The business continued to flourish and in 1904 took
over the rival firm of Flint & Co. of St Dunstan’s Brewery,
Canterbury. It is thought that Leney & Co., after their
absorption of Flint & Co., owned about 160 tied premises,
mainly in East Kent and the Rye and Hastings area of
East Sussex. In 1926 the firm of Alfred Leney & Co.
amalgamated with Fremlin Brothers of Maidstone to form
the public company known as Fremlins Ltd. The remaining
brothers Fremlin retired and Alfred Charles Leney became
the first Chairman of the new company.
Brewing at Dover ceased in 1927 but bottling of beer
continued until 1950 at the Phoenix Brewery, the beer
being transported from the Fremlins brewery at Maidstone.
The only break in production came towards the end of
World War Two,
when a shell hit the water storage tank at the top of
the building. Fortunately there were no casualties as
the incident took place at night. It was claimed that
the bottling plant was the nearest factory to enemy
occupied Europe.
After bottling ceased the old brewery was used as a
distribution depot by Fremlins until its demolition
in 1963. The distribution depot moved to buildings that
had once been part of the old
Diamond
Brewery on the Folkestone Road, which had been purchased
by Leney & Co. in 1908. In the late 1960s Fremlins was
itself taken over by the brewing giant Whitbread.
