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Wellhead Brewery

oldMohawk

oldMohawk

gone but not forgotten
Looking at various pics of the district around Christ Church Perry Barr I noticed a distinctive building which had the 'look' of a brewery. The building is to the right and below of the sports track in the 1st pic below linked to post#18 and also can be seen near the top in the 2nd pic which shows demolition taking place in the late 1960s for building of the university campus. A look on a map link here https://maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/sid...at=52.5197&lon=-1.8960&layers=6&right=BingHyb confirmed that a Wellhead Brewery was there and a search of the BHF produced some information but nothing definite. Further searching led me to an account about the owner Councillor Edgar Evans - Brewer and Maltster it is here https://www.search.birminghamimages...ID=3281&PageIndex=1&KeyWord=Edgar&SortOrder=2
There appears to be little information about it's beer and pubs it supplied and perhaps the brewery was too small to compete with larger brewing companies.

Linked pic #18
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Demolition 1969/197 (click this pic to see full width)
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Re: christ church perry barr

oldMohawk, many thanks for the second picture showing demolition of the area. birchfeild road schools were closed in 1965 to make way for a new campus but I think it only streached from franchise street to the railway line at perry barr. kind reguards sidwho
 
Re: christ church perry barr

Joseph McKenna in his book "Birmingham Breweries" is a bit confusing about the Wellhead brewery, stating that it was established 1878, taken over by M & B in 1899, but still run as "Edward evans, Wellhead Brewery" in 1902, that from 1911-1919 it listed Meade & Co, as proprietors, but that J & R Tennant qre listed at the brewery in 1915, though this may just be for distribution of Tennant's lager. The brewery was taken over by Holts in 1919
 
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Re: christ church perry barr

According to Hitchmough's Black Country Pubs, Edgar Evans and the Wellhead Brewery owned at least two pubs in West Bromwich (the Vine and the Loving Lamb) so he was brewing beer for at least two of his own pubs pre-1905.

Viv.
 
A roof collapse in 1895 at the Wellhead Brewery. From the Perrybarrbeyond site. Viv.

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Adverts of 3 beerhouses near Bristol St, near Summer Lane and in All Saints show the brewery running at least three beerhouses in Birmingham in 1890. The approval of a bottling licence in 1915 implies to me that before that time they only produced draught beer.
 

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Thanks Mike. So the brewery had a fairly well established business by the early 1900s.

Another little snippet. In a report from BreweryHistory.com it examines an arsenic poisoning epidemic in 1900 mainly in the north of England. Arsenic had been found in beer from malt and brewing sugars. Beer from the Well Head Brewery Co. was one of the many Staffordshire breweries tested from Dec 1901 - Feb 1902. To the relief of the Wellhead Brewery it was found their beer wasn't contaminated. One thing the report mentions is the beer from 'home' brewing wasn't affected. Not sure 'home' means it in the sense of one person brewing from home as today, or if it refers to a more localised brewery. Viv.
 
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Im think a few pubs still brewed there own beer then, and these would probably have been called home brewing
 
There are not many street level photos of the Wellhead Brewery and it just about shows on the right of the photo below. In my younger days I must have looked at it from the top deck of a No 29 bus.
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With Wellhead, there were two of that name, Edgar Evans ran the Wellhead Brewery as shown on the right hand side of the ariel view. The smaller James Evans Brewery was in Franchise Street. Edgar Evan's brew was named "Solar Rays". Meades Brewery, the Perry Barr New Brewery was on the corner of Franchise Street and Wellhead Lane. So there were three close together and there was another nearby on the Handsworth border. Local water was clearly of importance
 
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