Samuel Smith brewery chairman Humphrey Smith dies aged 81

Humphrey Smith, the owner and chairman of Samuel Smith Old Brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, died on 29 June 2026 aged 81. For decades, he presided over one of Britain’s most idiosyncratic pub businesses, where mobile phones, laptops and other technology were banned and many regular pub conventions were stripped away.

Samuel Smith Old Brewery was founded in 1758 and is widely described as Yorkshire’s oldest brewery. The family firm has been in the same family since the 19th century, and Smith had been at the helm since the 1980s. Under his control, Samuel Smith’s grew into a chain of more than 200 pubs across the United Kingdom, giving its rules an influence far beyond its North Yorkshire base.

Those rules turned the brewery into a brand in its own right. The company says its pubs are “havens from the digital world”, with no TVs or background music, while friendly conversation is encouraged and swearing is not. In some venues, customers also faced cash-only payment policies, a practical reminder that Samuel Smith’s was not trying to compete with modern pub operators on convenience or soft-edged hospitality.

That hard line made Smith a divisive figure in the British pub trade. Supporters valued the consistency and the sense of place that came with the stripped-back rooms and the absence of screens, playlists and constant device use. Critics saw a rigid, paternal style that left the chain out of step with customers accustomed to flexibility, card payments and a more relaxed approach to how a pub should feel.

Smith’s death closes the chapter on an authoritarian family-business model that was once easier to sustain in the pub sector than it is now. Samuel Smith’s remains one of the country’s most distinctive operators, but the very rules that gave it identity also made it a symbol of how far parts of the hospitality trade have moved away from the proprietor who dictates every detail from the top.