off-licence for three years before selling the business to one
Elisha Deal.

Foster bought the estate and house and installed his
son, John Francis, who was curate at the parish church.
The brewhouse, a common feature of the time in rural
districts, was given over to George Ward. Foster senior,
who had amassed a fortune from his grandparents and
augmented it through judicious marriages, is likely to have
bought The Lion for several reasons but besides the obvious
ones: beer being a heavily lucrative trade made for a good
investment and of course the Rector could choose who he
leased the shop to; The Lion sign was often adopted by
landlords in derision of the Puritans or dissenters, who
showered biblical phrases whenever they could possibly do
so. It may be a coincidence of course, but during this decade
the village’s Congregational scene was one of triumphant
militancy.

When she retired in 1855, The Lion was to go to auction
at Sudbury that September, however before the property
had a chance to go public, the village Rector, the Rev John
Foster who just three years earlier had demolished the ale
house, bought The Lion by private treaty and installed ‘by
earnest recommendation’ a brewer that was making a
name for himself called George Ward. White’s Gazetteer for
1848 identifies Ward as a maltster and brewer who was
carrying out his trade at the Windmill in Mill Lane,
Foxearth, where Elisha Deal was the Miller. Bearing in
mind that most villages around the Stour had a mill, it was
usual to find beer being brewed for workers and the surplus
sold. In the late 1840s Ward was delivering beer by horse
and cart in 1 gallon and 2 gallon stone casks to inn-keepers
at Cavendish and Sudbury.

 George Ward was the first generation of his family to
become  a  ‘common’  licensed  brewer  and  maltster.
Originally, from an agricultural background, he was born
at Western End, Foxearth in 1814, eldest of five children to
Samuel and Martha Ward (nee Mortlock) who was born at
nearby Cavendish.

 The same auction, which took place at the Rose and
Crown Hotel in Sudbury, refers to a house called The
Cottage3 with an estate of about 2 acres which was later to
become one of three large houses David Ward and
subsequent generations of his family would make their
home. The Cottage had been used as a boarding school up
until 1852 by a Miss Ince and part of the contents of her
estate included a malting office measuring ‘12 coombs deep’
(a coomb was a 16 stone sack of malt and measured 8ft 6in
in length) a brew house, a granary as well a small
carpenter’s shop tenanted by Dominic Branwhite. 4

 Like his father before him, he was an agricultural
labourer, first at Foxearth Hall, then Claypits Farm in the
village where he graduated to farm bailiff. It was while he
was at the Hall that he won first prize at the prestigious
South Suffolk Agricultural Show in 1839 for foot-plough
work.

Around the late 1840s, George met and amused a girl
named Charlotte Miller, a miller’s daughter from Walsham
le Willows in Suffolk. In 1850 they married at Foxearth
parish church (rural Victorian courtships were rarely long
spun out affairs)5 with people turning out in force to

Branwhites.  The maltings has been  largely  rebuilt  in  a
sympathetic manner and turned into flats. The only original part

Some  of  the  rituals  of  courtship  were  open  to
misunderstanding from outside the community. Not least of these,
was the widespread practice of delaying marriage until the girl
was pregnant; it relieved young couples of the hardships of setting

of the maltings to have survived is a building abutting Station
Road.