Enjoy an 18th century history lesson with your pint

Visitors to the picturesque Hampshire village home of a parson naturalist regarded as the world’s first ecologist can now also step back into history by tasting beer made with his own recipes.

Best known as a pioneering researcher who revolutionised the way people observed nature, and who inspired naturalists from Charles Darwin to David Attenborough, the Rev. Gilbert White was also a chap who liked his beer.

Now, visitors to his museum home – Gilbert White’s House & Gardens in Selborne, in east Hampshire – can pop across the road to a new bar serving beer from the Museum’s own micro-brewery.

The Jubilee Tap opened this month, breathing new life into a closed-down 18th century village pub, and continues White’s legacy of environmental sustainability – selling beer brewed from hops grown in the Museum’s garden, and reducing climate miles by transporting it less than 50 metres.

As well as the author of a ground-breaking study of living birds and animals in their natural habitats, which has never been out of print since being published in 1789, the keen horticulturist experimented with brewing, setting up a Brewhouse in his own home in 1765.

The Brewhouse, in which White experimented with different brews right up until 13 days before his death in 1793, was reopened officially as a brewery in 2021 and has been brewing beer since early 2020, producing over 15 different beers for sale at the Museum.

By opening the tap toom even more visitors can now experience one of White’s passions and try the Gilbert White range of beers made with his recipes and crafted in the Brewhouse he built.

And his beer, which will include a special recipe for its 100th brew due this summer, is also helping to revitalise a historic building that had been a public house for centuries before closing its doors in 2016.

The Queens – or Compasses Inn as Gilbert White would have known it in the 18th Century – in the heart of the village opposite Gilbert White’s House, has always played an important part in village life.

During his lifetime it was owned and run by White’s friend and neighbour Timothy Turner, who like the parson naturalist, brewed beer at home using hops and other ingredients from the local area.

Named the Jubilee Tap Room to honour the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee and reflect the venue’s former name, it will initially open from Thursday to Saturday evenings, as well as for special events, such as the coronation of King Charles III.

Among the craft beer and lager produced at the micro-brewery, currently run by volunteers from the Selborne area, are: Gilbert’s 1765, based on Gilbert White’s original ale recipe; house ale favourite Zig Zag Ale, a strong traditional ale named after a village zig-zag path cut in 1753 by White and his brother; and Six Quarters, a golden and heavily hopped ale referencing the ‘six quarters’ within the Gilbert White Garden.

For more details about the Jubilee Tap Room, visit https://bit.ly/3GIscC1

For tourist information about Hampshire see www.visit-hampshire.co.uk

Gilbert White’s House & Gardens