Ryde's building boom continued up to about 1850 when problems caused by the town's rapid expansion started to become apparent.  Two events stand out in this period; the construction of a pier in 1814 which enabled commerce to continue without being subject to the vagaries of the tides, and the gaining of town status in 1829.  A piped water supply and sewers were constructed from 1854 onwards.  About this time too, a new esplanade was constructed eastwards across the old "dover" on reclaimed land towards Appley.
   During this period, many pubs and hotels were opened to cater for Ryde's expanding population and growing appeal to holiday-makers.  A number of local brewers started production to help slake the thirst of the developing town.  Some brewed from their own pubs, others from dedicated sites.
   The 1859 Edition of White's Directory of Hampshire and the Isle of Wight lists the following breweries in the town:
 George Clements of 13 Castle Street
 Louisa Lake of the Eagle, 37/38 High Street
 W.B. Mew and Co. of 19 Union Street
 Edward Sweetman of 47 George Street
 William Tarver of the Anglesea Tavern
 James Woodrow of the Crown, High Street
 James Lake of the Lion Brewery, High Street
 Edward Sweetman brewed from the site of what is now the Commodore Bingo Hall, his direct outlet being a pub known as the St. George and Dragon situated opposite the present library.  Although Sweetman's produced a brochure about their brewery, the pub unfortunately was not featured.
    To all accounts, it was a small dark alehouse, frequented by old retired brewery men who smoked foul smelling pipes and spat frequently into the streets outside.
   Mr. Clement's brewery was roughly where the west wing of the present Esplanade Hotel is sited and was accessed from Castle Street.  He was later to sell out to William Baron Mew of Newport who had designs on dominating the brewing trade in the town.
   George Lake brewed from a site at the top of George Street, now a  car park at the rear of Ryde Job Centre with access through to Warwick Place.  It was known as the Eagle Brewery and was first listed in 1822.  His son James Lake started the Lion Brewery from a pub first known as the George on the corner of Garfield Road and the High Street in 1855.  The site is currently occupied by a branch of Currys.  The Lake family gave their name to the one existing pub once owned by them, the Lake Huron in Haylands, now that the Lake Superior has sadly gone.
The local brewers tended to cultivate their own chains of tied houses and most of the pubs that still exist today were constructed in the period up to 1877.  A fierce rivalry existed between them and occasionally within families as well.  Edward Sweetman Jnr. was a prime player in this scenario.  He set up his own operation in competition with his father's brewery from an adjacent site, taking over the brewhouse at the rear of the Anglesea Tavern after William Tarver retired in the 1870s.
   He expanded his trade to include the Castle Hotel in the High Street and built the famous London Hotel at the top end of the town at the beginning of the 20th century.  This venture, however, was to prove his financial ruin as he never recouped his expenditure on that project.
   James Woodrow originally had a small brewery in Union Lane, also
known as Brewhouse Lane in 1839, but moved the major part of his operation to the Crown Hotel in St. Thomas's Square by 1855.  He ceased brewing in 1871.
   Brewery takeovers began and when in 1865 John Cooper died in mysterious circumstances, his brewery was bought up and subsequently closed by Edward Sweetman Snr.  Poor old Mr. Cooper was found drowned in a large barrel of beer from which he could not be extricated.  Whether it was an accident, murder or suicide was never determined.  The vessel was dragged into Union Lane as a large crowd of townsfolk gathered and brewery workers set about demolishing it with sledgehammers.  When the barrel finally burst, Ryde's sots were ready with buckets and jugs to scoop up the flood of beer as it gushed down the road.  Cooper's Ale was obviously a brew with 'body'.
   Among the tied houses to his brewery estate is a reference to the elusive Barley Mow in Player Street.  This establishment never found its way into any of the local trade directories for the period and the only other listing for it was on the town map of Ryde dated 1865.  Presumably Edward Sweetman Snr. had no use for it and it was closed.  The other three pubs in the Cooper Estate, were the Wheatsheaf, the Oakfield Inn and the Roadside Inn in Nettlestone.
   In 1877 Edward Sweetman Snr. acquired the Eagle brewery from Louisa Lake, closed it down and used the buildings as a store.  The little Eagle Brewery Tap survived until 1972 and die to its location, ticked away behind the High Street, was known affectionately as "The Hole in
the Wall."  Sweetman's George Street premises became the largest brewery in Ryde until bought out by Mew Langton of Newport in 1921.   Meanwhile, a James Garland Duffett took over the Lion Brewery from James Lake in 1878.  With the closure of this site in 1922, brewing ceased in the town.
