Pickwick brewery

  In December 1887 Thomas Pearman Stevens completed an extensive re-modelling of the brewery combined with analysis of the brewery's Artesian well (which was assessed for supplying water to the hamlet of Pickwick in 1926 via the Corsham Water Company that spent £60 on ascertaining the yield and quantity of the well water). Thomas was born in Rotherfield Peppard, Oxfordshire, 3rd Feb. 1845. In 1871 he was an assistant brewer at the Swan Brewery, St. Thomas, Oxford, and on the 8th August 1874 married Ellen Pidsley, in Heavitree, Exeter, Devon, daughter of Richard Hayward Pidsley, a farmer. Ellen's brothers, Thomas Gould and Hayward Gould Pidsley ran the Well Park Brewery in Exeter, where, after his marriage, Thomas Pearman Stevens had become a partner. . Unfortunately Ellen had died on 1st May 1883, a short while after giving birth to her daughter Ellen Mary (1883-1962) on 24th April. Thomas later married Alice Vlieland, daughter of the Rev. J. N. Vlieland of Stalisfield, Faversham, Kent on 8th March 1887 at St. Mary, Hitchin, Herts. On 15th Jan. 1887, Thomas sold his interest in the Well Park Brewery to Alfred Ross and from 4th April 1887 moved to Pickwick with Alice. Thomas died on the 1st April 1907 in Ealing, Middx. The image below is directly linked from the website http://jnvlieland.blogspot.co.uk/2009/08/alice-vlieland.html where many more details of the family may be found.

MORE ON THE PICKWICK BREWERY