The Story behind our Seasonal Beer: North Downs Gold

The Titsey Brewing Company is situated at one of the highest points of the North Downs, some 240 metres above sea level.  It occupies a unique site where nearby fields offer wonderful views of London to the north, showing off both the skyscrapers of the City of London and Canary Wharf, while to the south the ranges roll away from the Greensand Ridge to the High Weald.

Other than patches of clay-with-flints at the top of the hills, the North Downs are almost entirely composed of chalk.  Chalk is a soft limestone originating some 60 to 100 million years ago during the Cretaceous period and formed from the shells of billions of tiny algae called coccolithophores that lived in the warm shallow sea covering southern England at that time. (Their existence is the inspiration behind the Coccolith art installation just south of the brewery.) As the African continent collided with Europe some 60 million years ago the major effect was the formation of the Alps, but a northern “ripple” formed a dome of which the North and South Downs are the remaining un-eroded extremities.  

The thin alkaline soil on the chalk downlands does not support dominating lush grasses, but this enables a wide selection of plants to thrive that are scarce elsewhere in Britain. These include cowslips and wild orchids, particularly bee and pyramid varieties, but also including the late-spider, monkey and man orchids. Butterflies such as the marbled white and various blues are also common during the summer months.

Evidence of human activity on the North Downs has been found going back some 400,000 years, but more commonly back to Neolithic times (c3000BC).  The less wooded ridge of the North Downs was the ideal route for stone-age man coming from France and travelling west to Stonehenge and other trade routes.  Today the path is a National Trail called the North Downs Way which runs 153 miles from Dover to Farnham.  It passes just south of the Titsey brewery which provides a welcome stop for weary and thirsty walkers.