Until I started writing this book, I had little idea of
what a ‘biography’ of the brewery involved; not for the
reader, but for the writer. Rummaging in private letters
and wills, reading things that until then, few others had
read, so the point comes where the writer knows scarcely
less about a family than its surviving members do. It is a
big intrusion.

If this is an intrusion, think how much more of one it is
when something unexpectedly crops up, as it did in this
case. Then it is like opening a door, slightly nervous of
what you might find, for these were secrets that were never
intended to be spoken about.  

It is scarcely two lifetimes ago since founders of the
brewery, George and Charlotte Ward, first set up as
brewers in the late 1840s. We know that George was born
into an agricultural family that had settled in Foxearth at
least three hundred years before his birth and that his
future wife Charlotte (nee Miller) was born at Walsham Le
Willows in Suffolk, but that is really all we know about
them. Records that were in the brewery lofts and carelessly
discarded by Charrington’s in the 1980s may have helped,
of course.

Whether George or Charlotte decided on the idea of
making money from brewing we shall probably never know
but what is clear is that the business grew far more rapidly
in years after George’s death than when he was alive;
though improved communication and transport had a good
deal to do with the brewery’s growth, the greater reasons
behind the success will be revealed as one reads this book.

Much more is known about their enterprising son David
Ward
his early days in charge of the brewery’s development to