Region & History

In Tadcaster, a small town in North Yorkshire, several breweries stand side by side. Samuel Smith has brewed here since 1758, John Smith's is based in the same town, and a third brewery belongs to Coors.

Samuel Smith points to its founding year of 1758 and, according to the brewery, remains in the hands of the Smith family. Humphrey Smith, who ran the company for many years, died on 29 June 2026. The family remains the owner.

Things look different at John Smith's. John Smith bought a brewery in Tadcaster in 1847 with money from his father. The brand later passed to Courage, which went to Scottish & Newcastle in 1995 and was taken over by Heineken in 2008. Today John Smith's belongs to Heineken UK. So it's no longer a small family brewery.

The second hub lies in the small town of Masham in the Dales. Robert Theakston founded the brewery there together with John Wood in 1827, at the Black Bull inn. In 1987, Scottish & Newcastle took over the then-owner Matthew Brown, and Theakston became part of a large corporation. In 2003 the family bought their brewery back.

Paul Theakston left the family business in 1992 and founded Black Sheep Brewery in Masham, in the former premises of the Lightfoot brewery. The name is a sly dig at his own family. Ever since, a town of just a few thousand people has had two breweries competing with each other in the Dales — and yet needing one another, since both draw visitors to the area.

There is no protected designation of origin for Yorkshire beer. The EU register lists things like Kentish ale and Rutland Bitter from England, but no entry for Yorkshire.