By James Vukmirovic

Copyright expressandstar

Banks’s Brewery has been a feature of life in Wolverhampton since 1875, with the introduction on the Carlsberg-Marston’s website even saying: “Standing tall above the Wolverhampton city skyline with its iconic chimney, Banks’s brewery has been brewing great beer here since 1875.”

However, the times have changed and time has now been called on the city institution after brewing stopped at the brewery at the end of August, bringing to an end 150 years of an iconic brewer in Wolverhampton.

The legendary brewer, famed for its adverts featuring Roger Moore and Noddy Holder, began life as Banks and Company, a maltster which started brewing at Newbridge in 1874.

The following year it moved to Park Brewery in Chapel Ash, producing the legendary Banks’s Mild, and has remained their until this day.

The company saw considerable expansion in 1890 when it merged with George Thompson & Sons of Dudley, and also the Fox and Victoria breweries of Wolverhampton.

This expansion gave the newly formed Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries 193 outlets for its beers, and saw the emergence of Wolverhampton as a major brewing centre.

But it was the construction of the Park Brewery in 1898, designed by architect Arthur Kinder, that truly catapulted Banks’s into the big time.

In 1943 the company took over Dudley-based Julia Hanson and Sons, adding a further 200 pubs to its estate and also brought the Hanson’s range of beers under its control, giving it a near-monopoly in both the Wolverhampton and Dudley areas.

By 1947, the company had continued to grow sufficiently to float on the Stock Exchange. Hanson’s Brewery, at the top of Dudley High Street, closed in 1991, and the production of Hanson’s was moved to Wolverhampton. Its popularity waned, but it was still a popular choice in the Black Country.

Indeed, so rooted were Banks’s and Hanson’s in the fabric of the Black Country and surrounding areas that thousands upon thousands of readers rallied to the Express & Star’s ‘Save Our Beer’ campaign when Wolverhampton & Dudley Breweries was threatened with a hostile takeover by Burton-based rival Marston’s in the late 1990s.

There was great jubilation when the Banks’s directors saw off the Marston’s threat, and in 2007 the tables were turned in spectacular fashion when Wolverhampton & Dudley instead took over Marston, Thompson & Evershed, adding the famous Marston’s Pedigree to its range of ales.

Changes did begin to happen not long after as the newly enlarged company decided that ‘Wolverhampton & Dudley’ sounded too parochial for a major national brewing giant, and renamed itself Marston’s, while Hanson’s was also dropped a short time later, with a decline in sales of mild ales blamed for its demise.

A new beer Sunbeam was first produced in 2011 in the Victorian brewery in Wolverhampton to commemorate the 10th anniversary of Wolverhampton achieving city status.

Additionally, from 2007 to 2017, Marston’s had a sponsorship agreement with the England and Wales Cricket Board, whereby Marston’s Pedigree was the official beer of the England Cricket team, meaning it was the official supplier of beer at all home Test matches and had exclusive beer advertising rights.

The business, which had continued to grow through acquisitions of other breweries including Ringwood, Wychwood, Brakspear, Thwaites and Charles Wells, combined its brewing business in a joint venture with Danish group Carlsberg in 2020 with Marston’s receiving £273 million and retaining a 40 per cent holding in the new Carlsberg Marston’s Brewing Company (CMBC).

CMBC took over Marston’s House in the city centre as its headquarters when Marston’s relocated its pubs operation to St John’s House in St John’s Square, at the start of 2022.

Since the creation of the joint venture several of the group breweries have shut or been put up for sale.

In April 2015, the now retired boss of Marston’s Ralph Findlay took then chancellor George Osborne to the top of Banks’s Park Brewery, and gave him a warning: “If you don’t get the beer duty regime changes, you are going to be looking at a hole in the ground here.”

That dark warning may yet prove to be true as a city icon now sits dormant following the end of brewing and the closing of the brewery.