My first attempt at this brewery was about 5 years ago now. At the time it was a non starter for us. We realised that the company had been taken over by Robisons in the 1980s and predictably by 1991 they had closed them down and simply used the site as a glorified warehouse. Information online suggested however that most of the site was still there and the tower brewery itself was obviously derelict on street view. It was a promising lead on our quest to find new breweries to explore! Trouble is when we arrived in sleepy Ulverston at 4am we were pulled by the police before we had even parked up.. We rattled off an excuse about finding somewhere to sleep but to be honest it knocked our confidence of infiltrating a live site in such a 'small town', over looked location and we decided to leave it for another day..
That 'another day' never really came however. Soon after our first try the site closed totally and luckily local explorers found their way in pretty soon after negating any need to rush back. I always meant to go back and finish the job myself tho, i just had to wait until earlier this summer for it to happen!
It was worth the wait, nothing major appeared to have gone from the site but it looks like lots of ancillary buildings had opened up since the last reports. The tower brewery itself is tiny, smaller than any others ive been in but i still managed to hunt out the usual old beer bottles and dusty crates. In the basements i found old acid etched windows bearing the brewers name and even rescued a stray cat from one of the brewing vats.. Got to love and old brewery!
That 'another day' never really came however. Soon after our first try the site closed totally and luckily local explorers found their way in pretty soon after negating any need to rush back. I always meant to go back and finish the job myself tho, i just had to wait until earlier this summer for it to happen!
It was worth the wait, nothing major appeared to have gone from the site but it looks like lots of ancillary buildings had opened up since the last reports. The tower brewery itself is tiny, smaller than any others ive been in but i still managed to hunt out the usual old beer bottles and dusty crates. In the basements i found old acid etched windows bearing the brewers name and even rescued a stray cat from one of the brewing vats.. Got to love and old brewery!
brewery history society said:Brewing commenced here in 1755. On the 17th July 1896 the Old Brewery was conveyed from the Trustees of John Booth to Robert and Peter Hartley and on the 29th December 1919 Hartleys (Ulverston) Limited was incorporated. On the 16th July 1982 the company was acquired by Frederic Robinson Limited, Unicorn Brewery, Stockport. Brewing ceased on the 8th November 1991. A total of 236 years of traditional beer brewing
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