The pub that was started as a hobby but is now a brewery's flagship inn
As pubs continue to battle the cost of living crisis, the Shropshire Star continues its Love Your Local series which celebrates our local inns.
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What started out as a hobby among monks has grown into a popular pub and brewery in the heart of a market town.
The Red Lion on Great Hales Street in Market Drayton is the flagship Brewery Tap of Joule's Brewery and has been a feature of the town since it was first built in 1623.
The Red Lion was an original Joule’s house and like most of the medieval town centre, sits over Market Drayton’s aquifer, the water source for all the ales brewed by Joule's at the brewery located on a half-acre site behind the pub.
The Joule’s Story begins in an Augustinian monastery near stone in the 1400s where the monks began to brew beer as a hobby, with word starting to spread far and wide about just how good the beer was.
The brewing monk wanted his beer to be extra special so he blessed every barrel and marked it with a cross, which is Joule’s Red cross and has been in use for more 400 years and is the 6th oldest beer trademark in the world.
Despite closing in the 1970s, the brewery and pub were closed after being bought out by Bass, but was revived more than 30 years later by the then-brand manager Steve Nuttall, with the trademark owned by Molson Coors, then became fully independent after buying the red cross trademark back.
