A riverside brewery in west London and the partnership that named it.

Beer has been brewed on the riverside site in Chiswick, west London, since the seventeenth century; Fuller’s own history puts the start in the late 1600s, English Wikipedia notes. The name came later. English Wikipedia, citing the company’s history, says the first record of the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick dates from 1816, when Douglas Thompson took the Griffin name from Meux & Reid, a London brewery that had failed. English Wikipedia says a wisteria was planted at the brewery in the same year.

The Fuller family arrived in 1829, when John Fuller joined the business. That partnership was dissolved in 1841 after Douglas Thompson left for France, and in 1845 the firm that still carries the three names was formed: John Bird Fuller was joined by Henry Smith of the Romford Brewery and Smith’s brother-in-law John Turner, who became head brewer. The company gives 1845 as its founding date, and Fuller, Smith & Turner remained the legal name through every later change.

For most of the twentieth century Fuller’s was a London family brewer with its own pubs. The beer that came to carry the name was London Pride, first brewed in the late 1950s; English Wikipedia gives 1959 in one place and 1958 in another. The name was borrowed from a flower: Saxifraga × urbium, long known as London pride, which grew on the bombsites left by the Blitz and became a symbol of the city’s recovery, and which Noël Coward made the subject of a patriotic song in 1941. London Pride was named Champion Beer of Britain in CAMRA’s best bitter class in 1979 and 1995, English Wikipedia says.

London Pride, ESB and a name with two keepers.

The stronger beer that made the brewery’s reputation among drinkers was ESB. Fuller’s says it was launched in 1971 as a winter brew replacing a beer called Old Burton Extra, an account repeated by the beer writer Roger Protz in 2021 for its 50th anniversary. ESB was named CAMRA’s Champion Beer of Britain in 1978, 1981 and 1985. A bottle-conditioned strong ale is named 1845, after the founding year; English Wikipedia says the then Prince Charles added hops to a copper of it on a visit in February 1995, and that it won CAMRA’s Champion Bottle Conditioned Beer award in 1998. Fuller’s Vintage Ale, a dated annual bottling, was first made in 1997.

The brewery grew by buying others. Fuller’s agreed to buy George Gale & Co of Horndean, Hampshire, in November 2005, the Morning Advertiser reported. CAMRA said at the time it would fight to protect the Horndean brewery, and in February 2006 Fuller’s announced that brewing there would end the following month, with Gale’s beers such as HSB moving to Chiswick, the Morning Advertiser reported. The cider maker Cornish Orchards was bought in 2013 and the Sussex brewer Dark Star in February 2018, English Wikipedia says.

Then the business divided. On 25 January 2019 Fuller, Smith & Turner announced the sale of its entire beer, cider, soft drinks and distribution business, including the Griffin Brewery, Cornish Orchards, Dark Star and its wine wholesaling arm, to Asahi Europe, part of Japan’s Asahi Group Holdings. The brand itself was handled separately. The company’s announcement said Fuller’s would keep legal ownership of the trademarks, while Asahi received a perpetual, global, exclusive and royalty-free licence to use certain of them, including the Fuller’s name, logo and cartouche, for beverages. Asahi said it would keep brewing at the Griffin Brewery, and the Morning Advertiser reported on 29 April 2019 that the brands had officially joined Asahi UK’s portfolio.

Design and documentation.

The seven brands in this group are all British beer names: Fuller’s, Greene King, Adnams, BrewDog, Theakston, Old Speckled Hen and Shepherd Neame. Beer brands in general sit at many different points in the trade, from family brewers that still carry a founder’s name to labels that now belong to much larger drinks groups, and a single brand can be sold everywhere from a corner shop to a pub bar.

A beer brand’s identity is usually carried less by a single bottle than by a pump clip, a label, a name and the place it promises, because the company behind the name may have changed hands, moved its brewing or grown far beyond the town where it started. That makes the questions behind each name worth asking plainly: who started it, who owns it now, and where its beer is actually brewed and packaged.

Each guide separates what independent sources record from what the company says about itself — its founding story, its owners over time, where its beer is brewed and how its labels have changed — and marks plainly what rests only on the company’s own word.

One name on two businesses since 2019.

Since the sale, the word Fuller’s has stood for two different companies. On the beer side, London Pride, ESB and the rest are brewed and sold by Asahi UK, which uses the Fuller’s name under the 2019 licence and lists the Griffin Brewery in Chiswick as its registered home. On the pub side, Fuller, Smith & Turner became solely a pub and hotel operator: English Wikipedia, citing the company’s results for 2021, says it runs more than 380 pubs, inns and hotels in southern England, managed and tenanted. The pub company kept growing after the split; English Wikipedia says it bought Cotswold Inns & Hotels in October 2019, after adding the six country inns of Bel & The Dragon in June 2018, The Drinks Business reported. At the 2019 announcement the two companies described a continuing relationship in which Asahi’s beers, Fuller’s brands among them, would be sold in Fuller’s pubs. English Wikipedia lists Michael Turner as chairman and Simon Emeny as chief executive.

London Pride, meanwhile, has kept a high public profile through sport and civic events. English Wikipedia says it has been the official beer of the London Marathon since 2007 and of Pride in London since 2018, and has sponsored Premiership Rugby and the British & Irish Lions since 2021.

The name needs care online. The pub company’s site is fullers.co.uk, while the brewery under Asahi has its own site at fullersbrewery.co.uk; both refer to the same heritage, but they are separate businesses. The name is also shared with unrelated companies abroad, including the American Fuller Brush Company.

For a design guide, Fuller’s shows how a brewery named for the griffin and a beer named for a flower can carry a London identity across nearly two centuries, and how a single brand can be shared by two owners under a licence. Compare Greene King, the Suffolk brewer and pub company, and Shepherd Neame, the Kent brewer. For this guide we use brewery red, Chiswick navy and malt gold with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Fuller’s’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.