There was a good turn out on Thursday 11th December 1975 for Stafford and Stone CAMRA’s Christmas Dinner and party which was held in the lounge of the Victoria, Browning Street, Stafford.

A week later the White Lion. Lichfield Road, and the Unicorn, Lammascote Road, were visited by the branch who paid "last respects to the pubs due to close on 1St January for the ring road development".

On 29th January 1976, the function room of the Dog and Partridge, South Walls, was the venue for the branch "Swop Shop Night, for the exchange and barter of beer mats, bottles, ash trays and all other real ale bric-a-brac".

Apart from the Coach and Horses, the Victoria, Unicorn and Dog and Partridge were the only Stafford pubs to be selling Draught Bass a quarter century ago.

The December 1980 edition of Pints of View reported that the Haberdashers Arms at Knighton, a "tiny free house", had "recently replaced its Springfield with Banks’s Bitter and Mild both served by HANDPULL, making it one of only a few pubs in the West Midlands to serve Banks’s this way".

The next month handpulled Banks’s was also reported in the Butchers Arms at Bramshall.

Despite undoubtedly being the leading traditional brewer in the region, Banks’s feature only quite rarely in the CAMRA Stafford and Stone branch archives.

While the larger Bass and Allied were frequently withdrawing or introducing real ales, Banks’s thankfully just lived up to their motto "Unspoilt by Progress

Banks’s cask conditioned Mild (3.5% abv) and Bitter (3.8%) continued to be sold in all of their ten local pubs, seven in Stafford and three rural ones.

The 1990s have however seen a few changes in the Banks’s empire.

Monthly Festival ales were introduced to some of their pubs six years ago and beers have also been available locally from breweries taken over by Banks’s - Camerons of Hartlepool in 1992 and Marstons of Burton and the Mansfield Brewery in 1999.

After a spell as just Banks’s, Banks’s Mild is now called Banks’s Original.

Handpumps, increasingly seen as the symbol of real ale, have recently been replacing the metered electric pumps that had been the norm for Banks’s cask beers since about 1970.

Banks’s have sold some hotels (the Garth) and smaller pubs (such as the Cock, Woodseaves) but bought other pubs including the Star in Stone. The introduction of their beers to a further six pubs in Stone is indicative of Banks’s success in the local free trade.

Banks’s have served the region admirably throughout the twentieth century but now, tragically, the future looks bleak as large city shareholders have more influence than local drinkers.

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