Congratulations to Hitchin Rugby Club for winning CAMRA North Herts Club of the Year.

This year’s Hitchin Beer Festival is the 50th in a sequence of Beer Festivals hosted (or co-hosted) by the North Hertfordshire Branch of CAMRA, in a continuous run of one or more every year since 1991. It is also 50 years since the North Hertfordshire CAMRA branch was established, in June 1974. To mark 50 years of the branch there will be branch social on Saturday 13th July, where we will visit the Red Lion in Stevenage Old Town where it all started.

The first festival was held at the Plinston Hall in Letchworth November 1991, selling 40 beers from 30 breweries, plus ciders & perries from 9 makers. Look at this year’s range and see how we’ve grown! Immediately prior to that 1991 event, ITV local news did a feature on our Beer Festival being in a former Temperance Town, the extra publicity resulted in a packed hall and a queue down the street. Success beyond expectation.

Several festivals in the Plinston Hall followed, until it was felt a larger venue was needed and we moved to Hitchin Town Hall for the first Hitchin Beer festival in November 1995. For the purpose of renting the Town Hall, we had got a preferential rate as a not-for-profit organisation, but when we asked to use that again we were told that we would be charged the commercial rent, so we returned to the Plinston Hall for September 1996.

In 2000 a partnership with Hitchin Round Table was established, and were able to use their charitable status to get an economic rental rate for Hitchin Town Hall. Hence our second Hitchin Beer Festival was a joint event, and the start of a long collaboration with the Round Table. From 2000 to 2011 North Herts CAMRA held two festival a year, one at Hitchin Town Hall and an autumn Festival at the Plinston Hall in Letchworth.

Unfortunately, in early 2012, the Plinston Hall closed. A new venue, Green House Community Market (just off the Wynd) in Letchworth, with bars distributed among the trading units. The only serious problem we had with that Festival was due to it being in a semi-open facility with no source of heating in a rather cold late September. It was an interesting experience, but we decided to not repeat it and we have not held a festival in Letchworth since.

Our next problem was the closure of Hitchin Town Hall, prior to the long drawn-out process of it being converted to a museum. We were therefore without a venue for 2013 until Hitchin Rugby Club stepped in with the offer of holding the festival at the club after the end of the rugby season in June. It then became a three-way partnership between North Herts CAMRA, the Round Table and the Rugby Club.

As CAMRA North Herts, we still wanted to do a separate Beer Festival of our own, so from February 2016 we hosted a Winter Beer Festival in Stevenage Arts & Leisure Centre. The Stevenage festival was repeated in 2017 and 2018, and then following a break of a year in 2020. This was one of the last festivals before the Covid lockdown struck, which meant there was no Hitchin festival in 2020.

We returned to Hitchin Rugby Club in September 2021 to hold a modified event. We had to restrict customer numbers, so made it ticket-only, and adopted safer bar service and seating arrangements. It still worked as a successful Festival, just a bit smaller than usual.

We were obviously very excited to be able to return to running “normal” Beer Festivals in 2022. Our event at the Rugby Club in June 2022 was the last one in which Hitchin Round Table participated, as the Round Table disbanded due to declining membership. Beer Festival in June 2023 simply involved a partnership between CAMRA North Herts and Hitchin Rugby Club.

So (if you’ve been counting the above) prior to this year’s event, we’ve held 21 Beer Festivals in Letchworth, 4 in Stevenage and 24 in Hitchin. Hence the 2024 Hitchin Beer & Cider Festival will be both the 25th in Hitchin and the 50th overall. Both a Silver Event and a Golden Event to celebrate!

Paul Coard

Congratulations to Rob and his team at the Orange Tree, Baldock on becoming this years Pub of the Year for North Hertfordshire!

Congratulations to Freddie, & Emily and their team at the Half Moon, Hitchin for winning the CAMRA North Herts cider pub of the year award for 2024.

Those of you who look out for the quarterly Herts magazine in our pubs may have wondered where it is. Unfortunately, we are not able to distribute a paper copy this time, nor publish some of the content. So here is a link to a digital download. Please particularly see local news on pages 22, 23, 27, 32, 37 and in Down Your Way from page 40.

Celebrating 50 years since the formation of CAMRA North Herts, we met in the Red Lion, Stevenage Old Town, where it all started. Committee members form the 70’s to present day joined branch locals and visitors from South Herts to share memories, photos and browse old branch magazines before a photo with the pub’s Sophie Cheong. Other favourite stops of the afternoon were The Broken Seal Taproom, drinking in Six Hills Brewery, the Dun Cow and the Chequers. Cheers to everyone who’s volunteered for or enjoyed being a member of CAMRA North Herts since 1974!