Take a look at our latest Trading Stories, Working Lives story – in which we track the working life of publican John George Collis through a series of newspaper clippings.
How I’d love to step back to the late 1870s, nip into the Hinckley Road Brewery – seen here on the right – and request “A pint of your finest ale, Uncle George”. There amongst the tap-room hubbub, John George Collis – always known as George – would regale me with family stories, and maybe a song or two.
I can but dream. Uncle George has long gone, of course. And the Hinckley Road Brewery has also disappeared. But I’m still keen to get a sense of his working life as a licensed victualler in Victorian Leicester. In search of stories, I head for the British Newspaper Archive – a searchable resource, spanning virtually a century’s worth of Leicestershire’s day-to-day history. Who knows what might come to light?
Download the full story here: John George Collis, a publican in the news