In Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk, Greene King have a brewery that produces beers that include a number that were once produced by Morland in Abingdon, including Old Speckled Hen.
In the brewery visitor centre there is a model of the Old Speckled Hen car that once drove MG workers to work in Abingdon. The original MG car could well be in America, and the one in the museum is made with the help of bottle tops.
Over the last decade or so Greene King have acquired a number of other breweries, and shut them down to centralise production in their brewery in Bury St Edmunds.
In 2006 they opened a state of the art bottling plant called Old Speckled Hen Hall.
Old Speckled Hen was a beer specially produced for the 50th anniversary of MG car production in Abingdon. It keeps on rolling along, having become the beer that won prizes, and created demand beyond Morland, and Greene King hostelries.
“Old Speckled Hen” was first brewed to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the MG car factory in Abingdon, Oxfordshire.
Named after an old MG car which was used as the factory run around, they would park the old MG Featherweight Fabric Saloon outside the paint shop where it would normally get spattered in paint and so it became known as the ‘Owld Speckl’d Un’.
I work in an office backing on to the old brewery site. Occasionally one of the towers in the brewery would “blow its top” sending a sticky yeasty brew over cars in our car park.. great for stripping paint!
Another use for Marmite?????.
I can not and will not ever forgive them for closing Morlands down. Such a terrible shame to loose a part of the towns heritage!!
The Original old speckled hen car was found in an old hay loft in Wales. Morland & co p.l.c. was about to purchase the car just before greene king took the, over, and the car was left in Wales.