good treatment of their workers - providing free schooling – and for their support of abolitionism). By 1853 the brewery was the largest in the world, producing 400,000 barrels of beer each year, with a site covering six acres. However, the company also faced competition from breweries based outside London – notably in Burton upon Trent, where the water was particularly suitable for brewing – and in 1873 the company acquired a brewery (Phillips) in Burton and began to build a major new brewery, named the Black Eagle after the original London site. In 1888, Truman, Hanbury, Buxton & Co became a public company with shareholders, but the balance of production was now shifting to Burton. The Brick Lane brewery site covered six acres by 1898. The Brick Lane facility remained active through a take-over by the Grand Metropolitan Group in 1971 and a merger with Watney Mann in 1972, but it was in terminal decline. It eventually closed in 1989. In fiction In Charles Dickens’ novel David Copperfield (1850), the character Mrs Micawber makes specific reference to Messrs Truman, Hanbury and Buxton): I have long felt the brewing business to be particularly adapted to Mr Micawber. Look at Barclay and Perkins! Look at Truman, Hanbury, and Buxton! It is on that extensive footing that Mr Micawber, I know from my own knowledge of him, is calculated to shine; and the profits, I am told, are e-NOR—mous! But if Mr Micawber cannot get into those firms—which decline to answer his letters, when he offers his services even in an inferior capacity—what is the use of dwelling upon that idea? (Chapter 28) In 2014/15 the Black Eagle Brewery featured in the fifth episode of the third series of the fictional BBC TV period drama Ripper Street, where protective employees harassed and killed London publicans who had changed supplier and were buying wares from breweries in Burton-upon-Trent. While a fictional account, the storyline reflected the real concerns that the London breweries had in late Victorian times, as rival product was increasingly brought from the north of England by the expanding railway network. Old Truman Brewery The old brewery buildings have become home to an arts and events centre and various shops and bars and it is now owned by The Zeloof Partnership. Business and leisure share the regenerated site for restaurants, bars, shops, businesses, events spaces, offices, workshops and two weekly fashion