On your left stood a business started by exactly the sort of person Oxford history tends to tuck behind the grander names. In seventeen forty-three, Richard Tawney the elder, a former boatmaster from Upper Fisher Row, founded a brewery here at the age of sixty. Most people slow down at sixty. Tawney apparently chose malt, barrels, and hard labor instead.
In seventeen ninety-seven, Edward Tawney, who had no children, brought in Mark and James Morrell, nephews of the solicitor James Morrell. That Tawney-Morrell partnership lasted until nineteen ninety-eight, supplying pubs and college kitchens for more than two and a half centuries.
The site grew bit by bit along the Wareham Stream, a side channel of the Thames. That stream turned the brewery waterwheel, just as nearby water once powered Oxford Castle. A brewing shed went up in eighteen seventy-nine, a blacksmith's shop and engine house in eighteen eighty, stables in eighteen eighty-nine, offices in eighteen ninety-two, a tun room - a space for huge brewing vats - in eighteen ninety-five, and the tall octagonal chimney in nineteen oh-one.
Then there is the memorial tablet from nineteen nineteen. It names the brewery's own men: Private E. North, Private A. Randall, Private W. Speaks, and Sergeant G. H. Burden of the Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire Light Infantry. Cellarmen and yardhands went from brewery stables to the Somme.
After a bitter family dispute, the brewery closed in nineteen ninety-eight, and Michael Cannon bought its one hundred and thirty-two tied pubs. Flats replaced much of the site in two thousand and two, but the gates, curved archway with gold lions, chimney, offices, engine house, and waterwheel survived. Remember North, Randall, Speaks, Burden... and the unnamed coopers and draymen. When you're ready, continue to Hythe Bridge, about four minutes away.
