Brewery sponsors Fields of Battle display
Nottingham-based Castle Rock Brewery has given its financial support to a major photographic exhibition touring the United Kingdom and Europe during the years of remembrance marking the centenary of the Great War.
The exhibition, Fields of Battle Lands of Peace, is in Nottingham until November with its 66 large annotated photographs on display at major pedestrian intersections across the city. According to the exhibition’s creator, Michael St Maur Sheil, his photographs of WW1 battlefields as they are today, “embody the spirit of the centenary in honouring those who fought, lived and died throughout the four years of conflict.”
Speaking at the exhibition’s civic launch at Nottingham Castle, Castle Rock chairman, Geoff Newton, expressed his pride that Nottingham has joined Paris and London as one of the exhibition cities. He introduced the civic leaders, the county’s Vice Lord-Lieutenant, Colonel Tim Richmond, and other guests to Castle Rock’s Commemoration Collection, a set of twelve real ales to be brewed over the five years from the outbreak of the Great War to the peace treaty of 1919.
“One of the difficulties with commemorative beers is to make the collection serious and consciously avoid any element of celebration. One of our key aims became how best to help educate the generations not involved in the horror that was the Great War and to act as a prompt for them to find out more about it. I hope we can achieve this aim in some way,” he said.
Castle Rock’s current Commemoration Collection ale is ‘Tommy Atkins’ dedicated to the volunteers who took up arms in the early days of war. ‘Christmas Truce’, brewed in November, will remember the moments when carols were sung, gifts exchanged, and football matches played in the impromptu truce at Christmas 1914.
“We sincerely hope that with each beer, customers will reflect on, and maybe discuss, the debt we owe the fallen,” says Geoff Newton.
Amnesty International and the Royal British Legion are set to receive 20p from each pint of the Commemoration Collection ales sold.