  The two brewers who now dominated the trade in Ryde were Brickwood's and Mew Langton.  The Brickwood family, though based in Portsmouth, always had a close connection with the Isle of Wight and many family members lived in the Bembridge area.  Both companies had depots in Newport and drays and later steam lorries supplied their now numerous public houses.
Great rivalry existed between the two companies which did not cease until they both came under the Whitbread umbrella in the 1960’s.    Despite rationalisation by the Whitbread giant one could still see examples of this rivalry until recently, as in Elmfield where the Mew Langton Lake Superior sat opposite the Brickwoods High Park Tavern.
    Still within recent memory in St. John's Road, Mew's held the license of the Bedford Hotel opposite the Brickwood's New Inn, both now sadly gone.
    Because the initial 19th century development began in lower Ryde, old seafront inns were demolished to make way for larger and more prestigious establishments.  The Royal Eagle and Albany replaced the earlier ramshackle Three Guns and Fighting Cocks.  Cluitts Refreshment Rooms, also known as the Original Inn, was demolished and replaced by the King Lud, the building not receiving  its mock Tudor cladding until some years later.
   Large hotels such as the Royal Pier Hotel, The Esplanade and the Osborne were constructed.  Many of them had small tap bars to the rear of their premises, for the use of tradesmen and artisans.
   The coming of the railway in the 1860s brought more trade and pubs with railway connections.  The Terminus and Railway Inn in St. John's Road are obvious candidates.  However, the Terminus underwent a strange transformation when the adjacent road bridge was built over the line.  The ground floor disappeared beneath the road level to become cellars and the first floor became the public area.  The Terminus stands empty now but the Railway Inn opposite happily survives, as the Hole in the Wall.
   Many of the town's smaller pubs held a beer licence only, and opened in private dwellings to help supplement the householder's income.  They proliferated after the Duke of Wellington took measures to counteract the effect of gin drinking by encouraging the consumption of beer.  Goldbourne's Beerhouse Act of 1830 enabled any householder to obtain from the Excise, on payment of two guineas a year, a licence to sell beer by retail in his dwelling house.  These beerhouses were often run by the wife of the householder and provided a second income.  They were invariably primitive establishments usually consisting of a front room or parlour of a small back street house.  Sanitation and hygiene were usually very poor or non-existent.
   Towards the ends of the 19th century the tide was beginning to turn against alcohol consumption with the rise of the Temperance Movement and the increasing public perception of drunkenness as anti-social behaviour.  With this came the strongly expressed opinion by the Police to the Magistrates that the law was being broken by the beerhouses in an effort to stay solvent,(i.e.) drinks were being served to customers out of licensing hours.  The Licensing Act of 1904 set up a Compensation Scheme funded by the pub trade itself.  Contributions were levied upon the licensed premises in the area and closure of "uneconomic" or "unsuitable" premises could be recommended to the Compensation Authority in Winchester.
    The old beerhouses dating from before 1869 were now brought under the control of the Licensing Magistrates.  An active policy of opposing the renewal of licences was adopted by the police involving random surveillance designed to determine the average numbers of customers using a pub, or indeed, the lack of them.  Closure based on these observations would then be recommended to the Licensing Magistrates.  Appendix 3 gives an example.
   In 1905 the Chief Constable of Ryde made his objection to the number of licensed premises in the town the subject of his annual report, and the first of several waves of closures began.  Much is made of Ryde's position at the head of a league table of licensed premises per head of town population.
   Over the next sixty years, the number of public houses declined steadily but even up to 1970 the town still possessed a varied selection of interesting and original pubs which formed an important part of the social fabric.  Many were the focus for small local communities and their landlords and landladies well-known local characters.  However, as the 1970s progressed and Brickwood's and Mew Langton disappeared as local brewers, a national company came to dominate 95% of the town's tied trade
   When the Whitbread giant decided to rationalise its local holdings, the number of licensed premises shrank to about twenty-five over the following twenty years.  By the time government legislation was enacted to curb the abuse of local monopolies by national brewers, it was all too late and many fine pubs were gone forever.  At the time of writing,  in 1996, the number of breweries holding licences in the town has again increased.   Now Gales of Horndean, Courage, Ushers and even the newly re-formed Burts Brewery are leasing pubs in Ryde.
   The pubs in this book are grouped geographically rather than alphabetically but the Index lists all the names by which an establishment is, or has been known.  It has been often said that Ryde was "over licensed" as a town, but although many old pubs deserved to go, many did not and all were to be sadly missed.
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