At the height of its success it was 'the cream of Manchester' but now Boddingtons Brewery is a name associated with the city's past.
In the 1990s Boddingtons was swept along on a wave of Madchester cool, where everything the city produced seemed to attract an eager audience across Britain and beyond. Even its traditionally 'northern' intuitions were given a new shine under the spotlight of Manchester's cultural capital.
It wasn't the Hacienda, Oasis or The Stone Roses – but Boddingtons was fortunate to exist in a city that produced them. And, thanks to a corporate takeover and some genius marketing – by 1997 its creamy, straw-coloured bitter was being exported to over 40 countries.
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Boddingtons brewery in Strangeways was an institution in the city for over 200 years. Founded by two grain merchants, Thomas Caister and Thomas Fray, on the eve of the industrial revolution in 1778, the business of selling beer to thirsty factory workers proved to be a winner.
Henry Boddington, born in 1813, rose through the company to become a partner and, in 1853, took out a loan to become its sole owner. The business continued to boom, with 100,000 barrels of beer a year being brewed by 1877 – the same year a fire almost destroyed the brewery.
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Henry Snr died in 1886 to be succeeded by his son Henry Jnr, and the brewery continued to move with the times as the 20th century approached. Boddies continued to brew its bitters and ales through World War One, the Depression of the 1930s and World War Two – though German bombers left the brewery in flames again on December 22, 1940.
Post-war success meant that national brewers took an interest in the Manchester plant. But Boddingtons remained independent until 1989 when the Strangeways Brewery and Boddingtons brand – but not the estate – were sold to long-time shareholders Whitbread for £50.7 million.
Although Boddingtons had experienced a decline before the Whitbread takeover, its beers retained their popularity in and around Greater Manchester, with only five percent of its sales outside the North West. But Whitbread transformed Boddingtons into a national brand by expanding its production, and importantly, by 1993 most of its sales were from outside its North West heartland, including exporting its beer overseas.
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Boddingtons rise in sales also coincided with Manchester's rise in cultural influence throughout Britain. Whitbread's chief executive, Peter Jarvis, told the Evening Standard in 1995: "It was very fortuitous that the brewery was in Manchester. To outsiders, Manchester is a very attractive place – known the world over for soccer, art, music and broadcasting. It would be difficult to have a Cream of Wolverhampton even though Banks's beer is very good. People do not aspire to visit Wolverhampton. On the whole they try to by-pass it."
Another key component of Boddingtons success in the '90s was its high-profile marketing campaigns. The London-based Bartle Bogle Hegarty (BHH) advertising agency was appointed to rebrand Boddingtons.
The agency created some of the most recognisable advertising slogans in history and helped turn the Manchester model Melanie Sykes into a household name. Much of the agency's work poked gentle fun at the fact that Boddingtons was a peculiarly northern drink with a strong working class following.
Following Guinness, Boddingtons was one of the first beers to incorporate a 'widget' into its cans - a design that gave its poured contents a creamy, draught-like head. BBH introduced the 'Cream of Manchester' tagline to Boddingtons products as part of its rebrand in 1991.
Originally a set of print adverts, the advertising campaign revitalised the brand's image and was extended to TV in 1992. That year, a TV featured a glamourous woman wearing a black dress walking across a beautiful apartment where she proceeds to use the foam from the top of a pint of Boddies as part of her skin-care regime.
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An equally sophisticated actor, looking dashing in a full tuxedo and bow tie, embraces her and gets a whiff of the creamy beer foam she has rubbed into her cheek, and says: "By 'eck, ye' smell gorgeous tonight, petal." Another of its iconic adverts was a spoof on the Walls Cornetto campaign – in which another actress glides along the Irwell in a gondola, quenching her thirst, not on ice cream, but with a pint of Boddies.
Smitten with its creamy taste, the glamorous looking actress wipes the beery foam from her upper-lip and utters the immortal line: "By 'eck, it's gorgeous." The handsome actor in a passing gondola – who had his pint of Boddingtons swiped by the woman – pulls out another can and says to the camera: "That Glady's Althorp, she never buys 'er own."
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From 1996 to 1999, the previously unknown Melanie Sykes got her big break in the Boddingtons TV campaign. In one memorable advert, the Mossley-born model pops her head out of an ice cream van, passing an athlete a pint of bitter instead of a cone and says: "Do you want a Flake in that, love?"
In 2000, Whitbread became part of Belgian brewer Interbrew, which owned Stella Artois. In September 2004, the new owners announced the closure of the Strangeways brewery, with most of its production moving to Wales and Lancashire, while its cask ale production – which accounted for less than 10 percent of its output – moved to Hydes Brewery in Moss Side.
The decision to close the Strangeways site was made despite the company admitting the brewery was profitable but the site had become a valuable asset. Despite a fierce campaign, the iconic Boddies factory chimney came tumbling down when the brewery was demolished in 2007.
The site was sold to developers and used for parking, but since 2022, it has been home to state-of-the-art educational facility City Campus Manchester. In March 2024, the Manchester Evening News reported plans to increase the number of flats on the former Boddingtons Brewery site had been approved.
The site — next to Stangeways on the edge of the city centre — was already going to be redeveloped into a 460-strong apartment complex, after towers between 11 and 27 storeys tall got the green light in March 2022. Latimer — the development arm of Clarion Housing Association, the firm behind the project — has since bid to expand the project reportedly at a cost of £105m. In September 2023, it unveiled plans to add another 44 flats and three more storeys.
And while the Strangeways brewery is now a thing of the past, the Boddingtons brand lives on as part of its owner's, Anheuser-Busch Inbev (the largest brewers in the world's) portfolio of beers.
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