Our next talk – Pre-eminent but not remembered: the Malting Families of Sawbridgeworth

On Thursday 25th May at the Hailey Centre at 7.30pm Tim Howard-Smith will give a talk entitled “Pre-eminent but not remembered: the Malting Families of Sawbridgeworth.

In 1769, Thomas Adderley’s brainchild, the River Stort Navigation was completed after just three short years of construction. The immediate impact was an upturn in trade for those already positioned along the river. Malt swiftly became the prime export commodity of the area, and as a result within a very short period following the opening of the Navigation, several notable non-conformist families keen to take advantage of the opportunities that the new heavy goods super-highway of its day afforded, arrived. Within thirty years the area around Sawbridgeworth would come to produce one third of all the malt used in the country. Today these families are barely remembered but they have left their mark upon this area in may ways, and this presentation will attempt to draw out some of their stories and their impact.