Author’s dilemma over book on crisis-hit brewery

Aug 20 2008 by Mike Chapple, Liverpool Daily Post

Author’s dilemma over book on crisis-hit brewery

THE crisis at Cains has presented a major dilemma for the author of a new book about the history of the city brewery.

Chris Routledge had spent more than a year researching and writ-ing the book Cains: The History of Liverpool In A Pint.

Commissioned by Liverpool University Press, the work was completed and the book was ready to roll – then came disaster.

The credit crunch kicked in, the brewery faced a winding-up order over an unpaid Customs bill, and crucial talks between the brew-ery’s owners, brothers Ajmail and Sudarghara Dusanj and the Bank of Scotland, collapsed.

Now Cains faces an uncertain future after being placed in ad-ministration – and the 40-year-old writer has some extra work to do.

“The final chapter was devoted to the Dusanj era, but it’s all very uncertain just when everything seemed to be going so well,” said Mr Routledge, who parallels the story of the Stanhope Street brew-ery – one has stood on the site for over two centuries – with the city’s enormous economic growth through the 19th century.

Robert Cain was an Irish immi-grant from County Cork who came to Liverpool, aged 18, in 1844. The entrepreneurial brewer and the city’s fortunes rose in tandem.

He bought the Stanhope brew-ery site in 1858, constructed the ornate red brick building which replaced it in 1887, and by the turn of the century had built 200 Merseyside pubs, including two of Britain’s most ornately famous: The Philharmonic on Hope Street and The Vines on Lime Street.

When the Dusanjs took over Cains in 2002, a similar success story in tandem seemed to be in progress. The city was about to take off with the help of EU fund-ing and a Capital of Culture nom-ination while the brothers took a struggling business and turned it into an apparent winner with a flood of impressive new beers and innovative ideas.

“From the start, the Dusanjs were very keen on really tying in Liverpool with the beers’ promo-tion and consistently championed the city,” said Mr Routledge. “It become like a talisman for Liver-pool and a lot of people, especially down South, who had never assoc-iated Liverpool with good beer, began to sit up and take notice.”

The reverse takeover of the 100-pub Honeycombe portfolio last year looked destined to become the dawning of a second stage of high ambition – but the credit crunch put paid to that.

“What’s happened has come as a big personal shock”, said the Yorkshire author, who now lives in Aughton

He added: “It’s all still up in the air but I’m still hoping that I will have something in place in time because the book is still scheduled for the end of September. The brothers have always been good about talking to me, and I’m hoping that they still will be, despite what’s happened.”

mikechapple