The original brewery was probably established by the Bucknall family, who leased the site in the seventeenth century. The site's first associations with
brewing can be traced back to 1666 when a Joseph Truman is recorded as joining William Bucknall's Brewhouse in Brick Lane. The Brick Lane facility remained active through a take-over by the
Grand Metropolitan Group in 1971 and a merger with
Watney Mann in 1972, but it was in terminal decline. It eventually closed in 1989.
In fiction In
Charles Dickens’ novel
David Copperfield (1850), the character Mrs Micawber makes specific reference to Messrs Truman, Hanbury and Buxton: :I have long felt the brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR—mous! But if Mr Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior capacity—what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? (Chapter 28) In 2014/15 the Black Eagle Brewery featured in the fifth episode of the third series of the fictional
BBC TV period drama
Ripper Street, where protective employees harassed and killed London publicans who had changed supplier and were buying wares from breweries in Burton-upon-Trent. While a fictional account, the storyline reflected the real concerns that the London breweries had in late Victorian times, as rival product was increasingly brought from the north of England by the expanding railway network. ==Old Truman Brewery==