Humphrey Smith, the owner of the Samuel Smith’s brewing and pub business, has died aged 81, it has been confirmed.
Established by his family in 1758, Smith had run the Samuel Smith Old Brewery since the 1980s. The firm also has about 200 pubs around the UK.
The business, based in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, was known by many pubgoers for its eccentric rules including banning mobile phones, music, televisions and swearing at their sites.
Tadcaster’s mayor Richard Sweeting described the notoriously publicity-shy businessman as a “true gentleman” and a “man of principle”.
The mayor said: “He hadn’t been well for a little while but Mr Smith was a private man and it was kept quiet.
“But it always is a shock when something actually happens and Tadcaster is in mourning.”
The smallest of the three breweries based in Tadcaster, it is also an unlimited company which allows it to maintain financial privacy.
Smith introduced many changes when he took control as chairman including turning tenants into managers, directly employed by the brewery.
It enabled the business to dictate the policies it is known for and, as its website states, its pubs are “havens from the digital world”.
Sweeting said: “Mr Smith had his standards, Mr Smith had his reasons and a lot of people understood.
“Mr Smith was also a man of principle and there would have been a reason for regulations in the pubs.
“A lot of people were quite happy for those regulations because we respected him.”
Councillor Kirsty Poskitt, who represents Tadcaster on North Yorkshire Council, said her family had close ties with the brewery and that she had found Smith to be passionate about local history.
“He was very well-known, not just in Tadcaster, but across the country and probably throughout the world. It’s impacted lots of people.
“It’s a sad day. He obviously had quite a lot of influence on the town itself, just in terms of its structure and how it is. His legacy is vast and varied.”
Speaking about the company’s ownership of land and property in the area, she said: “He is a very intrinsic part of why Tadcaster is like it is today. I think everyone’s reflecting on what he has meant to the town.”
Poskitt regularly met with Smith in her role as a councillor and said he was a “kind and fascinating man”.
“He was quite eccentric, but he was a really interesting man. He was passionate about history. I was always grateful for time with him and enjoyed speaking to him.”
Her father and grandfather both worked at the brewery, the latter as a cooper, and Smith remembered them both.
“Throughout Tadcaster there are an awful lot of people that were employed by the brewery and who live in houses that belong to the brewery.
“I’ve been here pretty much my whole life and he was a controversial figure in lots of people’s eyes, and but those that did interact with him and those that did know him would make positive statements about him and would acknowledge that he was an intelligent man with big family and his heart was in the right place.
“He always acted in the best interests of the town. He was incredibly private. For me he is a very big part of Tadcaster’s history and leaves a huge legacy.”
There have also been several reports over the years of managers being suddenly dismissed, often for alleged breaches of the rules the brewery imposed.
A number of the firm’s pubs have also been closed, often at short notice, and, in some cases, left standing empty for many years.
Last year, The Abbey, a Samuel Smith pub in Derby, abruptly closed with a handwritten note placed on the door saying the brewery owner was unhappy about photos of it being shared online.
Multiple sources told the BBC the landlords were informed by the brewery that they had broken policies and were dismissed with immediate effect.
In 2024, The Shoulder of Mutton in the centre of Bradford also shut unexpectedly, with the brewery refusing to share the reason why.
At the time, Bradford’s CAMRA branch secretary Kate Ahern said that the closure was part of a “pattern” of unexplained losses of Samuel Smith’s licensed premises.
Samuel Smith Old Brewery caused a stir once again, when bikers were barred from The Royal Oak at Ulley, near Rotherham.
Punters were greeted by a member of staff in the car park and told, ‘I can’t serve you, we’ve barred bikes’.
A major landowner, especially in Tadcaster, the brewery refused to permit the construction of a temporary footbridge over the River Wharfe in Tadcaster on land it owned in 2016.
The town’s 18th Century bridge was badly damaged by floods in 2015 and, while it was repaired, the town was effectively split in half with a long diversion.
However, Samuel Smith’s branded the £300,000 cost a “waste of public money”, though it later said it would consider allowing the bridge to be built if it was consulted about repairs to the bridge.
In the end the plans were changed and the temporary bridge was built on council-owned land.
Smith also frequently lodged objections to a wide range of planning applications in North Yorkshire.
A spokesperson for York CAMRA said: “The newspaper headlines may well say that Humphrey was a controversial and divisive figure with many quirks – but we’d do well not to forget that he presided over a family brewery that produces exceptional real ale and craft keg beers at very affordable prices and an estate of pubs that provide a huge social impact within their communities.
“He leaves his son Samuel both a legacy on which to build but also a huge challenge in reopening many of their pubs that are currently closed and bringing some of their more arcane operational rules back into into the 21st Century!”
The brewery has yet to comment on Smith’s death directly.