Introduction
The following is a modified extract from a 3 part article written by one of our longest serving branch members and appeared in 3 issues of the branch magazine, Donny Drinker
The author was Jim Sambrooks and he prepared the article in conjunction with Alan Walker (Founder Member), Andy
Mosby (Founder member), Pete Judge (Founder member), Mick Barton, Ray Balawajder, Steve Willmott, Neil Worthington and Dave O’Brien. The update at the end was written by Steve Pynegar.
In the beginning in a pub far, far, away……
In March 1975 I was enjoying a weekend break in East Anglia and one of my companions had a book containing lists of breweries and pubs selling their beers. This was, of course, the Good Beer Guide (GBG) and I asked my mate if he could get me a copy. His reply was if I joined CAMRA for 50p I could buy my own guide for 50p instead of 75p. I joined and bought my first GBG, the 1975 edition. I’ve bought them annually ever since and now have 41 of them on my shelf.
My membership number was 0375-075, I often wonder if I was the 75th member to join that month. What’s Brewing arrived and I discovered there was a Doncaster Branch. A meeting to test support for a Doncaster branch of CAMRA had been held in December 1974 and this was obviously successful as the first branch meeting took place a month later. Both were held in the Leopard.
I didn’t get involved with it for a few months until I attended a social. From then on I was part of the branch. At the first AGM I was elected to the Committee as Social Secretary, an easy job I thought : just select a pub and persuade members to descend on it at the appointed time. The job wasn’t so easy. There were few of us and once nobody turned up. My next Committee post was Membership Secretary and, in the eighties, Branch Chairman. Now I’m back at ground level and simply a member although I work with the Pub Heritage Group.
I joined in the weekly “discovery trips” where we would choose an area and inspect all the pubs, looking for real ale. Not as easy then as most beer was served through electric pumps similar to the keg beer pumps in use at the time. With our nearest neighbouring branches at Sheffield, Nottingham, Lincoln, York and Leeds and no branch boundaries, we would travel as far as Barnsley, Selby, Gainsborough, Worksop and all places in between. These discovery trips increased to two or more per week and we would work on one area until we’d checked all the pubs there. Checking those in the Dearne Valley, we came to appreciate the Royal Albert, a Wards pub in Blacker Hill and would make a point of finishing up there every time.
In 1976 I persuaded the branch to put on a beer tent at Sandtoft Transport Centre, now called “The Trolleybus Museum at Sandtoft”. I also persuaded the Museum Committee to accept a beer tent. One of the breweries we contacted to supply was Selby, the very first of all the micro-breweries whose proprietor, Martin Sykes, used an old bathtub for a fermenting vessel and the whole set-up seemed chaotic. The 1975 GBG described Selby Brewery as “A one-pub concern producing an unusual real ale.” The one pub was the Board Inn at Howden.
Branch meetings were held in the back room of the St. Leger Tavern, a tied house of Shipstone’s brewery from Nottingham. The licensee was Billy Wills, “Biscuit Billy” to his friends, and a visit to Shippo’s came in 1977 where we were told that Billy sold more beer per square foot of floor space than any other pub.
In those days most pubs were owned by the breweries and no less than seven were represented in Doncaster town centre: Shipstone, Home Ales in the Olde Castle, Wards in the White Swan, Tetley in the Masons and the Blue Bell, Stones in the Underground, and Sam Smith in the Corporation Brewery Taps. Barnsley Brewery owned a lot of pubs in our area including four in the town centre; the Railway, Leopard, Market Tavern and Cheshire Cheese on Wheatley Hall Road. There were no free houses. Between all these breweries only twelve pubs sold real ale and the Masons was the only one with handpumps, the others using electric pumps.
When Barnsley Brewery closed in February 1976 we held a wake in the Leopard and the press came along. They wanted to photograph branch members carrying the last cask from the pub. Licensee Jim Clarke had an old wooden cask in his cellar and, although filthy, this was chosen as the ceremonial last cask and carried out shoulder high by Andy Mosby, Pete Judge, Alan Walker and myself. The Railway, Leopard and Cheshire Cheese switched to bright John Smiths in cellar tanks at that time and the Market Tavern closed, leaving only eight real ale pubs in the town centre. After our wake in the Leopard a small number of pubs continued to serve Barnsley Bitter for a few days.
Taylor’s Brewery in Keighley bottled a beer called “Landlord” and we discovered it too was available on draught in only one pub, the Hare and Hounds at Chisley, Hebden Bridge, so a minibus trip was arranged to visit that pub. Now, of course, Landlord is widely available on draught
Opening hours were set by the local magistrates and had to be adhered to. For Doncaster they were 10.30 to 3pm and 6 to 10.30pm with an extension ‘til 11pm on Fridays and Saturdays. A few pubs in the market area were licensed ‘til 4 pm on Tuesdays only. Sunday hours were set nationally and even more restricted to noon to 2 pm and 7 pm to 10.30.
