likely that with Marshall dying without issue and William
Francis not being around to administer the family business,
Canham thought it appropriate to sell the majority of
George’s assets and keep Georgiana in the style to which
she had become accustomed. No doubt her sister-in-law,
Elizabeth, thought it sensible to sell the land on which the
brewery stood and majority of the glebeland abutting it
including Black Apple Tree field18 and Bareland Lane19
together with the village blacksmith’s forge in The Street.20

five cottages in the village (opposite the village school)
including the one which he had been renting from George
Foster’s trustee, for £4 a year.

Although not of the same social standing as some of his
peers,  Ward was very well connected and would not have
found it a problem to find wealthy individuals keen to
invest in the brewery - this could have included members of
the East Anglian squireachy such as the Bull and the
Andrewes' families as well as their friends. Certainly the
money required to buy the brewery and adjacent estate
would have been more than he could have raised on his
own, so sufficient share certificates may have been issued,
and enough of them to allow the village to stay in a
preferred owner’s hands.

John Foster’s final Will contains nothing alluding to the
brewery but one dated December 1889 does. Earlier that
year, on August 22, he hired land and the brewery on a 21-
year lease to David Ward with the proviso that the brewery
was insured ‘against fire for at least £400’. Two years
before his death in 1892, Foster made sure that money
raised from the sale of his lands (on which the brewery
stood) would go to Elizabeth providing she did not remarry.

When local newspapers broke the story that other
investors had been involved in funding the brewery and it
wasn’t just wholly funded with the Ward’s wealth, it
accelerated  an  enormous  fanfare  of  invention  and
suspicion.

Towards the mid-1890s, Ward & Son’s  beer was
dramatically increasing in popularity and George Ward had
been able to afford his children a small private education
and perhaps left behind a fair inheritance for his wife and
dependants but it is hard to see how these could have been
enough to have brought the family a fortune. At an auction
shortly after the private deal, David Ward bought a further

 It was widely rumoured that the Rector had had an
early dalliance with Charlotte and that David was John
Foster’s son. Certainly the pair had a close father and son
relationship but there is no absolutely no evidence to

support anything other than this. The only ingredients
were gossip and hearsay which when combined usually
makes for a random deduction. In any case, it seems that
George Anthony may well have contributed more to the
Ward‘s enterprise than his brother did, and it appears that
he supplied the necessary funds to build the brewery on his
brother‘s land. Today, there would be no consideration
given to this most basic form of asset management. The
Rector was one of the very few clergyman of his day, and
maybe since, to part own a brewery and by leasing his land
and investing some of his fortune in it and encouraging his
brother to do the same, started a classic rags to riches story
for the Ward family. If the scheme had failed they would
have left their hopeful heirs little besides the reflection that

William Bethel who lived at Mole End Place. It was later re-
named The Playground after John Foster designated it common

land and bored a well on the site for drinking water.  It is now
pasture land.

 Bareland Lane is opposite the entrance to The Chase in Mill
Lane, Foxearth.

and a grace and favour house built for the head brewer. Once
called Sunnyside it is now called Magnolia House. A new forge

was built for the brewery in Mill Lane to shoe dray horses and
make various ironwork.