Kirkstall Brewery is a complex of

Grade II listed In the United Kingdom, a listed building or listed structure is one that has been placed on one of the four statutory lists maintained by Historic England in England, Historic Environment Scotland in Scotland, in Wales, and the Northern Ir ...

buildings built in the 19th century on either side of the

Leeds and Liverpool Canal The Leeds and Liverpool Canal is a canal in Northern England, linking the cities of Leeds and Liverpool. Over a distance of , crossing the Pennines, and including 91 locks on the main line. The Leeds and Liverpool Canal has several small branc ...

History

The complex started as

maltings A malt house, malt barn, or maltings, is a building where cereal grain is converted into malt by soaking it in water, allowing it to sprout and then drying it to stop further growth. The malt is used in brewing beer, whisky and in certain food ...

, and the first buildings were erected at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century. They were later converted into a brewery and added to on several occasions between 1833 and 1954 for the various owners before its eventual conversion. Kirkstall Brewery Blue Plaque

The Kirkstall Brewery Co. Ltd. was registered in 1871, and by 1898 was producing around 72,000 barrels of beer a year. The beer was sold in

Leeds Leeds () is a City status in the United Kingdom, city and the administrative centre of the City of Leeds district in West Yorkshire, England. It is built around the River Aire and is in the eastern foothills of the Pennines. It is also the thi ...

and

Yorkshire Yorkshire ( ; abbreviated Yorks), formally known as the County of York, is a historic county in northern England and by far the largest in the United Kingdom. Because of its large area in comparison with other English counties, functions have ...

. Kirkstall beers have also been recorded arriving in Australia and

New Zealand New Zealand ( mi, Aotearoa ) is an island country in the southwestern Pacific Ocean. It consists of two main landmasses—the North Island () and the South Island ()—and over 700 List of islands of New Zealand, smaller islands. It is the ...

. In 1936, Dutton’s Blackburn Brewery Ltd. purchased Kirkstall Brewery Co Ltd. and its subsidiaries, Albion Brewery (Leeds) Ltd. and Willow Brewery Co. Ltd. In 1938, the company was renamed Dutton’s Lancashire & Yorkshire Brewery Corporation Ltd. Duttons sold the brewery but not the associated pubs to Whibread in 1957. Kirkstall Brewery was re-equipped, and the production of

bitter Bitter may refer to: Common uses * Resentment, negative emotion or attitude, similar to being jaded, cynical or otherwise negatively affected by experience * Bitter (taste), one of the five basic tastes Books * ''Bitter (novel)'', a 2022 novel ...

and mild went up to quarter of a million barrels a year. The brewery was closed in 1983. On a warehouse building on the west side of the canal, it is still possible to see the doors just above the water level that were used to load barrels of

beer Beer is one of the oldest and the most widely consumed type of alcoholic drink in the world, and the third most popular drink overall after water and tea. It is produced by the brewing and fermentation of starches, mainly derived from cer ...

onto

barges Barge nowadays generally refers to a flat-bottomed inland waterway vessel which does not have its own means of mechanical propulsion. The first modern barges were pulled by tugs, but nowadays most are pushed by pusher boats, or other vessels ...

. Kirkstall Brewery stood empty and unused until in the late 1990s, when it became a student accommodation under the name of "Brewery Student Village", part of

Leeds Metropolitan University Leeds Beckett University (LBU), formerly known as Leeds Metropolitan University (LMU) and before that as Leeds Polytechnic, is a public university in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. It has campuses in the city centre and Headingley. The unive ...

. The conversion was carried out by Bowman Riley Architects.

Facilities

The development provides accommodation for over 800 students. This number was initially over 1000, but more than 140 places were lost in 2011 due to water-related subsidence to two residential buildings, which had to be demolished in 2012.

New brewery

Kirkstall Brewery, Cavendish Street, Leeds (geograph 6408444)

Leeds International Beer Festival (4th September 2015) 019

A new brewery with the same name has been set up close to the original site. It has references to the old brewery crest and product names, and taking inspiration for their flagship 5% beer, Dissolution Extra IPA, from an original export beer from the 1860s.

Renovation

As part of the renovation project the

spring Spring(s) may refer to: Common uses * Spring (season), a season of the year * Spring (device), a mechanical device that stores energy * Spring (hydrology), a natural source of water * Spring (mathematics), a geometric surface in the shape of a h ...

s and watercourses that provided the water used in the brewing process were diverted, without damaging the

ecosystem An ecosystem (or ecological system) consists of all the organisms and the physical environment with which they interact. These biotic and abiotic components are linked together through nutrient cycles and energy flows. Energy enters the syst ...

of a Site of Special Scientific Interest along the

. Remaining underground water flows, together with faulty draining, contributed to the damage to two residential blocks and the need for their demolition in 2012. During renovation it was discovered that a Second World War submarine engine was installed at the brewery as a power back-up facility. This engine was one of a pair built in 1943, but never actually installed in a submarine. It was sold in 1948 to the brewery for power generation. The engine was removed in 1994 and is now at the

Anson Engine Museum The Anson Engine Museum is situated on the site of the old Anson colliery in Poynton, Cheshire, England. It is the work of Les Cawley and Geoff Challinor who began collecting and showing stationary engines for a hobby. The museum now has one ...

Poynton Poynton is a town in Cheshire, England, on the easternmost fringe of the Cheshire Plain, south-east of Manchester, north of Macclesfield and south of Stockport. Poynton has formed part of the Cheshire East unitary authority since the aboli ...

, Cheshire, where it underwent restoration. Kirkstall Brewery Student Village won the City of Leeds Award for Architecture in 1997.

History

Facilities

New brewery

Renovation

See also

References

Further reading