Hello Ppnny, As you say the earliest Directories on line are for 1847 ish onwards. It is only for Tetbury, but I printed off the Tetbury part of an earlier directory that covered Gloucestershire and I think that was more like the turn of the century from 1700s to 1800s, i.e. about 1792 to 1802. It was on, I think, one of the Archive CD Books offerings. If I find it, I'll attach the Stroud entry to a private email to you. Regarding maltsters, I am not totally sure, but I presume that they must have done their malting or whatever in their back yard or even, perhaps, in a room set aside for that. In that earlier 1847ish entry for Stroud, there were 4 in Stroud, only one part of the Stroud Brewery. Best wishes, Phil At 14:55 03/11/2008, penny gay wrote: >I had also been wondering about the feasibility of making malt at home, >which you mention - would this have been possible, given the right >equipment? And I think I have read that some pubs had their own malt-houses. >There were certainly plenty of those in Stroud. Penny. Phil Warn ô¿ô Genealogists do it backwards Family Historians take all steps "The Warn family in Tetbury from 1722" <http://homepage.ntlworld.com/philwarn/FamHist1/index.htm>

Google books came up with the following volume which may answer some questions The British malting industry since 1830 By Christine Clark The link is very long.... http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=FP3ESHC10OMC&pg=PA175&lpg=PA175&dq=maltsters+history&source=web&ots=-oOE_s7D5o&sig=fIZwkOqkgCRqCFKJk-CuCFxDDos&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=6&ct=result#PPP1,M1 Lynne