Timothy Thompson of Smethwick was the forebear of two important families in the West Midlands’ brewing and malting trade – Samuel Thompson and Sons, Maltsters in Smethwick and George Thompson and Sons, Brewers in Dudley.
Timothy left a detailed will in 1822. A contemporary of his was John Downing, both smallholder farmers in the Oldbury area and both members of the congregation of Oldbury by Halesowen Presbyterian church in the 1790’s. Both families also moved later to being members of the Old Church in Smethwick.
The two families came together, when Timothy’s oldest son, John Thompson, a Grocer, married Nancy Downing, the oldest daughter of John Downing on 1 Oct 1812. The couple had no surviving children and after John’s death, ‘Aunt Thompson’ lived with her brother George’s family. George Downing‘s grandchildren developed the Smethwick based malting firm of G and WE Downing, whose height of expansion is borne witness by the Malting buildings still standing in Gloucester docks. William Edmund Downing was married to the oldest daughter of Walter Showell, who was a major brewer also in Oldbury (Crosswells) and whose company expanded and owned at its peak three or four hundred pubs in the 1890’s.
However, the descendants of two of Timothy’s younger sons, Samuel and George, were arguably even more successful in setting up their own Malting and Brewing businesses. Samuel Thompson and Sons was also centred on Oldbury and Smethwick. George Thompson and Sons were brewers based in Dudley. Although they did not, at first, grow as fast as the Downing and Showell family businesses, the separate Thompson businesses outlived them. In 1931 Associated British Maltsters. a successor company incorporating Samuel Thompson and Sons, essentially took over the rump of the Downing depression hit malting business.
Meanwhile, in Dudley, George Thompson, another of Timothy’s grandsons by his third son George set up and grew a succession of brewing companies. He became mayor of Dudley in 1876. His own company George Thomson and Sons merged first with Victoria and Dudley Breweries and went on to form a cornerstone of what was by 1890 to become Wolverhampton and Dudley Breweries. Much later in 2007 this became what is known today as Marstons.
Timothy Thompson was buried in Smethwick Old Church on 29 Mar 1822 with a stated age of 72. No corresponding baptism can be found around 1750.
Sources and Notes
- Will of Timothy Thompson, Probate 5 Aug 1822 Worcester.
- Will of John Thompson Probate 11 Feb 1840, Lichfield (Oldest Son).
- Will of Samuel Thompson Probate 21 Dec 1842 PCC (Second Son).
- Associated British Maltsters was founded in 1928 with a merger between Gilstrap, Earp & Co of Newark on Trent and Samuel Thompson and Sons, of Smethwick. In 1931 G & WE Downing was being run by WE Downing’s son Noel Downing – the half brothers William Edmund and Thomas Lee Downing having effectively retired.
- George Thompson (Grandson) married Caroline his first cousin, youngest daughter of Samuel Thompson. He died Priory House in Dudley in 1897.
- The relationship between Non Conformists and the Old Church in Smethwick is a little opaque. The church had been built ‘new’ in 1732 with a legacy from Dorothy Parkes (b 1644, will 1728). The church and its sequence of vicars guarded their independence from and differences with the parent Parish Church at St Peter’s Harborne.