Shropshire brewery which has survived and thrived to provide fresh, cold and refreshing beers brewed with craftmanship and care
Market Drayton is home to a brewery with history going back centuries and which has kept the traditions of the monks who first brewed the beer that made its name.
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
The West Midlands has a long-standing tradition of brewing and beer making.
Breweries have been a part of the region for centuries, providing the welcoming aroma of hops and yeast in the air across the region and many different types of beer loved by thousands.
In the wake of the news of the planned closure of Banks's Brewery in Wolverhampton, the Star wants to support our local breweries and show that there are still many out there producing quality beers to be enjoyed in pubs across the region.
As part of our Backing Our Breweries campaign, we are going to look at what different breweries do, how they grew and built up their reputation, what their products are, how they continue to run in what are difficult financial times and what makes them special.
It's a story which starts in the 1400s when a group of monks in an Augustinian monastery near Stone began brewing beer as a hobby and found that the beer was so well-regarded that they began blessing every barrel and marking it with a red cross.
That began a journey for a brewery with the symbolic red cross, making it the sixth-oldest beer trademark in the world, and progressed to Salford and back into Stone where James Prescott Joule and, latterly, Francis Joule established the Joule brewery, reviving the monk's recipe and the red cross trademark.
Joule's Brewery became a bigger and more popular part of the pub scene in Stone and across the south and west Staffordshire and north Staffordshire area, with the brewery in Stone and 200 pubs, including the Red Lion in Market Drayton.
