Ancient brewery is slice of history

Shropshire's rich and colourful past have ensured there's no shortage of claims to historical firsts, and it seems one of the county's favourite breweries is now amongst them.

John Russell, who lives just outside Bishops Castle, bought the town's Three Tuns Brewery around nine years ago with his friend Bill Bainbridge.

"We didn't really know what we were doing to begin with" John confesses.

"I'd moved back to Shropshire on a sabbatical after working as a city trader on the futures market for 12 years, and had been spending my time restoring an old cottage just outside the town and trading from home."

John and Bill made the spur-of-the-moment decision to buy the brewery after its owners at the time planned to sell it for conversion into flats.

The pair were fascinated by the architecture of the building, which was constructed some time around the turn of the 16th century and added to during the Victorian era, and were keen to preserve the old brewing methods it had employed for more than a century.

But over the course of their ownership, John and Bill discovered there was more to the brewery's history than they first realised.

"All we knew was that it was licensed in 1642, the very first year that Charles I began to issue brewing licenses in an effort to raise money for the war.

"We'd spotted another brewery claiming to be the UK's oldest brewer, but they weren't licensed until around 1686.

"We knew ours was issued decades earlier, and that the Three Tuns had been brewing for considerably longer than its license date, and through further research we realised that it is actually the oldest licensed brewery in the country."

"We were very careful not to change our traditional brewing methods during the upgrade," says John.

"The miniature Victorian tower, which was built onto the side of the old brewing room in around 1880, uses the 'gravity process' method of brewing, where the beer started at the top of the tower and would filter down through a series of levels where different processes took place.

"In Victorian times, it was a very clever way of moving liquid around, and although we now use electrics and pumps, we still operate with that traditional method.

"Along with the yeast we use, which is hundreds of years old, it's one of the many things that adds character to our beers."

John is equally passionate about the architecture of the brewery and believes it to be one of Shropshire's most iconic buildings.

"People come and visit us from all over the world to take tours, see the buildings and sample the ales," he says.

"Tourism is very important to us and to Bishops Castle as a whole, and Twitter has been a great way for us to spread the word about what we're doing.

John tweets from @ThreeTunsBrewer and says that although he was dismissive of the idea at first, Twitter has worked surprisingly well for him.

"Within a short space of time, people who hadn't heard of us were seeking out our bottled beers or making the journey over to see us for a brewery tour, and pubs have approached us about stocking our beer.

"I don't want to just use it to shout about what we're doing or tell people how great the beer is, I like to use it more as a mini blog and a way of interacting with the whole community."

By Lara Page