In the early days we had to ask landlords if they had heard of CAMRA and explain what it stood for. Now with 160,000 members nationally and 1,100 in the Doncaster area, all licensees have heard of us.
Our first attempt to sell real ale to the public was in 1975 when we ran a beer tent at Bentley Gala selling Barnsley Bitter, Sam Smith’s Bitter and 4X. A year later came the beer tent at Sandtoft which we ran successfully for many years. But it was another three years before a proper beer festival could be organised as no premises could be found.
It was generally thought at the time that any mention of a beer festival would, in the minds of the Great and the Good, drum up thoughts of drunken masses and rowdiness so the word Exhibition was used instead to describe these events.
In 1979 branch members Steve Willmott and Mick Barton contacted Coopland’s and we were offered the use of their recently-closed bakery on East Laith Gate for the first proper beer festival to be staged by Doncaster CAMRA.
Urgent talks took place with the Jenkinson family, owners of Coopland’s and they offered use of the redundant Humpty Dumpty hot bread shop on Hallgate instead, one of those shops selling half-baked bread to take away and finish at home. Although far from ideal, this became our venue. There were no toilets at the shop and drinkers had to be let out of the back gate to use public toilets at Christ Church.
The festival was a huge success, far exceeding our expectations; we had to lock the doors on Friday evening as we had reached our fire limit. Beer was running short and Biscuit Billy at the St Leger Tavern offered a barrel (36 gallons) of Shipstone’s Bitter. This was duly hoisted from his cellar, using a hose pipe as no rope was available, and rolled up Hallgate. Despite adding masses of finings, the beer just wouldn’t clear, hardly surprising really!
So successful was the festival that Coopland’s made the shop into a pub and added a brewery. This was, of course, The Hallcross and Stocks’ Brewery.
Bentley Pavilion
It was some years before another venue could be found, this being Bentley Pavilion in 1991. Neil Worthington had joined our Branch from the Manchester area and negotiated use of the Pavilion which saw the start of our annual festivals. To provide entertainment on Saturday afternoon, the Green Oak Morris Dancers put on a display inside the hall and all the jumping about caused the floor, the stillage and the beer to bounce.
The festival soon outgrew that venue and after two years at Bentley we moved to the Racecourse Exhibition Centre. This provided much more space for a bigger festival; we even had an office and a ‘snap’ (local word for a packed lunch) cabin. When the Exhibition Centre wasn’t available for our Festival in 1994 we moved to the Dome Leisure Centre where we had use of the Village Green indoor bowling hall and here we stayed for the next four years.
Another essential for a beer festival is glasses. For our seventh festival the chosen theme was “007” and this was used on all publicity including glasses. Somebody at the glass supplier marked the boxes “James Bond Beer Festival” but the Ministry of Whatever took a dim view of this and impounded the boxes as we weren’t licenced to use the James Bond name. They took a lot of persuading to open a box and see that we were only using a number, not a name. In the meantime the festival had to open on Thursday evening and people needed something to drink from. Desperate ‘phone calls to pubs and neighbouring branches produced enough glasses to open the festival. The “007” glasses eventually arrived on Friday.
The festival returned to the Race Course for a few more years without major problems then they decided to rebuild the Centre and we returned to the Dome in 2005. By now Village Green had been put to other uses and we were confined to a smaller area right under the glass dome that the building is named after. Nobody thought to cool the casks and some very warm beer ensued : not only that but the floor was of solid tiles and the Powers That Be insisted we use plastic drinking vessels. By the next festival glass vessels were allowed and casks were cooled but damage had been done and drinkers in their droves stayed away. Lessons had been learned but it took several years to regain our reputation.
Doncaster College took up residence in its new building “The Hub” in 2007 and we hired their refectory for our Festival for quite a few years before moving back to the Dome.
Only one problem we had at the Hub was when I turned up one Thursday at about 4.30pm ready for 5pm opening. The whole place was in darkness. An electrician was working but it looked doubtful we would be allowed to open. Queues formed at the door and power was restored. Relief! The electrician was thanked profusely, and he drove away. Then power went off again and no further contact could be made with the electrician. We had no choice but to abandon for the evening and the pubs in town suddenly found themselves with a lot of extra customers. The next day we returned to a normal festival.
Update
Branch member Karl Hadfield helping brew the special 2019 beer festival beer at the Hilltop Brewery, Conisbrough
Our last major beer festival was in June 2019. By then the costs were significantly increasing. We were planning on using a smaller venue but then Covid struck and the branch went into enforced lockdown.
The branch was eventually brought back from its slumbers and slowly normality has been resumed. Over recent years we have had to adapt to the modern world. We have been fortunate to have members with skills in working with modern technology and we have grasped social media to keep in touch with the members and the general public. Currently these are frightening times with the cost of living and the reduction of the number of pubs. The branch continues to campaign for real ale but much of our campaigning today is about saving pubs and breweries. There is still a place for CAMRA at national, regional and local levels and we are glad to be part of it.