Best In the West

I've mentioned these brewery plaques in the past but never shown one. I spotted this one on a pub in town a couple of weeks a go. I have to admit I can't remember the name of the pub, and that isn't due to drink! Below is some detail on these plaques, which I took from the Gloucestershire Pubs website.

"These colourful brewery plaques are still quite a common sight in Gloucestershire and are taken very much for granted. However, they deserve far more recognition as these West Country Ales plaques are a reminder of Gloucestershire’s once proud brewing heritage.

West Country Breweries were established in 1958 when the Stroud Brewery merged with the Cheltenham Brewery. By coincidence both the Stroud Brewery and the Cheltenham Brewery first started brewing in the same year – 1760. The date is recorded in the ceramic plaques. West Country Breweries were a large regional company with tied houses (pubs) extending into Herefordshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire, Worcestershire and parts of Wales. As a result these colourful ‘castle’ plaques can still be seen as far away as Presteigne in Wales and Marlborough in Wiltshire.

The distinctive ‘castle’ or ‘tower’ design was first used by the Cheltenham Original Brewery and ceramic brewery plaques once graced the outside of their tied houses with the words ‘Cheltenham Ales’. After the Second World War the Cheltenham Brewery acquired the Hereford and Tredegar Breweries. As a result the company changed its name to Cheltenham & Hereford Breweries and the old plaques were replaced with the new, but similar, ‘Cheltenham & Hereford Ales’ design. The old Foxhill Inn near Guiting Power still has such a plaque inlaid into the wall.

The ‘West Country Ales’ plaques were placed in pub walls from 1958 until c.1967. Whitbread took over West Country Breweries in 1963 but for a few years after the acquisition Whitbread still used the West Country Ales ‘castle’ logo. There are two sizes and some slight colour differences in the glaze."

Once I read this I decided I had a new challenge - to find one of the original Cheltenham Brewery plaques. Watch this space. Right, which pub first...

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Frosty The...hic...Snowman (& Friends)

The winter arrived with full force over night on Sunday. Cheltenham woke to a winter wonderland yesterday, and very pretty it was too. We don't get snow here very often, only a couple of days each winter, and the recent snowfall wasn't predicted so it was a pleasant surprise. As I walked about yesterday kids were off school (why do UK schools close after an inch of snow?!) and they were enjoying the wintry weather, having snowball fights and building snowmen. The snowman in the top photo looked like he had been on the booze overnight! He was in the small front garden of what I assume was a student house, surrounded by rubbish bins and empty beer cans. They had given him wine bottle top buttons, a beer bottle top smile, eyes made of two pence coins, a Guinness hat, and a traditional carrot nose. Notice the beer can on his stick arm! The mini-snowmen below were a bit more civilised and were doing some Cheltenham sight seeing in Imperial Gardens.

The cold snap is set to continue through the weekend, plenty more opportunities for building snowmen!

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Don't Mention The War!

Excuse the title of today's post, its for the Fawlty Towers fans out there! Anyway, this is the German Market (hence the title!) in the Prom. It runs for a couple of weeks at the end of November, to tie in with the switch on of Cheltenham's Christmas lights, and has 60 stalls, sorry - German style chalets, selling all sorts of hand made gifts for the fast approaching festive season. You can get anything from wooden toys and jewellery to soap and woolly hats, it has something for everyone. And once you've had a peruse of the stalls you can stop for a freshly cooked Bratwurst sausage and a glass of German beer. Perfect shopping!

I wonder if they have a British Christmas Market in Germany?! Do you have anything like this where you live?

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