Tennent's Lager: Wellpark Brewery and Scotland's Lager

Each major claim carries one of three labels. established means supported by primary records, official bodies or several independent reliable sources. shared means the core fact is sound but sources disagree on details, dates or interpretation. traditional means widely repeated but not traceable to a primary or independent source.

Tennent's history is unusually well archived. The company's records, from the late eighteenth century onwards, are held by the University of Glasgow's Archives and Special Collections as part of the Scottish Brewing Archive. Historic Environment Scotland's 2025 listing record for the brewery clock tower summarises the site's history. Carol Foreman's chapter in Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010) credits its information to Tennent's itself, and is useful on the can designs.

The weakest claims are the oldest. The 1556 date rests on a family tradition recorded in a craft history, not on brewery records. The visit of Bonnie Prince Charlie's army in 1745 is told by the company. Claims that Tennent's was Britain's first lager, and that the slang word "scrubber" began at Wellpark, also need care.

The Tennents and the Drygate

traditional The Tennent family's brewing history is said to begin in 1556 with Robert Tennent, a private brewer and maltster. The catalogue of the company's records at the University of Glasgow notes that this date comes from the Chronicles of the Maltmen Craft in Glasgow. It has not been confirmed from other records, and it describes a family's brewing, not a continuous business on one site. The company and Historic Environment Scotland both repeat the 1556 date as the start of brewing on the site; this card treats it as tradition.

established In 1740 the brothers Hugh and Robert Tennent founded a public brewing partnership, H. & R. Tennent, at Drygate Bridge in Glasgow. The Drygate, near the cathedral and the Molendinar Burn, had long been a brewing district. Carol Foreman, in Made in Scotland (2nd edn, 2010), says the Tennents' brewery drew water from a deep well on its own ground and malted barley from the family farm at Easter Common, now Petershill.

traditional Foreman reports that at Christmas 1745, Prince Charles Edward Stuart's army stopped at the brewery on its return from Derby and was given ale. The Jacobite army did occupy Glasgow at the end of 1745, so the story is plausible. The detail that the men were "refreshed and heartened by the brew" comes from the company's own retelling and has not been traced to a contemporary record.

established By 1769 Hugh's sons, John and Robert, were trading as J. & R. Tennent. In the 1790s the firm bought a neighbouring brewery and renamed the enlarged site Wellpark, after a local well. It grew to about five acres. Wellpark was exporting beer by 1791, and the firm sent beer and stout from the Clyde to North and South America.

A Victorian exporter

shared By the mid-nineteenth century Tennent's was one of Britain's largest exporters of bottled beer. Foreman says the firm was the world's largest exporter of bottled beer by the 1850s; The Scotsman places that in the 1860s. Its trade included pale ales for India and the colonies, among them a Bombay Export Pale Ale.

shared Foreman says the red "T" trademark was in use from the 1860s and registered in 1876 for use throughout the British Empire. The date is the company's and has not been checked against the trademark register for this card.

established The family's control passed through several hands in the nineteenth century. Robert Tennent's eldest son, Hugh, ran the firm after 1827. He retired in 1855 and his son Charles Stewart Parker Tennent took over. Charles died in 1864, a few months before his father, and trustees ran the business for his young sons, Archibald and Hugh. In 1884 Hugh bought his brother's share and took sole control.

Hugh Tennent and lager

established Hugh Tennent began brewing lager at Wellpark in 1885. The University of Glasgow catalogue says he did so after a tour of Bavaria in 1881–82 and that the first lager was brewed for export. Foreman says he was in poor health, convalescing in Europe, when he tasted the pale German beers that were beginning to compete with Tennent's pale ale abroad.

shared Foreman says the first lager was brewed in May 1885 in a small way using the existing plant, and that Hugh's idea was laughed at by those who thought the Scots would never drink it. The ridicule is a common feature of company origin stories. The success is a matter of record.

established In 1889 Hugh commissioned a purpose-built lager brewery beside the existing ale brewery. Foreman says the German brewer Jacob Klinger, who had advised on the first lager, was put in charge, and that the German engineering firm L. A. Riedinger of Augsburg built the plant. She reports that a Glasgow newspaper called the project "a madman's dream". Foreman says even the coopers who made the maturation casks were brought from Germany.

established Hugh Tennent died in 1890, aged 27, before the new brewery was finished. It was completed in 1891. Foreman describes him as the last member of the family in direct control of the company. After his death, trustees, among them Dr Wyllie Clark, controlled the business. In 1893 Tennent's lager won a top award at the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago.

established The clock tower built in 1889 as part of the lager brewery still stands. Historic Environment Scotland listed it at Category C in August 2025. The listing describes a red-brick tower with a clock in a stone roundel and a louvred bell opening, used to mark breaks and shift changes for the workforce.

Was it Britain's first lager?

shared Tennent's is often described as the first lager brewed commercially in Britain. The Scotsman, for example, repeats the claim. It is not correct without qualification. The Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales records a lager brewery at Wrexham, built in 1882 and brewing to a Bavarian recipe, and describes Wrexham Lager as the first lager brewed in Britain. Tennent's can fairly be called Scotland's first commercial lager and one of the earliest in Britain.

