Qualla: Bass Brewery

Bass Brewery: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Andy Mabbett, CC BY-SA 3.0. On New Year's Eve in 1875, a Bass Brewery employee stood overnight in a queue outside a London registry office. The Trade Marks Registration Act came into effect at midnight on the first of January 1876, and someone had to be first in line. The next morning, when the doors opened, Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton Limited received the first six trade mark registrations issued in the United Kingdom: the red triangle for their pale ale, the red diamond for their strong ale, and four others later abandoned. The triangle is still legally trade mark number one. It has been painted by Manet, sketched into more than 40 Picassos, and observed by Leopold Bloom in the "Oxen of the Sun" episode of James Joyce's Ulysses. None of which the Bass employee queuing in the cold was thinking about.

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Image: Andy Mabbett | CC BY-SA 3.0

Bass Brewery: Why Burton

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Sue Adair, CC BY-SA 2.0. William Bass started his brewery in 1777, but the reason it succeeded was not him. It was the water. Burton sits on a layer of gypsum-rich rock that gives its well water unusually high mineral content, particularly sulphates, which work magic on pale-malt ales. The result is the ...

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Image: Sue Adair | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bass Brewery: The Largest in the World

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit M J Richardson, CC BY-SA 2.0. By the mid-1870s, Bass, Ratcliff and Gretton accounted for one-third of Burton's total beer output. By 1877 the brewery was the largest in the world, producing one million barrels a year and exporting, in the company's own boast, to "every country in the globe." That boast includ...

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Image: M J Richardson | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bass Brewery: Fanny Lucy Radmall

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom, CC BY-SA 2.0. Not every Bass story is one of triumph. In the 1880s the brewery received unwelcome publicity through Frederick Gretton, son of the John Gretton who had partnered with the Bass family. Fred had drifted away from the company to develop a stable of racehorses; his Sterling and Ison...

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Image: Elliott Brown from Birmingham, United Kingdom | CC BY-SA 2.0

Bass Brewery: The Beer Orders and What Came After

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Chris Allen, CC BY-SA 2.0. Through the 20th century Bass acquired Walkers in 1923, Worthington in 1927, then Mitchells and Butlers, Charringtons, William Stones, and many smaller breweries. By the 1960s the merged Bass Charrington was the largest UK brewing company. Then came Margaret Thatcher's 1989 Beer ...

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Image: Chris Allen | CC BY-SA 2.0