Charles Mallen: founder of Adelaide Brewery in Waverley, New South Wales, and Waverley Brewery in Adelaide
The former Waverly Brewery administration building on Belair Road, Unley. The brewery site behind it, including a five-storey tower, was later cleared for a carpark. Inset: Part of Springfield Brewery, Waverley's second life, in the 1950s.
Inset image by J.D. Radcliffe.
Charles Edward Mallen created the oddity of Waverley, New South Wales, getting an Adelaide Brewery followed by Adelaide city, then its suburb of Mitcham, getting a Waverley Brewery. The oddity had an extended life when the Waverley Brewery Springfield Brewery and was one of the last three breweries – with Adelaide Brewing Company and Coopers – in the 1950s.
Charles Mallen was born in Euston Square, London, and apprenticed to the Edwards company, cabinetmakers to the British royal family, where his father and brother were employed all their lives. Charles Mallen and his family emigrated to South Australia aboard the steamer Champion in 1854 and, for a while, he was employed at his trade, producing ornamental work in Adelaide city for the Wesleyan Church in Pirie Street and Faulding chemist shop. He bought land in Angas Street, Adelaide city, and five acres at Clapham where he built a home.
While employed by agriculture machines Mellor Brothers, Mallen was given a job to repair a malt crusher at W.H. Clark’s brewery in Halifax Street, Adelaide city. Mallen then moved to make plant and connect machinery for Clark’s new West End Brewery in Hindley Street, Adelaide city, with the property owned by John Haimes.
When Clark went broke and William Simms bought the West End Brewery business, he put Mallen on the permanent staff. Edgar Chapman joined Simms as partner and they appointed Mallen brewer and manager.
In 1874, Simms and Chapman sent him to New South Wales to select a location for a new brewery. He settled on the town of Waverley, near Sydney, where, on Edgecliffe Road, he built the Adelaide Brewery and brewed the first beer in 1874. With success, the brewery’s cellars were enlarged the next year.
Mallen left the company after being refused a partnership and returned to Adelaide, where he bought land on West Terrace, Adelaide city, and built a small brewery on the Gilbert Street corner that he named, cheekily, Waverley Brewery. This started operating in December 1875, and was bought by Simms in 1876, to become Waverley Vinegar Works.
Mallen then bought a property on Unley Road, Lower Mitchem, near the Brownhill Creek and, in 1878, with Haimes, built another Waverley Brewery, operated by Haimes, Mallen & Co., comprising John Haimes (unitl he died in 1891), Charles Mallen, Charles's daughter Maria Mallen and Arthur Bean, who retired in 1879. Charles Williams (previously involved the Lion, Walkerville Cooperative and his own Williams breweries) was appointed manager around 1921 and stayed until 1933, when he retired due to ill health.
Waverley Brewery closed in the 1933 when Charles Mallen's son sold it but the Mallen family continued as mulitple hotel operators into the late 20th Century.
Waverley Brewery was reopened by a group of businessman in 1939 as Springfield Brewery, with expanded buildings and plant plus brewing converted from the old top fermentation to the modern bottom fermentation. But World War II curtailed more upgrades and, despite an experienced brewer from Tasmania, Springfield Brewery was blighted with poor quality beer on top of the pressure of South Austraian Brewing Co. controlling much of the South Australian hotels market.
Ironically, the brewery’s final shutdown was linked to New South Wales. In 1953, the company chairman Angas Parsons, reporting a big financial loss, told shareholders that 80% of its beer for the past 12 months has been “something appalling, just dreadful”. The company had been sending its product to western New South Wales, before it found an agent in Sydney willing to take 100% of its output. Parsons admitted: “We then boosted production and foolishly went over the capacity of the plant. The poor quality was caused by insufficient fermentation and insufficient storage. I found some of our beer completely undrinkable in Sydney”.
Springfield Brewery went into liquidation in 1954. It had outlasted Adelaide Brewery in Waverley that didn’t reach the 1890s.
