HOW different Aldwark looks now. In the distance the chimney at Foss Island gives a clue to where this picture was taken, but almost everything else has gone to make way for social housing.

Older readers will know exactly what we are looking at here: Hunt’s Brewery, which was a landmark in York until the buildings were demolished in 1972.

Hunts also had a lemonade bottling plant in Bedern, just round the corner and it owned the Ebor Vaults public house. Apparently, the inn served the cheapest beer in York because the barrels were just rolled across the yard and that meant no dray charges.

Some might lament this because drays need horses and Samuel Smith has always kept some of the finest.

Indeed, here we see a picture from 1987 showing “Extra Stout” and the grey shires of Tadcaster who had plodded into the record books for a second time in less than a month.

Extra Stout had already been declared the biggest horse on earth, now the team was pronounced the world’s largest. Together they weighed 14 tons and the whole procession, from the front horse’s nose to the back of the wagon, measured 125 ft.

Tadcaster has always been one of England's most important brewery towns because of the quality of its water and during the last century annual brewery parades from Tadcaster to York took place to commemorate the link with John Barleycorn.

That said, most towns used to have at least one brewery.

In Pocklington, the buildings at the back of the Waterloo Hotel were used for the brewing of beer in the 1860s and this rare picture shows Youngs “Loco Ale” brewery in Chapmangate which was built around 1880 and brewed beer until around 1910.