Pictures by kind permission of Colin Murray Brown
The history of the Maltings in Langthorpe
Yorkshire was one of several eastern counties that dominated malt production in the nineteenth century. The maltings at Langthorpe was built as part of a large brewery. Early trade directories list a brewery and maltster here in the 1830s and a Langthorpe Brewery appears on the 1855 ordnance survey map of the area. The brewery became known as the Anchor around this time. The River Ure would have been used for the transport of raw materials in the early days, and from 1875 the site was served by the Pilmore and Boroughbridge railway. John Warwick was the owner of the brewery and the company became known as Warwick and Co. The brewery business and its public houses expanded towards the end of the nineteenth centaury, despite a severe fire destroying the malt kilns in 1893.
The new Maltings were built on the site between 1892 and 1907. The main building was a large, four storey brick structure with a green slate roof. There were three kilns with two pyramidal roofs acting as flues rising up from the one kilning floor. Land around the maltings was probably farmed to prove food for the workers during the lean summer months.
The Whitworth family ran the brewery during this period. Later they were to sell on the brewery to John Smith's of Tadcaster. The brewery on the site was soon closed down, but the maltings supplied Tadcaster brewery until 1962. Oral history has recorded that the site was run by only four men and a foreman at this time. After this, the building was used by an independent maltster for drying barley and then for a variety of other purposes before falling into disuse around 1990. What remains was listed a building of special architectural and historic interest.
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