From a leased brewhouse to a family brewer that counts its age in centuries.

Shepherd Neame is an independent brewer based in the market town of Faversham, Kent. The company says it was founded in 1698 and describes itself as Britain’s oldest brewer. It also says that evidence points to brewing on its site since at least 1573, and English Wikipedia, citing Faversham town records, gives the same year. The claim is not unchallenged: English Wikipedia notes that the Three Tuns Brewery in Bishop’s Castle, Shropshire, was licensed in 1642 and is also described as Britain’s oldest licensed brewery site.

The 1698 date belongs to Richard Marsh. According to the company’s history, Marsh leased the Faversham brewery in 1678 and bought it outright twenty years later, the year the business now treats as its official start; English Wikipedia also names Marsh as founder, citing Kent County Council’s historic records. The brewery then passed down a chain of marriages and partnerships. The company says Marsh’s daughter-in-law Mary married Samuel Shepherd in 1732, after which Shepherd ran the business and bought pubs around Faversham and on the Isle of Sheppey. His son Julius Shepherd, the company says, brought steam power to the brewery in 1789 with a Boulton & Watt engine.

The second name arrived in the Victorian era. In the company’s account, Percy Beale Neame joined as a partner in 1864, and in 1875 he bought out the Shepherd share to become sole proprietor. English Wikipedia says ownership has passed through five families in unbroken succession. The Neames have run the business ever since; the company says Jonathan Neame joined in 1991, became managing director in 1999 and chief executive in 2003, and English Wikipedia lists him as chief executive. Shares in the company trade on the Aquis Stock Exchange, English Wikipedia notes. The official history, Shepherd Neame: A Story That’s Been Brewing for 300 Years, was written by the historian Theo Barker and published in 1998.

A shepherd’s crook, a hop leaf and a fighter plane.

The company mark is a shepherd’s crook, a play on the first half of the name. In September 2016 Design Week reported the brewer’s first rebrand in 18 years, by the consultancy JDO. The palette was cut from red, blue, orange and white to grey and gold, the red background was removed, and the crook was redrawn with a hop leaf laced into it and an arc above it standing for the Kent countryside, JDO creative director Ray Smith told the magazine. Smith also described wider letterspacing and a more modern hand-drawn typeface. The magazine said the project took about 18 months and that JDO had already redesigned product brands including Spitfire and Whitstable Bay.

The best-known beer has its own visual life. The company says Spitfire was first brewed in 1990 to mark the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Britain, as a one-off brew to raise money for charity, and stayed on. The Morning Advertiser reported in April 2019 on a Spitfire Amber Ale redesign that put the outline of the aircraft across the centre of the logo, unveiled at Kent County Cricket Club’s ground in Canterbury. Packaging Insights reported in February 2020 that the agency Identica and the can maker Canpack had produced matt navy, red and silver Spitfire cans, with the plane’s silhouette flying through the lettering. In October 2025 The Brewers Journal reported a further redesign by the agency Thirst: a hand-drawn Spitfire logo evoking vapour trails, a reimagined Shepherd Neame monogram, and gold added to the red, white and blue to highlight the Royal Warrant.

The Spitfire posters also drew complaints. The Morning Advertiser reported in March 2001 that the Advertising Standards Authority had dismissed complaints about “Bottle of Britain” posters that had been removed from the London Underground, ruling that they did not disparage Germans.

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.

Kentish ales, a brewhouse in Faversham and beers brewed for others.

The older beer in the range is Bishops Finger. The company says it was first brewed in 1958 and named, according to folklore, after a finger-shaped signpost pointing the way to Thomas Becket’s tomb in Canterbury, and it says the beer holds Protected Geographical Indication status as a Kentish strong ale. The company also says it became the first regional brewer of lager in the UK in 1968 with Hürlimann, and that it launched 1698, a Kentish strong ale, for its 300th anniversary in 1998.

All of it is brewed in Faversham. English Wikipedia says the brewery draws chalk-filtered water from an artesian well beneath the site. The company says that in 2017 its wooden mash tuns, after more than a century of service, were retired and their teak reused by a local shipwright to clad new stainless-steel vessels. The brewery also makes beers for others: The Morning Advertiser reported in July 2019 on an exclusive deal for the Thai lager Singha, which English Wikipedia says Shepherd Neame brews under licence. The company says it added its first cider, Orchard View, in 2017. Shepherd Neame is also a pub owner, with 286 pubs and hotels, mostly in Kent and London, in results to June 2025 cited by English Wikipedia.

For a design guide, Shepherd Neame shows how a brewer can let the company mark stay quiet — a crook and a hop leaf in grey and gold — while a single beer, Spitfire, carries the loud colours and the aircraft. Compare Fuller’s, the London brewer, and Singha, the Thai lager brewed in Faversham under licence. For this guide we use hop gold, navy and crook grey with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

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