Wrekin Brewery Co. Ltd

Wrekin Brewery Co. Ltd, Market Street, Wellington, Shropshire.

Founded 1870.

Registered March 1922.

Sale of 10qtr brewery and 33 licensed properties November 1921 on dissolution of partnership.

Acquired by Greenall Whitley & Co. Ltd. 1966 with 94 tied houses.

Brewing ceased September 1969.

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• List of Wrekin Brewery co Ltd pubs

• Maltsters and Brewers in Wellington

Reflections on the Wrekin Brewery by Dominic Pinto

The Wrekin Brewery in Wellington sadly disappeared virtually from the face of the earth in the late 1960s. At one time the Wrekin was a large privately owned brewery that also made pop and bottled beers for other firms as well as owning 200 tied houses.

My attention was drawn by a reference by Boak and Bailey to an article for the Sunday Times in the summer of 1974 where architectural and cultural journalist Ian Nairn wrote a powerful piece that is said to have been at least partly responsible for the leap in membership of the nascent Campaign for Real Ale. Among other matters he called for Telford New Town to revive the then recently expired Wrekin Brewery, whose ales were renowned locally. There were a number of letters reacting to this article, including one from a John Dugdale of the Telford Development Corporation: ‘[We] are investigating the proposal with gusto.’ As far as is known nothing did came of this, but I wondered if local archives and records might reveal more about the opportunity.

After several iterations by e-mail with Alison Mussell at the Shropshire Archives and a search of the Telford Development Corporation archive catalog on-line, and while acknowledging that it was a long shot, two sets of documents looked worth delving in to. The Board minutes from January 1974 to July 1975, and the Chairman's correspondence file for industry 1971-75. I concluded that the notion of re-establishing a brewery had not actually reached the Board to consider!

Judging from the aerial photo The Wrekin brewery was clearly a substantial enterprise. It was founded in 1870 by Thomas Taylor in Market Street and it soon moved to larger accommodation.

After several changes in ownership it was bought at auction in 1921, by Owen Downey Murphy, who presided over a number of linked businesses straddling soft drinks, bottling beers including Guinness, milk and eventually supplying wine and spirits, over a wide area. The company expanded successfully with around 140 public houses in the mid-1940s when Murphy died aged 70 having refused a bid from bid from Marston, Thomas and Evershed to buy him out. Trade continued, presumably under the direction of his sons who were directors of the company. The 60s saw the growth of lager and a new takeaway market for bottled beers but the introduction of Wrekin Bitter did not really address the threat of lager. The development of what was to become Telford New Town in 1972 did not help either, as a number of their pubs were demolished, to be replaced by only nine new licensed premises, for which the brewery was in competition with the national brewers and lost out.

Eventually the owners sold out to Greenall Whitley & Co. Ltd in 1966, which transferred brewing to Wem in 1969, and soon the Wrekin name as well as the premises disappeared, the old brewery finally being demolished in 1975.

I then read that brewing had returned to Wellington, and Market Street, which is very welcome, and under the name of the old business with Ironbridge Brewery Co now operating as The Wrekin Brewing Company at the Pheasant.