Wayne Pritchett on Rivers and Harbours
The Quay Arts Centre of course was Mew Langton’s Brewery and that’s where my family came into it because my great grandfather, Samuel Lee, he had the contract and his father before him, to transport all the beer that was brewed in Crocker Street Brewery, to the Mainland pubs, Southampton, Lymington and Portsmouth.
It wasn’t until 1920, when Mew Langton’s had their own barge built. The first one they had built, the ‘White’ was built in 1920 and his old wooden barges were beyond repair, he packed up that sort of work, but that’s how my family were involved in that, transporting the beer to the Mainland, and they were also involved with a chap called James Thomas who was a Miller in Newport and they used to transport grain to and fro for James Thomas and Company which later became Lee Thomas.
There’s some story goes round that James Thomas named his son Lee Thomas after my great grandfather’s surname. That’s how it come about, so the family story goes. But of course all that changed again by the mid ‘30s. I think there was a problem with grain prices and all that folded as well, but that’s how sort of my family were involved in initially with the grain trade in the Brewery from the time, oh right from the very early times ‘cos I mean they were brewing beer in Crocker Street you know in the mid 1800s, so that’s how it came about.
And I’ll always remember when I was five years old, 1948, the second beer boat what Mew Langton’s had built, well known called the ‘Four Axes’ which was named after a brew of their bitter, I always remember when it came up to Newport, it was August 1948 and I was five years old, the next door neighbour happened to be my grandmother’s brother who worked for the Brewery, and I’ll always remember him saying to my grandmother, he said, “You’d better go down the Quay, the new beer boat’s turned up” and I’ll always remember my grandmother putting my shoes on, we walked down the Quay and we looked at this brand new boat which was tied up where the Quay Arts Centre is now. That was the summer of 1948, and from that time onwards, I’ve had memories of that Quay because don’t forget we played there as kids, all through the 1950s, the beginning of the ‘50s even, so you know, it’s been a lifetime really.
