he a very talented sculptor, a copy of his statue ‘The Falconer’ (a pastime he adored) today stands in New York’s Central Park, he was also part of the Simonds family which owned one of the town’s major breweries and became a chairman of the business himself in 1910.

Founded in 1785 by George’s grandfather, William Blackall Simonds, the brewery* built up a number of military links thanks to its proximity to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst, which it supplied from 1813 onwards, and Aldershot, which, in the 1850s, became the ‘home’ of the British army and for which Simonds won the supply contract in 1872.

These links meant the brewery not only expanded its production to such an extent that by the 1880s it was the largest in Reading but it had also opened a branches in the important garrison posts of Gibraltar and Malta. In fact, it would takeover Malta’s first brewery, Farsons, in 1929 and it exists to this day as the Simonds Farsons Cisk Brewery, although it is now independent.

The brewery, thanks to its army connections, was also one of the larger producers of stouts and pale ales, especially India pale ales, which were the staple beers of British troops at the time wherever they were stationed in the empire.

Alfred Barnard’s ‘Noted Breweries of Great Britain and Ireland’ mentions both the Maiwand Lion and the fact that in 1890 the brewery was producing around 150,000 barrels a year and by the late 1930s the brewery was producing between 1% and 2% of all beer produced in England and Wales.

Unfortunately, this illustrious history drew to an end in 1960 when Simonds was amalgamated with Courage & Barclay. By 1970 the name ‘Simonds’ was dropped altogether from the company name although it continued as a brand of beer. The last Simonds to work for the company was Duncan Simonds who retired in 1980. In 1974 the impressive brewery site in Reading was demolished and is now the site of The Oracle shopping centre.

Simonds was by this point, to all extents and purposes, lost as an entity, its fortunes bound up with Courage which, after a tumultuous period throughout the 80s was bought by Scottish and Newcastle in 1993.

The Simonds brand was part of the package sold to Wells & Young’s in 2006 but there are, at present at least, no signs of a resurrection. The only tangible evidence of the Simonds brewery that exist today are the Maiwand Lion and several pubs around the country which still bear the Simonds logo – at its height the brewery owned over 1,000 pubs – so look out for them when out and about.

Although you won’t find a Simonds beer to quench your thirst anymore, a suitable substitute might be the ‘Forbury Lion IPA’ brewed by Loddon Brewery which, although in Oxfordshire is only three miles from Reading.

*Quick expansion meant that in 1790 the brewery needed a new site which was, in the end, designed by no less an architect than Reading native Sir John Soane.