Introduction

Imagine a time when life was so certain that when you built a building for your business you were confident enough in the future that you put the name of the business into the very fabric of the building.

This is not a time of mergers and takeovers of globalisation and restructure, this is when life was more local and certain.

There are a number of such buildings around and so this blog is an attempt to record some of them and more importantly a bit of the history of the business which by and large are no longer with us.

If you know something about any of these business please add a comment. You can do this without having to sign up for anything and can be anonomous if you prefer.



Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Speights Brewery





This is 200 Rattray Street

After the post concerning Well Park Brewery it seems appropriate to follow the fortunes of  James Speight, Charles Greenslade, and William Dawson who landed up here founding the Speights brewery.

The inscription on the building is New Zealand Breweries Ltd Speights Branch. The history of the company and the building is to be found here http://www.speights.co.nz/Our-History.aspx from where you will find we are looking at a building constructed in 1937 quiet a long time after the 1876 start of the enterprise. By this time Speights was part of New Zealand Breweries Ltd formed in 1923 with the combining of 9 smaller breweries.

The most popular story of this building is that the barrell on top of the chimney started out as a practical joke by a draughtsman but found favour with Mr Hugh Speight (grandson of the founder) as was built as drawn.

Another business still operating in its building.
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