Young’s brewery: the penultimate trip

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The people that provide my blogging software, WordPress, have just added a slideshow capability, so I though I would try it out with some pictures from what was the second-to-last ever trip round Young’s brewery in Wandsworth, South London, in September 2006. The following week brewing ceased on the Ram Brewery site after, probably, at least 450 years of continuous ale and beer making. Sadly, two days after our trip, John Young, the chairman of Young’s, died of cancer, aged 85.

I am, unfortunately, a rubbish photographer with no particular idea what I’m doing (I remember the “doh!” feeling after my ex-brother-in-law, who, to be fair, is a well-known and award-winning sculptor, took a photograph on my camera that was vastly superior to anything I had ever achieved with it). But there are a few interesting pics here among the vaguely all right ones.

As a bonus, at the very end there’s a photograph from the air of the brewery site in 1930: note the trolleybuses in the bottom right hand corner, going up Garrett Lane (off which I used to live, in the 1980s: you could tell which way the wind was blowing, at that time, by sniffing the air, since the Kenco coffee factory was to the south, a gin distillery stood to the east and Young’s rose to the north, each giving their own distinctive aroma to the Wandsworth funk. All, alas, are now closed.)

4 thoughts on “Young’s brewery: the penultimate trip

  1. Just discovered your blog. Very educational and interesting! Keep up the good work.

    We have a blog too, but we’re more about home-brewing and (trying to be) humorous. And we’re brand new too, so we don’t have anything like the depth of knowledge you have. I’ve listed your blog on our site. I hope that’s OK with you.

    Cheers!

  2. Martyn, you’re too hard on your abilities as a photographer. I used to teach photography and know a bit about it, and your photos are fine. You’ve even violated a basic composition rule to good effect (rules are made to be broken for a good reason). It’s generally a bad idea to place the center of interest in the middle of a photo or to make it too symmetrical. It most often makes for a dull photo. But in your photo of the horse, you’ve done just that and the symmetry makes a cool picture.

  3. Mmm, you’re very kind, Jeff, but in my many years as a journo I’ve worked with some excellent photographers, who have had the ability to frame in the viewfinder in a way that I never would be able to match, and I am excruciatingly aware of my imperfections.

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