Man with 1,500 beer trays says he is preserving brewing history

BBC News

01-04-2025

Meet Richard Percival, the man who owns what he thinks is the world's largest collection of brewery trays.The football fan, who supports Notts County, was on an away day in Brighton in 1982 when he asked if he could keep a Young's Brewery tray with a ram logo at a pub - which led to him becoming "an absolute magpie in both senses", amassing a collection of 1,500 trays.The double garage of his home in Oakham, Rutland, now serves as a "mini-museum" with 300 of his favourite trays proudly on display."I'll sometimes bring a barrel of beer in here and have a few pints with people," he said. "They have a drink and spend a lot of time looking around because they're mesmerised."
The retired 62-year-old said he was "weaned" on Kimberley ales although his favourite beer nowadays is Gale's Horndean Special Bitter (HSB).Richard launched a website at the end of February, which he describes as an "encyclopaedia of brewery collecting", and despite his large collection, is still appealing for help to track down certain trays.
Many of the trays Richard is still hunting for come from breweries such as Stretton's or the Leicester Brewing & Malting Company, which operated substantial chains of pubs, so must have produced trays - but no evidence of them currently exists.Others have been photographed, such as a pre-war yellow tray with a judge pictured from Offiler's and black-backed trays from Nottinghamshire's Kimberley Brewery.Perhaps his favourite of all is a rare tray from Warwicks and Richardsons, based in Newark, Nottinghamshire.The tray itself is an unusual piece as it depicts the brewery building itself, a selection of 10 beer pump designs, and bears the maker's mark, which is extremely rare, according to Richard.But after it was uploaded to his online archive, he was contacted 35 years after the purchase by the original seller.Richard said: "He sent me a photograph of his grandfather holding the exact tray as an apprentice in 1904."The young lad only looks about 12 years old."
Richard's unusual hobby combined a love of football and interest in real ale.He said: "It was always linked to an away match at Notts, where you go to a different part of the world and they had different breweries, so you knew you were going to get a different tray."I started to realise, after I'd picked up about 10 from matches, that these things were really quite ornate so I decided to start collecting."He began asking landlords in pubs, before progressing to antique fairs and then into the internet age over eBay and on social media.Richard said: "I used to go into a pub and start off by saying, 'I've got an unusual collection', and you could see my friends rolling their eyes. They thought I was a complete lunatic."These days, when they walk in, everyone goes wow."
The collection is entirely from the breweries of the British Isles and its modern cut-off is 1970, so nearly every one of his waiter trays are made from steel.But his oldest one, an 1870s oval tray from Black Country brewer Fred Cutler, is brass, while others are aluminium and he has a handful of plastic ones too.He says his most prized ones are the distinctive, weightier, black-backed steel trays from before World War Two.He said: "When you actually try and chase a tray and eventually it turns up, there's an adrenaline rush."After all the effort you've made, you eventually get that tray after many years of trying, it's a fantastic feeling."
Richard thinks the stories behind the objects that he collects add value."It's over 40 years of collecting so there's a lot of effort gone into it," he added."They're not that valuable. They're advertising items and they do hold some value, but as a historical collection for Britain, for the brewing industry, it adds up."So, as well as the enjoyment I have chasing and trying to pick up trays, it's also a national heritage."I think the main thing is that what I've done, because I love beer and I love brewing, is preserved brewing history."