at
Shugborough Hall 18th century Before establishing a brewery,
William Bass transported ale for brewer Benjamin Printon. Bass sold this
carrier business to the
Pickford family, using the funds to establish Bass & Co Brewery in 1777 as one of the first
breweries in Burton-upon-Trent.
19th century Early in the company's history, Bass was exporting bottled beer around the world, serving the
Baltic region through the port of
Hull. Growing demand led his son
Michael Thomas Bass (1760–1827), to build a second brewery in Burton in 1799 in partnership with John Ratcliff. The water from local boreholes became popular with brewers, with 30 operating there by the mid-19th century. His son,
Michael Thomas Bass (1799–1884), succeeded on his father's death in 1827, renewed the Ratcliff partnership, brought in John Gretton, and created 'Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton'. The opening of a railway through Burton in 1839 redoubled Burton's pre-eminence as a brewing town. In the mid-1870s, Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton accounted for one-third of Burton's output. A strong export business allowed Bass to boast that their product was available "in every country in the globe". By 1877, Bass was the largest brewery in the world, with an annual output of one million barrels. In the 1880s the brewery received unwanted publicity through the lifestyle of Frederick Gretton, son of John Gretton. Having worked for the company when a young man, he drifted away and developed a stable of racehorses. His 'Sterling' and 'Isonomy' were stars of the Turf. But Fred, as he was known, was also a heavy drinker and took a mistress, the teenage Fanny Lucy Radmall. In later life she would become a household name as
Lucy, Lady Houston. When Fred died of drink in 1883 he left her £6,000 a year, much to the disgust of his family. Following the death of the second Michael Thomas Bass in 1884, his son Michael Arthur Bass, later the
1st Baron Burton, took the reins. Both Michael Thomas Bass and his son Lord Burton were philanthropically inclined, making extensive charitable donations to the towns of Burton and
Derby. The annual
Bass excursions, laid on by the firm for its employees, were the largest operation of its type in the world by a private company. The brewer became a public limited company in 1888. Bass' No. 1 Ale was the first beer to be marketed as
barley wine, around 1870.
20th century Early in the 20th century, a declining market closed many Burton breweries, 20 in 1900 falling to eight in 1928. Bass took over Walkers in 1923, and
Worthington in 1927. Also in 1927, they acquired, for over £1,000,000,
Thomas Salt, which was founded in 1774 as the Clay Brewery by Joseph Clay, who sold it to Salt, his maltster, just before the introduction by
Napoleon of the
Continental System that stopped all trade between Britain and Europe. Bass was one of the original London Stock Exchange
FT 30 companies when the listing was established in 1935. Over the next half-century, Bass maintained its UK dominance by acquiring such brewers as
Mitchells & Butlers (1961), Sidney Fussell & Sons Ltd (1962),
Charringtons (1967), Bents-Gartsides (1967), John Joule & Sons (1968),
William Stones Ltd (1968), and
Grimsby's Hewitt Brothers Ltd (1969), being variously known as
Bass, Mitchells and Butlers or
Bass Charrington. Draught Bass ale and Worthingon "E" were merged to become the same product until Bass became preferred as the name of the cask beer and Worthington for keg, although some pubs resisted this distinction. Bass had been reliant on railways to distribute its beer from Burton, and owned the country's largest private rail network within the town linking its various premises. From the 1970s it followed the trend to abandon the use of rail freight, which had become notoriously unreliable. The switch to road haulage required local transport depots, and in many places small independent breweries were bought and repurposed as such. At that time, along with the other major brewers which now dominated the industry, Bass were moving away from the production of traditional ales in favour of keg beer and particularly Carling lager at Warrington, ignoring opposition from
CAMRA. In 1980, Bass merged its soft drink operations with those of rival
Whitbread to form a new holding company,
Britannia Soft Drinks. The new firm brought together Bass's Canada Dry Rawlings business with Whitbread's
R. White's. In 1986,
Allied Breweries merged their Britvic business into the company, with Bass holding a 50% shareholding and managing the business, while the other 50% was shared equally between Whitbread and Allied. In 1988, Bass acquired the rights to franchise the
Holiday Inn name outside of North and South America and in 1989 went on purchase the Holiday Inn hotel chain from
Holiday Corporation.
1989 "Beer Orders" During the prime ministership of
Margaret Thatcher, beer production, distribution and retailing were vertically integrated, with the "Big Six" brewers (Bass among them) accounting for a large portion of UK beer production and sales. Most pubs were "
tied houses", owned by one of the brewers, and mostly selling its products. On the advice of the
Director-General of Fair Trading, the
Monopolies and Mergers Commission (later the Competition Commission) released a report entitled "The Supply of Beer: A Report on the Supply of Beer for Retail Sale in the United Kingdom", investigating the nature of the beer industry. The report made recommendations to break up a "complex
monopoly" among beer brewing and sales between the UK's "Big Six" (
Allied, Bass,
Courage,
Grand Metropolitan,
Scottish & Newcastle, and
Whitbread), which at that time accounted for "75% of beer production, 74% of the brewer-owned retail estate, and 86% of loan
ties." and instructed Interbrew to dispose of the Bass brewery facility in Burton along with the
Carling and
Worthington brands, which were all sold to
Coors (later
Molson Coors). With only hotel and pub holdings left in the Bass company's portfolio, the company renamed itself
Six Continents plc, which itself split into
Mitchells & Butlers and
InterContinental Hotels Group in 2003. Bottled and keg Bass formerly exported to the US with a higher alcohol content are now produced there domestically by
Anheuser-Busch at a
Baldwinsville, New York, facility.
Fate of the original Bass brewery in Burton upon Trent , Fukushima, Japan From 2000 to 2005, Bass was produced under licence by Molson Coors in Burton, in the original Bass brewery. When Coors' licence to brew draught Bass came to an end in 2005, a new licence was awarded to
Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries plc (later
Marston's plc), which transferred production of Bass to its own brewery, also in Burton. and as of 2021 brews
Carling and other beers for the UK and European market. In 2020, the historic Bass brewery site, adjacent to the contemporary brewery, was put on the market for redevelopment. ==Brewery museum==