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Brewing commenced at Highgate Brewery on 1st July 1899 and the company's first
two employees were Fred Broadstock and Bill Jones, representative and drayman.
In 1899 Queen Victoria was still on the throne, Noel Coward and Ernest Hemmingway
were born, Johan Strauss died, the Boer War started, Walsall born Jerome K.
Jerome wrote "Three Men in a Boat", and the loud speaker was invented.
The population of Walsall was around 90,000.
Lying on the edge of the "Black Country", the workshop of England,
Walsall had many working collieries and a long established saddlery industry,
both labour intensive and thirsty occupations.
Perhaps more importantly beer cost 2p a pint!
In 1895 Mr. James A. Fletcher, son of the proprietor of Fletcher Brothers,
an old established wines and spirits business in Ablewell Street, Walsall,
decided to establish the Highgate Brewery. He set about acquiring property
in Sandymount Road, to brew propriety beers and the Brewery was incoporated
as a limited company on 16th August 1898. It appears that the Fletchers built
the brewery to supply the ten licensed houses they already owned.
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