More on KentOnline
More on KentOnline
Look closely at this picture of an Australian brewery taken in 1922 and you will notice the building and delivery trucks are emblazoned with the Kent Invicta White Horse.
That it is because it was the Kent Brewery of New South Wales.
It was established in 1835 by two emigrants from Cranbrook: John Tooth and his brother-in-law Charles Newnham.
Newnham had experience as a brewer at the Bakers Cross Brewery in Cranbrook, while Tooth was a successful general merchant.
They established their brewery by Blackwattle Creek, just outside Sydney to ensure a good supply of fresh water.
Over the next 150 years it became one of the largest brewers in the state, employing 1,800 men, though Newnham had split from Tooth in 1843, and the company became known as Tooth and Co.
Their beers - Kent Old Brown Ale and KB (Kent Brewery) lager remain among the most popular down-under today, although the firm was bought out by Carlton and United Brewery in 1983 and the original brewery building was closed in 1993.
When they started, Newham and Tooth sold three strengths of beer: X ale for one shilling per gallon, the stronger XX for one shilling and six pence and the strongest brew, XXX ale, for two shillings and six pence. In so doing, they started the Australian method of rating a beer's strength which English drinkers today may be familiar with from Castlemaine XXXX.
The Kent Brewery had a reputation of looking after its employees: not least by giving them a beer ration four times a day: a schooner of beer each at morning tea, lunch, afternoon tea and when they clocked off. The tradition continued in some form until 1983.
After the split, Charles Newnham started a rival business - the Woodstock brewery - but it never reached the same success, and he returned to England in 1854, to run his father's timber business in Uckfield. He died in 1886.
