Over the rooftops to the brewery beyond ………

Across the rooftops, 2020

Now Andy has done a good job of capturing just how Robinson’s Brewery remains an important part of Stockport.

It dominates the skyline in many of the pictures he took and rightly so, given that it has been doing the business since the middle of the 19th century.

At which point I could slip into a history of the brewery, but that has been done,* and so I will just say that the first Mr. Robinson bought the Unicorn pub in 1838.

It stood at 23 Lower Hillgate, and his eldest son started brewing there in 1849.

A decade later the family expanded into a warehouse behind the Unicorn and began to purchase pubs.

Looking down on to Lower Hillgate, 2020

By 1890 they had 12, and eventually the empire stretched to 300 pubs in the North West and North Wales.

Sadly, the Unicorn no longer exists, it was demolished to make way for the present brewery, and the best I have to offer up is Andy’s picture of the entrance.

And so, the best I can do is wander back through the historic record, and explore the census returns for 1841 and 1851.

Lower Hillgate is one those narrow streets which are a feature of this bit of Stockport, and it twists and turns down from Little Underbank to Wellington Street.

Lower Hillgate, and the Unicorn Brewery, 1900

Back in 1841 the Robinson family’s immediate neighbours included, a hosier, a hat dyer, various textile workers and two washerwomen.

A decade later, Joseph Faulkner was still running his butcher’s shop from 21 Lower Hillgate  while at 23 Mr. and Mrs. Davenport were engaged in selling the finest drapery, and doing well enough to employ two staff and a servant, all of whom lived with them.

Location; Stockport

Pictures; Robinson’s Brewery, 2020, from the collection of Andy Robertson and Lower Hillgate in 1900, from the OS map of Cheshire, 1900, courtesy of Digital Archives Association, http://digitalarchives.co.uk/


*Robinsons Brewery, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robinsons_Brewery