Activities

Hardys & Hansons is the Nottingham-based pub retailer, brewer and wholesaler that was acquired in June 2006 by Greene King, when it operated 268 mostly freehold pubs, which included 83 managed and 185 tenanted houses along with five franchised Premier Travel Inn hotels. 

Its estate, while concentrated in Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire, extended into Cheshire, Derbyshire, Greater Manchester, Lancashire, Leicestershire, Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, Staffordshire, Warwickshire, West Midlands, and Yorkshire at the time of the acquisition.

Timeline

• 1832: Samuel Robinson converts an old bakehouse in Kimberley, Nottinghamshire, into a brewery.
• 1846: Stephen Hanson builds a brewery almost opposite Robinson’s site.
• 1857: Beer wholesale merchants William and Thomas Hardy buy Robinson’s brewery. As their empire expands, the Hardys open a second brewery in 1861.
• 1870: The Hardys move into the pub retail market with the purchase of the Cricket Players’ Arms, which becomes one of the UK’s first ‘tied houses’.
• 1930: Hardys & Hansons is born from the merger of the two companies.
• 1954: Richard Hanson joins the family firm. He becomes managing director in 1973, chairman and managing director in 1989 and chairman in 1998. He retires in April 2004. 
• August 1962: The group is listed on the Stock Exchange.
• November 2000: Hardys and Hansons buys eight pubs trading as Watling Street Inns from Yates Group for £12m. Five are in and around Manchester, with the remaining three at Burley, Leeds and Stourbridge.
• February 2005: The group buys five food-led Beefeater pubs with associated lodges for £11m from Shadeweir Inns. The sites in Bromborough, Preston, Warrington, Wigan and Wakefield have a combined 194 bedrooms and operate under franchise under the Premier Travel Inn name. In the year to October 2004, the properties achieved earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation of £600,000 on a £4.3m turnover.
• March 2006: Tbe group transfers to the Alternative Investment Market.
• June 2006: H&H receives a £271m agreed takeover offer from national pub group and brewer Greene King.