This website uses cookies so that we can provide you with the best user experience possible. Cookie information is stored in your browser and performs functions such as recognising you when you return to our website and helping our team to understand which sections of the website you find most interesting and useful.
News
Kirkstall brings back iconic brewery ‘The Tetley’
Kirkstall Brewery is taking on the lease of the former Tetley’s Brewery to renew its status as a “landmark of Yorkshire beer culture”.
‘The Tetley’ building was built in the Art Deco style in 1931 and by the 1980s Tetley’s Brewery had became the world’s biggest cask ale producer, making the site an icon of Leeds beer history, even after its closure in 2011.
From 2013 until 2023 the building, which is located within the Leeds’ district Aire Park, operated as an art gallery.
From May, Kirkstall will be turning The Tetley into a hub of the very best of brewing in Leeds, featuring beers from other breweries in the area, alongside brands from Kirkstall Brewery, Leeds Brewery and its owner and founder Steve Holt’s most recent acquisition, North.
Holt said: “It’s a tremendous privilege to bring Leeds’s most iconic brewery building into the Kirkstall fold. As a brewery that pays a great deal of respect to the history of brewing in the city, we believe we are the ideal custodians for the next chapter of this legendary building.”
Michael Cronin, head of portfolio at Vastint UK, the developer behind Aire Park and owners of The Tetley building, explained: “Last year we outlined our ambitions to safeguard this iconic building for the next 100 years and have now submitted our plans to the council. Since we became custodians of the building, it was always our intention to keep it open until the restoration work got underway to bring this fantastic building up to 21st century standards. So, we’re thrilled to be welcoming Kirkstall Brewery to Aire Park and to be bringing one of the current generations of Leeds and Yorkshire breweries to a site which has played such a pivotal role in the history of beer making in the region. The Tetley will form the centre piece of Aire Park, alongside the eight-acre public park and this collaboration will hopefully give the people of Leeds a small taster of what’s to come in the very near future.”
Holt added: “It really is the crown jewel of brewing history in Leeds, and we are deeply grateful for the opportunity to make it a landmark of Yorkshire beer culture once again.”
The Tetley is expected to reopen under Kirkstall’s management by May 2024.