About CAMRA

The Campaign for Real Ale (CAMRA) has been supporting Real Ale for over 45 years. Its 180,000+ members (the largest consumer movement in the UK) are tasked with calling at all of the country’s pubs during the year, trying the beers, and recommending the best for the Good Beer Guide – copies of which are on sale here. They organise beer festivals throughout the country, and support others, such as this one, by offering their expertise and services free of charge. Anyone can join, and you are free to be as active as you like, from coming to meetings and joining us on trips to breweries and festivals, usually at reduced rates or even free, or just drinking the beer and learning more about it.

They campaign for various issues, such as ensuring every pint glass is a full pint rather than too much head, and do their best to keep breweries and pubs open.

Festival Location

The festival is held at The Braintree Insitute, formally known as The Bocking Arts Theatre.

Parking is available at both the Braintree District Council Offices and Sainsburys car park. Both of these are within a 2 minute walk of the Festival Site.

Very limited parking will be available at the Institute on the Thursday and Friday evenings.

Braintree Bus Park is a 5 minute walk away, and Braintree Railway Station is onlya 8 minute walk.

The Festival location is shown in Light Blue.
The Car Parks are shown in Green. Note: Charges maybe applicable during the day.
The Bus Station is shown in Violet.
The Railway Station is shown in Red.

About Braintree Lions

Braintree Lions Club (CIO) (Charity Number 1205643) started as a Band of Brothers, which came into being in 1979. When a few chums got together and formed a club for men. And in those days all Lions Clubs were men only, the ladies had to form their own Lioness’s clubs if they wanted to belong. Nowadays, of course, the club is open to all.

Back in the early ’80s we were young, strong and enthusiastic, it was the time when Dutch Elm disease ravaged our countryside and the lions chopped down the elms, chopped them up and delivered the logs to local old folk. We also tidied overgrown gardens (a huge demand for that service) and even decorated rooms for old ladies or residential homes.

To raise funds we started an annual auction of ‘Furniture, Antiques and Bric-a-Brac’ in the Wiseman Hall, long since pulled down. All year-long we collected stuff, keeping it in Tony’s barn until the big day. A good fund-raiser until car boot sales came along.

In those early days we started to drive the minibus for our friends in the Gateway club. We are still driving it, although we tried many other fundraising ideas, the Town Fair, raft races on Gosfield Lake, concerts in Cressing Barns and built a train to give rides at school fetes until we realised the real money-maker is the Christmas float and that too is still going strong. The club members also collected shoe boxes, filled with small luxuries and took them direct to Bosnia. For many years we helped with the ‘Chernobyl children’ who came to England for a respite from the polluted air of their benighted homeland. Now we give out Messages in a Bottle a small plasitc bottle with the owners list of  medication and a sticker on the front door informing paramedics.

We are, of course, part of Lions International and have helped create water wells in Africa and educated children in Malawi. We have contributed to help with natural disasters, the tsunami, earthquakes etc and because Lions International can send this aid to a local Lions club we are sure our money goes straight to where it is needed. Lions Clubs have long been associated with helping the blind, since Hellen Keller challenged us to become “knights of the blind in the crusade against darkness” and since then Lions Clubs across the world have worked on projects to prevent blindness, restore eyesight and improve eye health and eye care for hundreds of millions of people worldwide. In Braintree we still collect unwanted spectacles which are sent to Africa and put to good use.

What are we doing now, 43 years after those young men became friends?
We still take the train to local fetes, we still drag Santa around the frozen streets, delighting the children, we collect for Children in Need. But our main fundraising events are the Braintree Real Ale Festival. We have been doing this for 17 years and what a fun-filled delightful event it is. Real Ale enthusiasts come from all over to sample and quaff over 60 beers, porters and ciders and because we persuade local companies to sponsor each barrel, we make a tidy profit. We also have a Christmas Raffle and an Easter Egg raffle in many of the Braintree pubs.

WHAT DO WE DO WITH ALL THAT MONEY? WE GIVE IT AWAY!

The air ambulance, Farley Hospice, other hospices and local hospitals have all benefited. A computer for a blind couple, equipment for disabled children. Macmillan Nurses, Mencap, First Stop and many other local charities have all been helped.

We also have a social side, with our Charter Night every year, a black tie, posh frock affair, theatre trips, safari suppers and speakers at our meetings. The world has changed a lot since 1979 but Braintree Lions are still busy, still raising money, still enjoying good fellowship. If you would like to see what we do, come along to one of our meetings.

History of the Festival

Since June 2005 the Lions Club of Braintree, in association with North-West Essex CAMRA, has been organising a Real Ale Festival in Braintree.

Our original plan was to help promote real ale in Braintree, but also to highlight that there were breweries in Essex. In 2005 there were approximately 3 Essex Breweries, for our 2019 Festival we had 30+ Essex-based breweries to choose from.

Since that first Festival in 2005, Braintree Lions Club has raised and donated in excess of £300,000 to local, national and international charitable causes with some £90,000 coming directly from our Real Ale Festivals.

Over the first 18 festivals we have:

• Had 818 different beers/ciders available;
• From 286 different breweries/cider makers; from Cornwall to Scotland;
• Served over 55,000 pint;
• Offered 15 BRAF festival beers. All from Essex breweries.