Since 1753
We cannot be exactly sure when the first brewery was set up at Cazeau, but it is thought to have been before 1753. The only document which proves that there was a brewery on the site is a deed of partition of property which came into effect on 17th October 1753. This document states that:
"Subsequent to the partition performed on 17th October 1753, Nicolas Descamps inherits the house in which he was born from his father, Jacques, who died on 22nd April of the same year. It consists of a manor property which includes a dwelling house, bedrooms, stable, gate, a well and other buildings used for brewing and innkeeping, commonly known as the "Verd Fachaud".
In 1755, Nicolas married a certain Marie-Anne Pottier, but he died in 1760. The widow did not grieve for too long as she married one Jules Dujardin just a few months later. They had just one daughter, Julie, who married Jacques Delecoeuillerie, from Fourcroix, an outlying area of Blandain about which little is known, in January 1785. Indeed, some local historians say that a thriving Cistercian abbey had been established on the site in the 12th century. Unfortunately, all the monks were massacred during the great peasant revolt of 1358 and the abbey was then left to fall into ruin. It totally disappeared from the landscape several hundred years ago.
Anyway, Jacques Delcoeuillerie bought the manor property back from the Descamps heirs, following a fire which badly damaged the building in 1797. Although Jacques' mother was the wife of the late Nicolas Descamps, she did not actually have any rights to the property! Julie and Jacques' only son Denis was born in August 1795 and he carried on the brewing business. However he soon got tired of it and so, in 1840, he sold the brewery to an "outsider", Henri de Lannoy from Messines, who died in May 1856.
Henri's heirs were not very interested in paying homage to St Arnold, so, in August 1856, they handed the business back to Denis Delecoeuillerie! In October of the same year, he in turn passed the hot potato on to his nephew, Jean-Baptiste Agache, a young Frenchman (he was 31) from Willems in the north of France. Two years later, he married Dame Elisa Libert, from Hertain, with whom he had two children, Arthur and Charles, who took over the brewery in1892. It was their drive and energy which helped the brewery start to grow: various investments (equipment, property, etc.) diversification of sales outlets etc. This promising momentum was halted by the First World War. Europe was torn apart, and the German invaders requisitioned the copper vats for the munitions industry. As the brewery was not fortunate enough to be run by a splendid siren like Margrit Feldhof, the local Kommandantur refused to give any ground and the Cazeau vats were turned into killing machines.
After the 1918 Armistice, the Cazeau brewery joined forces with two other local breweries in order to start up business again at the Duchâtelet brewery in Néchin. It was only in 1926 that new facilities became operational at Cazeau. During this period, Charles Agache's second son, Maurice, took over the operational management of the Brewery. Production was based around various types of beer: Scotch, conventional beer (Priming), strong beer (Triple Agache) and table beer (Super Familia). Maurice later had to brave the agonies of a second world war. Having led the brewery all the way through these troubled years, in 1952 he eventually decided to take a well-earned rest, handing over the reins to his second son, Jean Agache, who was helped by his younger brother, Maurice.
The house speciality was Cazbier, an amber beer similar to Pale Ale. But the post-war period was a tough time for small traditional breweries using high fermentation methods. People's tastes were changing, moving more towards the low fermentation "Pils" coming out of the industrial breweries. In 1969, the Brasserie de Cazeau was the last working brewery in the Grand Tournai area and, like all the others, it decided to end production and reinvent itself as a beer retail business.
