Peter Walker - a personal reflection

The Crown, Lime Street, Liverpool

I was a student at Padgate College in Warrington in the 1970s. The area at that time had three breweries: Burtonwood, Greenall and Tetley, although you wouldn't have known it because the vast majority of pubs were Greenall's. The brewery's adverts told us to, "Smile please, you're in Greenall Whitley land". They produced funny beer mats and even 'GWL' car stickers, like the 'GB' plate you use when driving abroad. I sometimes used to wonder whether they had ever caused any confusion at border checks on the continent. If only they had put as much effort into the beer as they did into the hype because, at best, Greenall's beers were mediocre.

I don't recall any Burtonwood pubs in the town, and most of the few non-Greenall pubs were Tetley. Tetley's beers were better than Greenall's but not by a great margin. Tetley had merged with Peter Walker in 1960, and in the 70s, they were still brewing the old Walker's Bitter, although they sold it under the Tetley name, which I found slightly odd seeing that most beer drinkers I knew preferred the Walker's Bitter to the Tetley's. The local CAMRA branch produced stickers for the few pubs that still sold Walker's to put in their windows, something my friends and I found very useful.

I had a sort of family connection to Walker's because my maternal grandmother had worked in Walker pubs for many years, as did her son, my Uncle Bernard. He rose to be manager of several pubs, and I can remember visiting two as a child, the Sefton Arms in Croxteth and the Victoria in Bootle. My grandmother used to be his relief manager on his day off. I remember calling into the Victoria for a pint a couple of times when I was older and working in Bootle; he was rightly proud of the quality of his beers. In later years, knowing about my involvement with CAMRA, he was pleased when I told him that he had kept an excellent pint.

At some point in the 1980s, Tetley Walker decided to relaunch the Walker brand. Some Tetley pubs were re-badged as Walker's and new beers formulated. In the process they scrapped the old Walker's recipe, which had been around 3.5%, like many beers at the time, and replaced it with Best Bitter (3.5%), Bitter (3.3%), and an even weaker mild. The beers weren't bad but I preferred the old brew. Later added to the range was a stronger Warrington Ale and a Winter Warmer, both of which I did quite like.

The 3.3% strength of the new Walker's Bitter became something of a joke in Liverpool:
Policeman: "Excuse me sir, have you been drinking?"
Driver: "Yes, officer, Walker's Bitter."
Policeman: "Very good, sir, carry on."

Walker's beers are no more, possibly disappearing around the time of the 1989 Beer Orders, but the name can still be seen on quite a few pubs in Merseyside, as shown in the photographs which I took in Liverpool yesterday.

The Vines, Lime Street, Liverpool

P.S. Since I posted this less than an hour ago, it has correctly been pointed out to me that someone is brewing a smoothflow version of Walker's Bitter, although I've no idea who or where. When saying that Walker's beers were long gone, I was thinking of the Warrington-brewed beers. Anything else would be a poor facsimile just to cash in on the name.