Gulval Meadhouse

What a pity it was demolished. I live nearby and am sadenned to see it gone. The great times we had there...music, food memories! If only the building could have remained and used in a different way.

This is certainly a great photo and finding it has meant a lot to me.
I believe that the building was originally the old Gulval Mill. I have found an article from a Brisbane newspaper published in 1947 that supports this and also talks about the mead making business that was being established in Gulval.
My own link to the mill is through my great grandfather, Thomas Edwards, who lived in Gulval and worked at the old mill before he and his family migrated to Australia in 1882. He ended up becoming the foreman at the new flour mill at Port Adelaide, run by W Thomas, who was also from Penzance. The mill is still operating on the same site but is now owned by Westons.
Here is a copy of the article. By the way congratulations on the new web site.

Gulval Mill Reference - Extract From: ‘The Worker’ (Brisbane) Monday 3rd November 1947

Our Honey May Make An Old English Drink

Australia will play a major part in restoring to Britain the historically famous drink, mead. Mead-making on a big scale has just started this year in the pirate country, Penzance, Cornwall (writes C. S. McNulty in the Sydney 'Sunday Telegraph').

THE Commonwealth will supply about half the honey to be used by enthusiastic men who have taken over an old mill at Gulval, Penzance, and renamed it The Mead House. The heady wonders, it will produce are aimed to make many dollars for the Empire dollar pool as well as warm many stomachs. Official permission has already been granted for the importation of a preliminary six tons of Australian honey with lots more to come as things get under way. They expect 160 tons of honey will be needed annually when the mill is at 'saturation' point.

60,000 BOTTLES
About sixty thousand bottles of fermented liquors of a wide range will be produced each year. Real mead, so the makers say, does not taste like honey, but can be produced in many different graduations. Plain homespun mead can be light and much like chablis, sack mead turns out to be more of a liqueur-type like Tokay, and there is, for instance, sack metheglin, which put Samuel Pepys into raptures when he had some at the back stairs of, the Palace. "A brave drink," wrote the appreciative Samuel. Then there is a sparkling beverage not unlike champagne.

ANCIENT GLORY
Mead-making in the true manner, say the experts, is an art which has been lost to England for about four hundred years. Their ambition is to bring back mead in its ancient glory. It has not really disappeared entirely since the brave days when the Saxons introduced it to the English. Even to-day's edition of Mrs. Beeton's famous cookery book tells the housewives how to make mead— with honey, water, white of eggs cloves, ginger and herbs. But its popularity has varied and all are not its devotees. It is on record that Sir Roger de Coverley registered pained shock at Spring Gardens when 'a wanton baggage' invited him to share a bottle of mead with her. No mead for Sir Roger. Nor a wanton baggage either, apparently.

VICAR BLESSES THE VATS
That the English revivalists of the ancient art of mead making are not unmoved by the rare tradition of their rich potions was demonstrated by the manner in which they moved into the old mill at Gulval. They had the local Anglican vicar along, a chubby, immensely human dispenser of doctrine, who, in full vestments, blessed the vats in a ceremony that is many hundreds of years old, its origin lost, but its frequent use, in centuries now dead, attested by material dug from theological libraries.

GETTING TO WORK
With the intercessory service complete, the makers got straight to work. Already some mead is fermenting in the vats. It needs about a year before drinking, five months of fermentation in different stages, and then storage for seven months or so. Some of the mead will be marketed in Australia if there is a demand, but its sponsors expect most of the product to set New York by the ears. But it would have to be a staunch brew to equal the legendary mead of Tasmania. There, near Hobart, so former Attorney-General Eric Ogilvie assured me years ago, there dwelt an aged woman who was wont to wager a five-pound note to be placed in front of any drinker of her home-made mead. If he could empty three glasses of the mighty stuff and then pick up the fiver he could have it. The reciters of the legend insist that nobody was ever known to collect.

Quite fascinating

And thank you for your kind comment about the site