John Brown (31 December 1795 – 23 October 1890)''The Churchyard of St Peter and St Paul, Tring, Hertfordshire''. Compiled by Ronald Geoffrey Spiers, 2004. PDF via "Churchyard Guide" a
St Peter & St Paul – Tring
accessed 24 April 2017. was a brewer in

Tring Tring is a market town and civil parish in the Borough of Dacorum, Hertfordshire, England. It is situated in a gap passing through the Chiltern Hills, classed as an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, from Central London. Tring is linked to ...

Hertfordshire Hertfordshire ( or ; often abbreviated Herts) is one of the home counties in southern England. It borders Bedfordshire and Cambridgeshire to the north, Essex to the east, Greater London to the south, and Buckinghamshire to the west. For gover ...

. Born in

Okeford Fitzpaine Okeford Fitzpaine is a village and civil parish in the English county of Dorset, situated in the Blackmore Vale south of the town of Sturminster Newton. It is sited on a thin strip of greensand under the scarp face of the Dorset Downs. In ...

Dorset Dorset ( ; archaically: Dorsetshire , ) is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the unitary authority areas of Bournemouth, Christchurch and Poole and Dorset. Covering an area of , Do ...

, he moved to Tring in 1826. His brewery was in Tring High Street, and he built several public houses in the area, at a period when the coming of the railway was advantageous to the business. (The brewery is not to be confused with the present-day Tring Brewery). The brewery in Tring High Street

Coming of the railway

In the 1830s, a railway line, of the

London and Birmingham Railway The London and Birmingham Railway (L&BR) was a railway company in the United Kingdom, in operation from 1833 to 1846, when it became part of the London and North Western Railway (L&NWR). The railway line which the company opened in 1838, betw ...

, was built, which passed near the town. Since it used shallow gradients, a

cutting Cutting is the separation or opening of a physical object, into two or more portions, through the application of an acutely directed force. Implements commonly used for cutting are the knife and saw, or in medicine and science the scalpel and ...

was created through chalk hills near Tring between 1834 and 1837. The cutting was the largest created at that time, being 4 km long and 12 m deep. It was mostly dug manually. The

navvies Navvy, a clipping of navigator ( UK) or navigational engineer ( US), is particularly applied to describe the manual labourers working on major civil engineering projects and occasionally (in North America) to refer to mechanical shovels and ear ...

employed in its construction provided business for breweries in Tring, including that of John Brown. During the 1830s he built several

pubs A pub (short for public house) is a kind of drinking establishment which is licensed to serve alcoholic drinks for consumption on the premises. The term ''public house'' first appeared in the United Kingdom in late 17th century, and was ...

in the area, which had a distinctive architectural style. In Tring, these included the Britannia (the present Norfolk House) and the King's Arms. The King's Arms is away from the town centre: John Brown expected that the town would expand with the coming of the railway, and that the pub would be in a busy area; however, the expansion did not happen as he expected. Another of his buildings is near to the railway station about two miles from Tring; it was built in 1838 under arrangement with the London and Birmingham Railway Company. Its name was originally the Harcourt Arms, after the Harcourt family who owned Pendley Manor; it was renamed, some time between 1845 and 1851, the Royal Hotel. In 1851 John was a farmer and a wine and spirit merchant, as well as a brewer; in 1881 he was employing nine men at the brewery.

The end of the family brewery

In later years the brewery was run by John's son John Herbert Brown; he and his brother Frederick William took over when John died in 1890. However, John Herbert died in 1896, and in 1898 Frederick William sold the brewery, with nine freehold public houses, to Locke and Smith of Berkhamsted. A stained glass window in Tring parish church, on the east wall of the south aisle, is dedicated to the memory of John Brown and his brother William Brown, who founded a land agent business in the town.

Horseriding

He was an enthusiastic horseman. In 1844 he established the Tring Steeplechase; he owned one of the horses in the inaugural race. The event was reported in The Sunday Times of 21 January 1844; he is described there as "a gentleman well known to all the sporting men of the neighbourhood as one of the most active and zealous among them in supporting all measures connected with the pleasures of the chase." Notable sporting people associated with the race, including

Baron Rothschild Baron Rothschild, of Tring in the County of Hertfordshire, is a title in the Peerage of the United Kingdom. It was created in 1885 for Sir Nathan Rothschild, 2nd Baronet, a member of the Rothschild banking family. He was the first Jewish memb ...

, met before and after the event at the Harcourt Arms, where John Brown was the host.

Buildings of John Brown's Tring Brewery

file:Norfolk House - ex Britannia P.H. - geograph.org.uk - 1210491.jpg, The Britannia public house in Tring (the present-day Norfolk House) file:The Kings Arms, Tring - geograph.org.uk - 1606323.jpg, The King's Arms in Tring file:Royal Hotel, Tring Station - geograph.org.uk - 1581971.jpg, The Harcourt Arms, later the Royal Hotel, at Tring Station (about 2 miles from Tring town centre)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown, John English brewers People from Tring 19th-century English businesspeople People from North Dorset District 1795 births 1890 deaths