THE FIRST turf was dug and the ground blessed with beer at the inauguration ceremony for Princetown's newest brewery last week.

The Rev Louis Baycock, who recently retired as vicar of Chagford, shouldered a shovel and broke the ground before giving a lively and entertaining speech about connections between the church and libations.

The site for the new brewery will be occupied by a £1-million development containing the finest brewing technology in Europe and producing 4.5 million pints a year.

Philip Davies, chairman of Princetown Breweries, said: 'We are delighted with the success of the Princetown beers — our best seller is Jail Ale, so called because of our proximity to the prison, which has just sold and sold.

'It's been a remarkable success story — we started out ten years ago as a small brewing enterprise at the Prince of Wales pub and today we are stood here waiting for a £1-million brewery to be built — it's incredible.

Mr Baycock said the parish church would once have acted as the local brewery, both to raise funds and because local water then was undrinkable.

'Now, we use only pure Dartmoor water at Princetown Breweries because we believe that is the best there is — we might be biased but our customers seem to agree!'

More than 100 people attended the launch last Thursday, many of whom partook of a tipple named Ground Breaker which was brewed specially for the occasion by the company's brewer and managing director Simon Loveless.

He said: 'We are all extremely excited at the imminency of the project.

'I'm just looking forward to its completion when we can increase our production levels and diversify into new products — without losing the traditionals!'

The new brewery represents a huge investment in the future of the company which will continue manufacture on its current premises until the new ones are complete.

Tim Prime, director of Brew-Technology Ltd who are supplying the equipment, said: 'This is the biggest project of its kind in the UK brewing industry at present.

'It's a very exciting enterprise to take a greenfield site and turn it into a £1-million brewing facility — I've seen the plans and the results promise to be fantastic.'

It was not just the land that had to be aquired, the Duke of Cornwall requested that the plans go to him for consultation before the project could be approved.

Mr Davies said: 'We are very grateful to the Duchy of Cornwall for selling us the site freehold and also to Prince Charles who approved the plans and gave us the go-ahead.

'Not only will we have Europe's finest brewery featuring state-of-the-art technology, we also have the royal seal of approval!'

Princetown Breweries hopes to have the new facilities up and running this November and pints in the pubs next year.