Thomas's Brewery / Old Brewery predecessor
Cardiff, Wales, United Kingdom
Tally's Take
Why this matters
Where Brains begins. The company's own heritage says Samuel Arthur Brain bought Thomas's Brewery in St Mary Street from his wife's family in 1882 — and the Old Brewery site itself is documented by the Brewery History Society and Coflein as dating back to 1713. The Thomas family's own start date is not asserted here, because no source gives one. A site with three centuries on it and a founding year nobody wrote down.
The Museum
Timeline
- 1713The Old Brewery site
Documented by BHS and Coflein; the Thomas family's start date is not established.
- 1882Bought by Samuel Arthur Brain
From his wife's family — the founding of Brains.
The People
Behind the beer
The first common brewer recorded on the Old Brewery site, 1813, per Brian Glover's Brains 125 Years (Breedon Books, 2007).
Follow the money
How it changed hands
1 recorded move- 1882Bought by Samuel Arthur Brain
From his wife's family — the founding of Brains.
No current parent in the archive's records — the moves above are history, not present ownership.
Corrected by
- Mike Brown, Brewery History Society — one change to the citations, 2026-08-23
Corrections from outside the archive are logged permanently and credited here. Every one of them replaced something this archive had wrong.
Show your working
Sources
- recordProbable
Brewery record taken from Tally's Wales master, Pass 139. No source URL accompanied this row.
Tally's Wales master, Pass 139 (research workbook) · Tally's Beer Universe research workbook · 2026
CommercialMedium reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-19Reviewed 2026-08-19 - historyProbable
Dated evidence as recorded in the source pass: 1713, 1882.
Tally's Wales master, Pass 139 (research workbook) · Tally's Beer Universe research workbook · 2026
CommercialMedium reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-19Reviewed 2026-08-19 - foundedConfirmed
The 1713 date for the Old Brewery site comes from Richmond & Turton, The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records. Brian Glover's Brains 125 Years (Breedon Books, 2007) records a pub brewhouse on the site in 1713 but gives it no name. 1713 therefore dates a brewhouse at the address, not a named brewing business.
The Brewing Industry: A Guide to Historical Records · Manchester University Press · 1990
ScholarlyHigh reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-23Reviewed 2026-08-23 - historyConfirmed
The first common brewer recorded on the site is James Walters, 1813, per Brian Glover's Brains 125 Years (Breedon Books, 2007). A common brewer brewed for sale to others rather than for one house, so this is the earliest evidence of commercial brewing here — a century after the 1713 brewhouse.
Brian Glover — history of Brains (exact title to confirm)
ScholarlyHigh reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-23Reviewed 2026-08-23 - foundedConfirmed
1713 and 1813 are not competing dates for the same thing. One dates a brewhouse at the address; the other names the first commercial brewer working there. The archive records both and collapses neither.
Brian Glover — history of Brains (exact title to confirm)
ScholarlyHigh reliabilityAccessed 2026-08-23Reviewed 2026-08-23Conflict. Site date versus business date
Only the claims above are sourced. Everything else on this page is the archive's own research and has not yet been tied to a document — which is worth knowing rather than hiding.
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