Bottles, cans and the "scrubbers"

established The firm made its own containers. Foreman says it had its own pottery for stoneware bottles by the end of the nineteenth century, later moving to glass. It became a limited company, J. & R. Tennent Ltd, in 1901, and introduced draught lager in 1924.

shared Tennent's was among the first British brewers to sell beer in cans. Several sources give 1935 for its first canned lager. Foreman gives 1936 and describes the cans: cone-topped with a crown cap, known as "Brasso" cans from their likeness to tins of metal polish, and at first sold only to ships' stores.

established According to Foreman, the cone-topped cans were dropped after the Second World War. A flat-topped American-style can followed for export in 1954, and in 1955 the 16-ounce "two-glass" can was introduced at home. Printed series followed: Scottish scenes from 1959 to 1961, an "English Series" in 1962, and in 1964 the "Housewives' Choice", twenty models, each with a recipe using beer.

traditional Foreman reports that the women employed to scrub the great oak maturation casks at Wellpark were known as "scrubbers", and that this is the origin of the Glasgow slang meaning of the word. The story is told by the company and has not been confirmed from dictionary evidence for this card.

The "Lager Lovelies"

established In January 1965 Tennent's launched the "Ann Series" of cans, at first for export only, featuring the model Ann Johansen in scenes at a pool, in a garden or boating on Loch Lomond. Foreman says Ann appeared on every can of Tennent's lager and export from 1965 to 1969. A more revealing series, "Ann on Vacation", was confined to export markets.

established In 1969 Ann was replaced by a rotating group of models known as the "Lager Lovelies" (for export, "Tennent's Girls"). They included two former Miss Scotlands. Models were on three-year contracts. In 1982 a "Can Girl Calendar", obtained by collecting ring-pulls, drew 30,000 requests in under three months, according to Foreman. For the lager centenary in 1985 the firm produced cans showing the Lovelies in historical costume.

shared The campaign ended around 1991. STV and The Scotsman both give 1991 as the year of the last cans; some summaries give 1989. STV reports that research by the firm in 1990 found most drinkers indifferent to the cans, that sales were flat, and that the campaign had come to look old-fashioned.

established The cans were criticised at the time and since. Feminist campaigners said they objectified and exploited women, and the alcohol-marketing researcher Dr Thora Hands has argued that they helped to sustain sexist stereotypes in the 1970s and 1980s. STV also reports that models interviewed by Hands spoke positively of the work, which paid well and helped some build careers. The cans are now collected.

Changing owners

established J. & R. Tennent became a public company in 1953. In 1963 Charrington United Breweries took it over, with some 240 licensed houses. In 1966 it merged with United Caledonian Breweries to form Tennent Caledonian Breweries, with brewing concentrated at Wellpark in Glasgow and the Heriot Brewery in Edinburgh. Wellpark was largely rebuilt between 1965 and 1968. In 1967 Charrington merged with Bass to form Bass Charrington.

established In June 2000 the Belgian brewer Interbrew bought Bass's brewing business, including Tennent's. Interbrew merged with the Brazilian brewer AmBev in 2004 to form InBev, which bought Anheuser-Busch in 2008. Foreman's text, written before these later changes were complete, describes Tennent's as owned by Interbrew.

established On 27 August 2009 C&C Group, the Irish maker of Magners and Bulmers cider, announced that it would buy AB InBev's businesses in Scotland and Ireland, including Wellpark and the Tennent's brands, for £180 million. AB InBev kept rights to use the Tennent's Super and Tennent's Pilsner names in some markets abroad.

established In 2014 C&C and the Scottish brewer Williams Bros opened Drygate Brewing Co., a smaller craft brewery, on the Wellpark site.

Market share and sponsorship

established At the time of the 2009 sale, The Drinks Business reported that Tennent's accounted for 55 per cent of lager volumes sold in Scotland's on-trade (pubs, bars and restaurants). Later figures are reported in different ways. C&C's interim results for the half-year to August 2024 call Tennent's Scotland's number one beer brand, and report that its on-trade share rose by 5 percentage points over the 12 weeks to 10 August 2024 while volumes fell. The Grocery Gazette reported in August 2026 that Tennent's volumes had fallen 2.8 per cent in the first half of the year as Scottish beer consumption declined, though the brand gained share of on-trade lager. These are company-reported figures.

shared Tennent's sponsored the T in the Park music festival from its first year until 2016. Foreman dates the first festival to 1993; other sources give 1994. The firm also sponsored the Scottish Cup, and the Scotland national football team from 2006 to 2010.

• Wellpark's name comes from a well on the site.
• Tennent's first lager was brewed for export.
• Hugh Tennent died at 27, a year before his lager brewery was finished.
• A Glasgow paper called the lager brewery "a madman's dream".
• The first cans had cone tops and crown caps, like a bottle.
• Early Tennent's cans were nicknamed "Brasso" cans.
• The 1889 clock tower at Wellpark was listed in 2025.
• Wrexham, not Glasgow, had Britain's first lager brewery.
• A craft brewery, Drygate, now shares the Wellpark site.

• Disputed: brewing since 1556. The date comes from family tradition recorded in a craft history. The documented brewery dates from 1740.
• Myth: Tennent's was the first lager brewed in Britain. A lager brewery was operating at Wrexham by 1882, three years before Tennent's first lager.
• Disputed: Bonnie Prince Charlie's army drank at the brewery. It is possible, since the army was in Glasgow at the end of 1745, but the story comes from the company.
• Disputed: when the Lager Lovelies ended. Most accounts give 1991; some give 1989.
• Disputed: the first Tennent's can. Sources give 1935 or 1936.
• Myth: the word "scrubber" began with the cask cleaners at Wellpark. This is a company story with no supporting dictionary evidence here.
• Disputed: the first T in the Park. Foreman gives 1993; the festival is generally dated to 1994.