IN times gone by the area had a myriad of small brewers, which one by one were taken over and amalgamated with bigger names, and so the cycle went on.

Massey, Duttons, Lion are all names from the past, while Thwaites can boast more than 200 years of tradition.

Duttons was first established in 1799 and as a century passed, it was handed down through the generations.

During World War I, with many men fighting the war and the Defence of the Realm Act putting restrictions on opening times and spending, many of these little breweries saw trade severely hit.

Thus, by the 1920s, small breweries had had their day and Duttons started to make acquisitions, such as the Blackburn Brewery Co in 1928, which had itself taken over Horsfall's Brewery of Brierfield and Crabtree's in Clitheroe.

Further takeovers and name changes occurred over the years; in 1938 it became Dutton's Lancashire and Yorkshire Brewery Corporation and in 1963 it opened its offices in High Street.

Among its bottled beers was Oh Be Joyful, an old English ale, better known as OBJ.

Twelve months later, however, it was taken over by Whitbread but closed in 1978. The building was demolished in 1986.

The Lion brewery in Little Harwood, is believed to have dated back to 1875, when it was called The Little Harwood Brewery Company.

By 1897, it had become Nuttall & Company and it remained as such for 30 years, until 1927 when Matthew Brown acquired it. The brewery’s old embossed bottles used to carry a trademark rampant lion as and its next door pub, The Seven Trees, which was built around 1900, had a carved lion in the stonework above the doors.

In 1985, a bid launched by the giant Scottish & Newcastle to take over the Lion Brewery was opposed by many and even led to the forming of The Matthew Brown Preservation Society.

Two years later S & N came back with an enhanced valuation and by 1992 the brewery was closed.

Local brewer and pub retailer Daniel Thwaites has been based in Blackburn since 1807.

Born in 1777, Daniel Thwaites first began brewing when he joined the ‘Eanam Brewery’ in partnership with local businessmen, Edward Duckworth and William Clayton.

In 1824, the brewery became the sole property of ‘Thwaites’ when William Clayton sold his remaining share to Daniel.

Daniel and his wife Betty had 12 children, four sons and eight daughters. Daniel Thwaites junior was born in 1817, the sixth of their twelve children.

He and his brothers John and Thomas later inherited the brewery following the death of their father, in 1843.

Following the purchase of the Snig Brook Brewery in 1863, the brewery continued to prosper and develop and it was at this time that the Eanam Brewery expanded production to provide 100,000 barrels a year by 1878.

Daniel junior was not only as a brewer but also as a Conservative politician. He was MP for Blackburn from 1875 until 1880. He was was said to be a good landlord who owned some of the best public houses in Blackburn.

Although it had already become a limited company, Thwaites’ major expansion came after the First World War.

In 1923, it bought the James Pickup Wines & Spirits Company and then Henry Shaw & Co, which owned the New Brewery in Salford. In 1925 Thwaites began bottling its beers and in 1927 they bought the Fountain Free Brewery.

During the 1960s Thwaites’ public houses were in abundance across the town and Daniel Thwaites’ ales had become popular throughout East Lancashire.

1966 saw the opening of the new £5.5m new Star Brewery and brewhouse followed in 1972 by a new £3m bottling plant, considered to be ‘the last word in bottling complexes.’ In Burnley, Massey’s brewery was a well known name - though the family had connections with the textile industry, they also owned Bridge End Brewery, founded around 1750.

It acquired William Astley of Nelson in 1925, followed by J. Grimshaw and John Kenyon of Cloughfold in 1928.

The Astley family were looking to relinquish active management of their brewery and decided that flotation of the business under the umbrella of a larger company might be the answer. In 1921 Buying Grimshaws gave Massey's about 120 pubs in Burnley and by 1939 the company had over 150 pubs and off-licenses in the town.

John Kenyon Ltd operated from the Rossendale Brewery on Bacup Road, near to the Rossendale Union Gas Works and had 78 outlets which came under the Massey name. Its owl trademark was introduced in 1937 and its bottled beers included 6d Special Mild Ale, Prize Stout, King's Ale and Golden Bitter Beer.