A family affair (John Smith)

John Smith and his family helped put Tadcaster on the beer map. Lewis Eckett reports

Two great pointers as to whether you’re winning the fame game.

One: do you have a first name that everyone associates with just you – such as Elvis, Madonna, Arnie or Cher?

Two: do you share a very common name with millions but it is still mostly associated with you, like John Smith?

In Britain Smith is the most common name of all – and apart from a brief period in the 80s when a Mancunian indie rock band held sway, it’s a name that has been most closely linked to Yorkshire beer, despite its ubiquity.

Beer lovers also associate the name with Tadcaster, where a brewing tradition grew up that was only surpassed in England by that of Burton, and which to this day is closely associated with bitter ale.

John Smith is a key figure in all of this, but his role was as much as a catalyst, a fulcrum figure who was able to take the strands of a struggling brewing industry that had existed in the region for some 500 years and to organise it in to a structured business that still exists to this day, in some form or other.

Tadcaster is in North Yorkshire and records show that there was brewing there as early as the mid 14th century. By 1380 records show that there were at least five innkeepers and the brewing industry grew gradually in partnership with the inns and staging posts from that time, with most serving one or two houses.

By the 1700s, however, there are documents showing that some individual brewers were trading further afield.

The availability of good barley was a key fa.....

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By Lewis Eckett

Section : Beer Legends

Page number : 46