Wilshaw stumbles on an intriguing suggestion of a "hidden beer history" for the Westcountry...

Leafing through a book called Devon and Cornwall in Pictures, which was published in 1959, I found an interesting photograph of the Blue Anchor Hotel in Helston, Cornwall.

The picture, apparently of a man in an apron in a beer cellar, caught my eye because it gives one viewpoint of how breweries were faring in those counties at that time, a full half a century ago.

The entry from the book, which was published by Odhams Press, London, reads: "Beer brewing as a local craft was once a feature of life throughout the Duchy of Cornwall.

"There are records of many inns which brewed their own beer, and scores of big farmhouses from end to end of the county were similarly self-sufficient.

"During the last 50 years (that is: since 1909) almost all the inns serving home-brewed beer have been taken over by the big breweries or have at least ceased to make their own brews, until now it is said that the only remaining house of its kind is that in which the picture on the left was taken, the Blue Anchor Hotel at Helston.

"The brewer is drawing off a sample from one of the great vats in which the beer is brewed at this old inn."

If this summary is accurate, and I can't be 100% certain it is, then by the early 1960s, say, an entrenched and highly localised beer culture was obliterated in Cornwall. It follows that if it happened there, it probably happened in Devon too. I find this an extraordinary and intriguing suggestion, not least because an entrenched and highly-localised beer culture is my idea of an idyll on planet Earth, which could be splendid for tastebuds and the environment alike.

I, a bitter-drinking northerner by birth, had always been led to believe that this was cider country, which, to some extent, it certainly was, and still is.

But I do very much like the idea of this "hidden history" of beer brewing and I'd really love to find out more. What type of grain did they use? And what about hops? Wild hops? No hops?

Whether or not any of this farmhouse beer was anything but revolting, of course, is another story. But it can't have been much worse than the can of sweet Marston's Pedigree I had last week.