Continuing on a Shire Oak theme, I happened upon this whilst searching for something else a week or so ago. It’s a public notice from ‘The London Gazette’, dated April 23rd, 1901.
Disagreement? Poor sales? Too much competition from William Roberts? From The London Gazette, 23rd April 1901.
Interestingly, although the partnership was dissolved, that doesn’t seem to be the end of the story. The website of the Fox Inn, at Chaddesley Corbett, whilst crippled by one of the worst website gimmicks I’ve ever seen, has this interesting statement on it’s history page:
Ann Newey, owner of the Fox Inn, sold the pub to G.H.Boulter, Shire Oak Brewery located at Stonnal near Walsall in 1903. The brewery were keen to expand their estate of pubs in Worcestershire. It was then that the pub’s brewhouse closed and the Shire Oak ales introduced to Chaddesley Corbett. It is probably after the pub was acquired that it was re-modelled. Shire Oak closed in 1930 and the pub was sold to John Joules and Sons of Stone in Staffordshire.
This must have been a fairly sizable concern, yet I can find little history of the brewery, either as ‘Shire Oak Brewery’ or ‘Boulter, Shire Oak’. A Mrs Ann Boulter is recorded in the 1896 Kelly’s, as transcribed by the wonderful Sue Lote, as ‘Shire Oak & Farmer’, but that seems to be all.
I bring this up now as I erroneously stated some weeks ago, on a post on Councillor Mike Flower’s blog that The Shire Oak was a William Roberts house, which is patently not the case.
So, has anyone got any more information?