Smithers and Sons (Ltd), North Street Brewery, Brighton
Smithers was also an old-established concern: sale particulars of a brewery at Preston in 1792 (TAM/6/1/7) already refer to a Smithers, and title documents (or schedules) deposited here made it clear that the business was well-established in the 1830s. It was incorporated in 1906, and the brewery was in North Street, Brighton, for most of the Company's history (with another at Hurstpierpoint in this century). Apart from the fusion with the West Street Brewery Co in 1913, Smithers in 1919 bought out the business of Messrs Mews of the Portslade Brewery (itself the inheritor of John Dudney's Brewery) and indeed improved that establishment so as to transfer at least a major part of its brewing operations there. Apart from title deeds, virtually no administrative records of Smithers (or of the Portslade Brewery) are available here, but some annual reports 1913-1927 are available in HOW 11/6 and 11/12.
The last major purchase at this time was of Smithers and Son Ltd and of the West Street Brewery Ltd, both of Brighton, in 1929. In fact Tamplin's purchased all the ordinary shares of Smithers in 1929, after which that Company went into liquidation, and since Smithers had from 1913 owned all the ordinary shares of the West Street Company, control here also passed to Tamplin's. The West Street Company was formally wound up in 1937. The business of the two companies had been merged in 1913, Smithers undertaking the trading while ownership of properties remained distinct, but it seems that some properties had passed to Tamplin's management even before 1929
Not all the Smithers' properties went to Tamplin's in 1929; a number were sold to the Kemp Town Brewery.[1]