Following on from Gay Baldwin’s introduction earlier in the week to spooky goings on on the Island, here, as promised is the first instalment. We take a trip down to the Ventnor Brewery. Ed
Wight Spirit – Brewed Supernaturally
The ghost of a long-dead brewer who still keeps a watchful eye over the beer-making has had a modern-day ale created and named Wight Spirit in his honour.
Wearing old-fashioned clothing, complete with starched wing collar and rolled up shirtsleeves, the phantom brewer has been seen at a third floor window, once the labelling room, surveying the yard at Ventnor Brewery, while his spirit is also heard whistling in empty rooms.
There’s been a brewery on the site since 1840, when Ventnor Brewery was opened to take advantage of the remarkably pure spring water, which rises through the chalk hill of St Boniface Down behind. A most favourable agreement with the Ventnor Water Company secured an unlimited supply of water for 1,000 years for just 6d (two and a half pence) a year! The arrangement is still in force today, but with an additional £250 annual fee for the extraction licence.
In 1860 it was renamed Burt’s Brewery, and for more than a century Burt’s beers were drunk in pubs and inns throughout the Island. At one time there were no fewer than 148 breweries on the Isle of Wight – and of these 44 were actually in Ventnor! Of course they included many tiny brewhouses, many of whose ales were of indifferent quality and strength, but the variety would have gladdened the heart of many a CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) enthusiast today.
For almost a century, Burt’s Brewery was owned and managed by generations of the Phillips family. In 1992, a national chain bought Burt’s and operations were transferred to Newport. Today, a mainland brewery owns the name.
The Fabulous Baker Boys
For six years the premises lay derelict. However, when brothers Xavier and Airon Baker re-opened the brewery with Bob Simpson, they reverted to the original name of Ventnor Brewery.
Built as a Victorian tower brewery, which used gravity to brew the beer, the building was damaged during a low level air raid on 18 August 1942, which left three local people dead. On 17 January 1943, two German Focke Wulf fighters flew in at sea level – so low that one severed telephone wires – to drop two 500kg bombs on Ventnor. Their target was the radar station on St Boniface Down behind the town, but the ‘tip and run’ raid devastated the town instead. One bomb demolished several homes, businesses and an hotel and damaged at least 200 other properties. The other cut through the gable of St Boniface Villa, ricocheted onto the back of a radio shop, exploding on the lawn of the house next to the brewery – the Phillips family home, where tragically Jack Phillips’ wife Mary, and his father William (Bill) Phillips were killed instantly. His youngest sister, Pamela died later from her injuries.
Although rescue work continued through the night, a total of seven local people were killed in that raid. So do wartime events shed any light on the haunting at the brewery?
“No-one knows who the ghost is, but there has been talk of one here for years,” said Xavier. “I think that whoever he is, he’s benign and friendly. The spirit was seen recently by a young woman visitor who noticed a man, wearing old-fashioned clothes, standing at the top floor window with his sleeves rolled up, as if ready for work. We sometimes hear him whistling when the building is empty, and he has also been seen waving from the window of a disused storeroom which has always been known as Mocher’s Room.”
Who Mocher was or why the room was named after him is not known. Does he haunt his old workplace? Whoever the ghost is, he still likes his ale and clearly has no time for other beverages. When Xavier and Airon bought some traditional cider with a view to selling it as part of the Ventnor Brewery range, they found the three stone flagons had been thrown across the room and smashed.
“It couldn’t have happened by accident. It had been done deliberately in the night and when we found the broken the jugs next morning, I think he was trying to tell us he didn’t approve of cider in his brewery!
“Apart from that we have had no trouble with him,” said Xavier. “I really feel that he’s happy the brewery is back in business again and he’s keeping an eye on things. We have even named a beer in his honour now. We call it our Wight Spirit bitter – Brewed Supernaturally. I don’t know if he still approves of what we’re brewing here today, but at the dead of night when all is quiet, it would be nice to think he enjoys a sup or two.”
Image: Dave Hughes
