TOP-UP..ANOTHER 'ALF OF NIGEL SAUL

Hello again and welcome to the other 'alf of Nigel Saul's working day at Hartley's back in the 80's.

Nigel's photo on the left shows Buck  one of his workmates, adding finings in a celler in around 1980, and below that we have Roy Snaith and Ken Pelter..if you're out there..get in touch!

Last week we heard from Nigel he was  watching the cockroaches in the Racker as it filled with beer...

"..Once the cask was full the levers were flicked back up and the beer flow stopped. A bung was banged into the filler hole in the barrel then it was rolled away by the cellarman (me) to whichever cellar it was to be stored in. This could be risky as the wooden barrels were held together by metal hoops, which would rust and when a hops was only held together by a sliver of metal the could snap and spring apart and if you were unlucky it could stab you in the arm. I still have the scar. Health and safety? Tsk tsk. As beer was now seeping out it had to be repaired, as you slowly bled to death.

Normally storage started against a back wall and a side wall and would be a row of 3 or 4 barrels, leaning firmly against each other and wedged with whichever stone came to hand.Then a second row the same, then a third row would be placed on top of theses two, resting in the channel formed by those two, this was usually done by two cellarmen, a wooden barrel with 36 gallons of beer in it weighed quite a bit, but kils (kilderkins) were only 18 gallons and could be stacked by one person. And so on went the stacking until the job was finished.

Once that was done, another batch of barrels were sent down from the yard for us to make ready for the following day's brew. 

That was pretty much it for a normal day's work, but there were other work related tasks now and then, such as hosing down the cellar floors, helping on the yard by unloading wagons and stacking empty barrels, draining returned barrels of bad beer; these were barrels sent back from the pubs of the weren't fit to drink for one reason or another. there was a large bath-like receptacle built in the cellar area, About 12 foot by 15 with two pairs of runners stretching over the top length ways. 

The barrels were pushed along the rails, the bung knocked out and the the barrel was rotated so the beer would drain out. This was done so the brewery could reclaim tax and chap from customs and excise checked it before it went down the drain. 

The "bath" was about 3 foot deep, this I know as I once fell in it when pushing a barrel along the rails. I went home, shower, change and back again, strange how half the alkies in Ulverston followed me home....

 I also helped in the bottle shop stacking crates or filling bottles (and emptying them, sometimes lol). Mice were not uncommon in the brewery, as a customer found out when buying a Hartley's bottle in a pub; he open it and out came the beer along with four baby mice, it had been used a mouse's nest."

Hopefully we'll be meeting with  Nigel before too long to record his stories...maybe you have something to tell us about your time at Hartleys.. let me now if you do, and we can make you a part of this history of a great Ulverston institution.

Many thanks Nigel.