Beer wasn’t always made with hops. In Anglo-Saxon England, ale, called a malt brew, used bittering herbs like bog myrtle, nettles, and sage. Beer using hops was introduced from Germany and Flanders in the late fifteenth century and English brewers began importing dried Flemish hops for its preservative powers as well as taste. Gradually, hops became the preferred ‘bittering’ herb, balancing the sweetness of the malt, and by the 17th century, beer with hops had replaced ale as England’s national drink.
In the nineteenth century, hop growing entered a golden age and many of the hops were grown in the benign climates of Kent and East Sussex, drying or kilning in oast houses still seen today.
Breweries and Maltsters (those in the business of preparing malt for brewing) in resorts such as Brighton proliferated and to one of these, The Robins Ebenezer Maltster of Waterloo Street, Brighton a young man, Sydney Oswald Neville from Scarborough, educated at Eton, took up an apprenticeship. Sir Sydney Oswald Neville,1873 -1969, became one of the stars of the brewing industry, and was knighted for his services in 1942. He was a pioneer in the professionalizing of the trade, raising standards in public houses and reducing drunkenness so as to widen their appeal as well as creating funding for research in the growing of hops and barley and fermentation processes. He came to Worthing in the 1920’s having a house in Farncombe Road, later moving to Mill Road.
A second s
ignificant brewer in the cemetery is Ernest Hanbury, who in 1869, married and settled in Worthing in Shakespeare Road. In 1870 he went into partnership with John Beal Jude to form the brewing company Jude Hanbury and Co. Ernest moved to "Hardwicke" in Tennyson Road where in 1925 his wife Lucy died. Both are buried at Heene. The Jude Hanbury beer company was bought by Whitbread in 1929.
Inn keepers, ‘beer-house’ keepers and beer sellers, though mainly the men of the family, were often helped by their daughters and wives who, as widows, sometimes continued to run the business on their own. One is Sophie Pyecroft 1844 -1939. The daughter of a publican she jointly ran the Ship Hotel in Greenwich with her husband, Thomas. 1878, the family moved to Petworth, and took over the licenses of the Half Moon Hotel, The Swan Hotel and the Railway Inn. Thomas died after a short illness in 1883 and Sophie continued to run these establishments until 1894 when she moved to nearby Tillington taking management of the Horse Guards pub. In 1901, she and the family moved to Worthing. They lived firstly in Winchester Road and then in Cowper Road.
Thomas Cornford was a Publican at the Montague Brewery in Montague Street. His daughter, Daisy, described as a brewer’s assistant, is also buried at Heene.
Emma Winton née Hedger 1835 - 1897 was the wife of William Winton of Lancing, an agricultural worker until his late fifties when they became beer-house keepers in Worthing.
Edmund Lephard, born in 1818, Northchapel Sussex, married Lucy Southerton in 1841 in Wisborough Green. They lived in Montague Street, Worthing, running a beer shop, a popular, low-key type of pub.
Gertrude Thomas, 1884 -1927, described as the daughter of a Brewer Scientist, lived at The Acre, on Boundary Road.
Philippa Matthews