In the same year war was declared, a 400 feet deep well
had been bored a few months earlier, which had been a
necessary but costly affair, lined as it was with 200 feet of 9
inch quarter inch thick galvanized steel tubes by Brown’s of
Ipswich; the water pumped by a Lea Howell pump. This
had upped water capacity to a further 3,000 gallons of
water an hour. Now the brewery was able to call on 120,000
gallons of water each working day.

year in 1944) the average original gravity of its beer was a
weak 1021, the firm managed to keep good trade and
employed the same amount of workers as it had at the
outbreak of hostilities including its invincible head who had
an aversion to retirement and looked on work as ‘one of the
finest tonics on this earth.’ and was still typing all his own
letters at the age of 88.

Yet three years after victory, not even the ministrations
of work could rouse him. He was a little over ninety years
old,  and died according to  his death  certificate,  of
congestive cardiac failure, coronary arteriosclerosis and
hypertension - that is heart failure, aggravated by the
narrowing of the blood vessels possibly causing angina and
high blood pressure without any apparent cause. The liver
was blameless, and he died, as he had lived, by the heart. It
was the same year that his grandson, David Harvey Ward
was receiving his brewing tuition at Gilstrap, Earl &
Company of Newark, Nottinghamshire. His grandfather
had spent sixty-nine years developing a business that by
today’s standards of growth would have been vying for a
Queen’s Award for Excellence, now his grandson was ready
to play a new part in the firm that his namesake had taken
an active interest in all his working life, and when most

No one knew quite how long the war would continue for,
so as markets began to contract violently there was the
inevitable shortage of brewing material; this in turn led to
Ward’s immediately withdrawing supplies of the best-
selling Imperial ale which in turn meant the House of
Commons was forced to remove its 25 year patronage.

As though to emphasise the imminence of great change,
David Ward, renewed his punishing early working regime
at the brewery where he was still chairman. Although in
his early eighties, he visited the brewery each day and
spent at least two hours touring the brew house and
talking to his workers. Once on finding analytical tests on
the brewery’s water supply, which were carried out
annually by Heron’s Laboratories in London, he vented his
dismay towards the head brewer Trethowan.

men would have long retired, continued as managing
director up until his death.

On Heron’s analysis certificate he wrote, in stark red
ink: “Why wasn’t I told about problems with the new well -
‘I knew nothing of these [tests]. Why not?’  

When he was finally laid to rest in the presence of his
many family, friends, villagers, employees, household staff
and others it was next to his daughter Winifred who had
died in December 1946. in a grave near to the church organ
he had played for forty years,

Not everybody found this proud and difficult presence
winning. A note in one of the brewery’s books announced
unkindly:  “Boss  came  in.  Usual  bloody-minded  self.
Bombastic and boring.”

War-time measures made for heavily less economically
successful production than before, with the result that one
local brewery G..E Cook at Halstead, made an abortive
attempt to buy the brewery in September 1943. Although
the austerities of war-time Britain had a deep effect on the
brewery’s output (it was down to producing 8,500 barrels a

Mr Ward was slowly laid  to rest  not far from  the  organ he
played  for  over  40  years. Mr  Ward  founded  the well-known
East Anglian firm [sic], he was 90 years old.

 Canon Hughes referred to him as our friend and said that the
life  of  our  friend  was  long,  also  of  the  many  activities  in
business, public work  or the village in which  he  truly threw