Stones Brewery

Stones Brewery (William Stones Ltd) was a brewery founded in 1868 by William Stones in Sheffield, Yorkshire, England, and purchased by Bass Brewery in 1968. After its closure in 1999, Stones Bitter has continued to be produced by Molson Coors.

William Stones started brewing in 1847 in Sheffield with Joseph Watts. Following Watts' death in 1854, he continued brewing by himself. In 1868, he purchased the lease of the Neepsend Brewery and renamed it the Cannon Brewery. He continued to brew there until his death in 1894. Stones' success saw him die as one of the richest men in Sheffield, although he lived a modest life. The company was taken over by Bass in 1968. In 2000, Bass sold its brewing operations to the Belgian brewer Interbrew who were ordered by the Competition Commission to sell Stones. In 2002, it was purchased by the Coors Brewing Company, who merged to become Molson Coors in 2005.

Stones Bitter was brewed at the Cannon Brewery from 1948 and was popular with Sheffield's steel workers. It was originally available across the south Yorkshire, Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, with distribution extended to the rest of the north of England in 1977, and nationwide from 1979, accompanied by a considerable marketing push. Increasing demand saw it also brewed at other Bass breweries from the 1970s onwards. The beer's popularity reached its apex in 1992 when it was the country's highest selling bitter, selling over a million barrels. The beer has been lauded as "one of Sheffield's most famous exports". After the Cannon's closure production was continued elsewhere. Stones Bitter (3.7 per cent alcohol by volume) is brewed by Molson Coors at their brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, and the canned product at their Burton upon Trent brewery.

Stones sponsored the Rugby Football League Championship and its successor the Rugby Super League from 1986 until 1997. A series of television advertisements from 1983 until 1991, starring Tony Barton and Michael Angelis, became the longest running bitter advertisements in the country. Since the withdrawal of the majority of marketing support by Bass in 1997 in favour of Worthington, the beer has experienced a marked decline in sales volumes, although it remains among the twenty highest selling ales in the United Kingdom.

In 1847, Joseph Watts of Dewsbury and William Stones (1827 -1894) of Sheffield began brewing together at the Cannon Brewery in Sheffield's Shalesmoor district near Kelham Island. The name may have come from the nearby foundry that cast gun barrels. In 1852 they acquired their first tied house, the Kelham Tavern. Watts died in May 1854 aged 46, and two years later Stones purchased his share of the business from his former partner's brother. By 1861 the brewery employed 23 men and two boys. In 1868, Stones took over the lease of the Shepherd, Green & Hatfield brewery in the Neepsend district, which had been founded as the Neepsend Brewery in 1838. He renamed it the Cannon Brewery after his original premises. In 1880 Stones built two malthouses in Worksop. Stones died in 1894, and he left the brewery to his cashier, James Haynes, and Richard Wigfull, a corn miller, as tenants in common. William Stones became a limited company in 1895 with £275,000 of capital (£29,919,937 in 2023 adjusted for inflation) and had by this time grown to become one of the largest businesses in Sheffield, with a tied estate of 84 pubs primarily in its home city and Chesterfield. Distribution was extended to Huddersfield in 1896.

Stones acquired the fourteen tied houses of Chambers' Brunswick Brewery in Sheffield, after that company entered into liquidation in 1910, for £28,200 in 1911. In 1919, The Crown Inn opposite the Cannon Brewery was purchased and rebuilt to serve as the brewery tap. By 1939 the brewery estate had expanded to include Mansfield and Barnsley.

In 1954, William Stones partnered with Tennant Brothers to acquire the Sheffield Free Brewery, closing the brewery and dividing the estate between themselves. In the same year, the company purchased Mappin's Brewery of Rotherham, and the brewery was closed down the following year. The takeover added around 100 public houses to their tied estate, to make a total of 300. As a result, Stones had the second largest tied estate in Sheffield after Tennant's.

In 1959, William Stones paid £100,000 (£1,936,032 in 2023 adjusted for inflation) for Ward & Sons of Swinton, a family-run local bottler of beer and mineral water. The Ward bottling plant was capable of filling and labelling 8,000 bottles an hour, which was more productive than Stones' existing plant. The acquisition allowed Stones to bottle national beers such as Bass and Guinness for itself, rather than relying on contractors. Also in that year a reciprocal deal was reached with Whitbread, whereby William Stones supplied draught bitter to the 33 houses of the former Scarsdale Brewing Company of Chesterfield, in return for stocking Whitbread's Mackeson Stout in their own tied estate. In 1960, the company was awarded the rights to bottle the Norwegian Ringnes lager brand for the region. All bottling had transferred to Swinton by 1961, allowing Stones to close its own bottling plant, giving it room to redevelop its Sheffield site. In 1962, a deal was reached with United Breweries to sell Carling Black Label lager in Stones tied houses in exchange for supplying Stones products to United's Sheffield area public houses. In 1965 the company was valued at £5 million, rising to £7.2 million by 1967 (£109,796,667 in 2023 adjusted for inflation) as takeover rumours mounted. In 1966, William Stones launched its first brewery conditioned beer, Stones Imperial.