Newson Garrett was the founder of Snape Malting's which has now become a famous opera house that hosts the Aldeburgh Festival that moved there in 1967.
He was also Aldeburgh's first Mayor at the latter part of his life.
Newson Garrett (1812-93) was born in nearby Leiston and the younger son of the well known agricultural engineer Richard Garrett III who built the Long shop works there.
Newson married his brothers parents-in-law daughter, Louisa Dunnell, and spent seven years managing Dunnell's pawnbroker shop in Whitechappel London before returning to his native Suffolk in 1841.
He bought a small corn and coal merchants business from Osborne and Fennell at Snape Bridge, that quickly expanded over the following three years.
In early 1850 he became a partner in the Bow Brewery, London. This lead to the establishment of Newson Garrett and sons, the malting business. Barley was collected from the neighbouring farms and shipped down the river Alde round the coast to the breweries in the North to Newcastle or London in the south.
In 1854 he started tuning barley into malt by soaking the barley and heating for a while in a large malting house. He built the malthouse at Snape using bricks from a local brickworks he had taken over, to his own design. The malthouse had very distinctive vents in its root that emitted a white steam and a sweet smell during the four days the barley was roasting at the kiln.
The malt (main ingredient in beer) was then shipped to the breweries. Malting provides an important bridge between agriculture and the brewing industry and was in great demand.
Newson and Louisa had eleven children of which the most famous were Elisabeth who when married, was known as Elisabeth Garrett-Anderson the UK's first woman doctor and Millicent Fawcett the president of the woman's suffragette movement.
In 1889, Newson was elected as Mayor of Aldeburgh, a post to which his daughter Elisabeth Garrett-Anderson followed him in 1908, fifteen years after his death.
Newson died of a heart attack in 1893 and was buried at Saint Peter and Saint Paul's Church in Aldeburgh. There is a commemorative plaque in the church on which his children wrote:- 'His Life from early Mankind was spent in Aldeburgh Where for upwards of Half a Century He took a Leading Part In All that Concerned the Welfare of the Town" |
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