The Hop Leaf Gazette was the ‘In House’ magazine of H&G Simonds Ltd for distribution to management, staff & publicans. Produced in the editorial style of its day, it included articles on; brewery operations, products & branding, pub refurbishments and corporate news, as well as the profiles and obituaries of key employees, licencees & pub management, births, marriages & deaths among long serving staff, brewery sporting & social events and even a regular ‘Nature Note’. Illustrated with images of people, pubs and events, it proved very popular and well-read among the wider Brewery family.
Today, it provides us all with a fascinating Social History resource and archive that we have now made more widely accessible here.
At the end of each edition year in September a blue bound annual ‘Compendium Edition’ was offerd to management & staff for a small subscripotion. We have a complete set of the 16 annual editions that were produced from 1926 -1942. These are now on-line as a key social record of the period. HERE
Here are the issues from March 1943:-
Vol XXVI – XXVIII, 1952 – 1954
Vol XXXII – XXXIII, 1958 – 1959
Scroll down for some of the most momentous issues:
1985 The Bi-Centenary Souvenir Issue
1952 F.A. Simonds’ Jubilee Issue
1953 F.A. Simonds Obituary Issue
1953 Summer Issue, The Coronation of Queen Elizabeth 2nd
Even our high resolution scanning has not made the small faded font reliably searchable for specific names or text, but do please try searching for your names or items of interest, using the search tool at the bottom of each page. Once you find an issue of interest, follow the notes to search that issue in more detail.