A Victorian-style bitter is being launched next week to help raise awareness about the high levels of child poverty in Manchester.
The bitter has been brewed by Manchester brewery Marble Brewery to mark the opening of an exhibition, Queues Clogs & Redemption, charting the work of children’s charity Wood Street Mission since the mid-Victorian era.
The bitter, which has been brewed in an authentic nineteenth century style, is called “Wood Street” after the side street – now on the edge of Spinningfield’s Business District – the charity has been based on since the 1870s helping local children and families living in poverty.
The event will also be accompanied by a guided walk from Wood Street Mission’s historic building through some well-known Victorian sights and slums to the Marble Brewery’s Marble Arch pub in Ancoats, which was established in the 1880s.
Roseanne Sweeney, chief executive of Wood Street Mission said: “The slums may have disappeared but sadly other features of life in Manchester and Salford which caused concern in the nineteenth century, still exist – growing inequality, low paid insecure work and the lives of large numbers of children being blighted by poverty. Today despite the affluence of parts of our cities, one in three local children is living in poverty.”
“I am delighted Marble Brewery is helping us raise awareness about our work through this exciting collaboration.”
Queues Clogs & Redemption looks back at Wood Street Mission’s work from the days of “rescuing” street children in the nineteenth century, sending tens of thousands to the seaside in the early twentieth and running a city gym in the 1980s. It includes photographs and artefacts from its archive held in the John Rylands Library, and first-hand accounts from former service users about their experience of poverty as a child.
The “Wood Street” bitter is being brewed in a traditional style but at 3.6% ABV is half the strength of some beer brewed in the nineteenth century. Matthew Howgate, head brewer at Marble Brewery said: “It will be made with Marris Otter and Crystal malts. Hops will be Admiral which are an English hop. It will be beautiful.”
The bitter will be available for a limited period from 9 September in the Marble Arch and Marble Brewery pubs, as well as selected other pubs, including the Gas Lamp on Bridge street which was once Wood Street Mission’s old kitchen.
