London’s biggest breweries were once among the most recognisable landmarks in the capital. Barclay, Perkins & Co’s Anchor Brewery in Southwark became a tourist attraction, producing more than 300,000 barrels a year. Samuel Whitbread’s steam-powered brewery on Chiswell Street in the City was a wonder of the age.

Today, these powerhouses of the 18th and 19th centuries have long since closed or have undergone a change of use, with the Whitbread facility, once the biggest brewery in the world, being converted into one of the City of London’s best-known conference and banqueting venues. Beer has not been brewed on the site since 1976. Now The Brewery is set for a new phase in its 274-year history after the sale of the venue to Rhubarb Hospitality Collection.

The deal, to be announced today, expands Rhubarb’s footprint in Britain and lifts its workforce to more than 2,500. Rhubarb runs bars and restaurants in several London venues, including Sky Garden, 22 Bishopsgate and the Royal Albert Hall, and operates restaurants and event spaces in New York and Berlin. It is the accredited caterer at more than 60 sites, delivering 1,500 events a year.

Rhubarb is backed by Oak View Group, an American property investor, which acquired it in 2023. The group is a specialist in running live experiences and premium hospitality services and it recently opened Co-op Live in Manchester, where its opening was plagued by numerous issues.

The grade II listed Brewery, which hosts more than 500 events annually, is managed by James Varah, 43, its chief executive, and he will work with his counterpart at Rhubarb, Pieter-Bas Jacobse, 55, to develop a portfolio of premium venues in London.

Whitbread continued to operate the London venue as a conference and banqueting centre until 2005, when it was put up for sale for an estimated £45 million to £50 million. At that point, it still housed the old Whitbread offices, which carried planning consent for conversion into serviced apartments.

It was sold to EC&O Group, the owner of Earls Court and Olympia at that time, and the undeveloped office space in Chiswell Street was split off separately and sold to GuestInvest, a timeshare operator that went bust.

The hotel portion of the project was developed and opened in 2011 under the Montcalm hotel brand, owned by Precis Advisory, which took on the scheme after the demise of GuestInvest.

At present, the two parts of The Brewery site in Chiswell Street are owned and run separately from each other. Rhubarb’s purchase of the conference and banqueting business does not have any implications for the Montcalm hotel, one of more than twenty hotel properties owned and operated by Precis Advisory.