Boddingtons Brewery

Boddingtons

Former type	Brewery
Industry	Brewing
Predecessor	Hole, Potter and Harrison
Founded	1853
Founder	Henry Boddington
Defunct	2005 (brewery closure)
Headquarters	Manchester, England
Products	Beer
Production output	250,000 hectolitres (2012)
Owner	AB InBev

Boddingtons Brewery was a regional brewery in Manchester, England, which owned pubs throughout the North West. Boddingtons was best known for Boddingtons Bitter (Boddies), a straw-golden, hoppy bitter which was one of the first beers to be packaged in cans containing a widget, giving it a creamy draught-style head. In the 1990s, the beer was promoted as The Cream of Manchester in a popular advertising campaign credited with raising Manchester's profile. Boddingtons became one of the city's most famous products after Manchester United and Coronation Street.

Whitbread bought Boddingtons Brewery in 1989 and Boddingtons Bitter received an increased marketing budget and nationwide distribution. Boddingtons achieved its peak market share in 1997 and at the time was exported to over forty countries. Boddingtons beer brands are now owned by the global brewer Anheuser–Busch InBev which acquired the Whitbread Beer Company in 2000. Strangeways Brewery closed in 2004 and production of pasteurised (keg and can) Boddingtons was moved to Samlesbury in Lancashire. Production of the cask conditioned beer moved to Hydes Brewery in Moss Side, Manchester, until it was discontinued in 2012, ending the beer's association with the city.

Strangeways Brewery was founded in 1778 by two grain merchants, Thomas Caister and Thomas Fry, just north of what is now Manchester city centre. Their principal customers were the cotton workers of Manchester, then a burgeoning mill town. Henry Boddington, born in 1813 in Thame, Oxfordshire, joined the brewery in 1832 as a travelling salesman when the brewery was in the possession of Hole, Potter and Harrison. Like most Manchester breweries at the time, it was a modestly sized operation. Boddington had become a partner by 1848, alongside John and James Harrison, and by this time the company went under the name John Harrison & Co. In January 1853, Boddington borrowed money to become its sole owner. Between Boddington's takeover until 1877, the brewery's output increased tenfold from 10,000 to 100,000 barrels a year, making it not only Manchester's largest brewery but one of the largest in the North of England, with over 100 tied houses. By 1883 Henry Boddington & Co. was a limited liability company. Henry Boddington's estate was valued at almost £150,000 when he died in 1886.