Local History Vernon and Sibyl Hilton By Roderick Martin


IF you had lived in Tavistock a century ago you would have most certainly have known Vernon Hilton, the manager of the brewery in Brook Street. Born in 1878, he came to Tavistock in 1904 when his father, Ernest Hilton, a wealthy cement manufacturer and businessman, bought the Tavistock Brewery for his third son to manage. Being an excellent horseman, golfer, fisherman and all-round sportsman Vernon Hilton made an immediate social impact in the town.


He regularly partook in the monthly medal at Tavistock Golf Club, played in badminton matches, and became a rising star of the local mounted territorial regiment. Indeed such was his involvement in social, soldiering and sporting activities it is difficult to see how he found time to manage the brewery. Fortunately back at the brewery there was a capable and reliable workforce led by George Slatter, the experienced head brewer, operating the plant. George had many children all of whom had defined career paths; his sons worked in the brewery, and his daughters became ‘ironers’ in the laundry. The Hiltons were popular owners and the brewery steadily improved the popularity of its beer but the early nineteenth century was a time of austerity and temperance.


The


brewery had previously lost most of its tied houses and was never going to be able to compete against the larger Plymouth Breweries which either owned or purchased lease agreements with the best local pubs. In the 1911 sale of Bedford Estate properties the Plymouth Breweries outbid the Hiltons, and everyone else, purchasing nine of the eleven town public houses put up for sale, and made them into their tied houses thus further reducing the local outlets available to the Tavistock brewery. Following a fire on the brewery premises in 1912 the Hiltons decided to call it a day, and tried to sell the Tavistock brewery at auction, but their reserve price was not reached. A few days after the outbreak of


war in August 1914 Vernon Hilton was promoted from Lieutenant to the rank of Captain, and left Tavistock as part of a complement of five officers and 140 other ranks in the 3rd Devonshire Battery, 4th Wessex Brigade, Royal Field Artillery.


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Vernon Hilton


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