Citylife in Rugeley and Cannock Chase March April 2024

The Swan Inn
By the late Harry Thornton (Landor local history Society)
Brereton had three inns even in the days
before 1800 when the village was little
more than a few houses scattered around
Brereton Hall where the ancient highway
crossed over the brook (now culverted), with a
few more houses up Coalpit Lane. The historic
Red Lion still quenches thirsts, whereas the
Talbot Inn and the Swan closed their doors to
imbibers many years ago. Fortunately, the
Swan Inn building still remains as a doublefronted
house next to the Cedar Tree Hotel
and to many people it is still known as the Old
Swan.
It was acquired by the 2nd Earl Talbot in the
1840s at a time when he was snapping- up all the
property he could in Brereton to house colliery
workers and because coal was potentially under
the ground. When the executors of his greatgrandson
the 20th Earl of Shrewsbury sold it, with
many other Brereton properties, by auction in July
1923, the sale catalogue described it as “The Old
Swan”, with an old brew-house, let to Mr Sam
Jones at an annual rental of £13. Two 3-storey
houses (now demolished) which adjoined the rear
of the Swan but faced towards Coalpit Lane were
let to Messrs Vernon and Watkiss. Mr Ambrose
Jones, in an audio- taped interview in 1978 with Mr
John Perry, then head of Hob Hill School, said his
parents moved to the Swan in about 1908 from
Talbot Road and he recalled the beer-making
coppers still being there. He said his father had a
small holding on the other side of the Main Road
where he kept retired pit ponies which he used for
delivering miners’ coal and for carting spent hops
from the Lichfield Brewery for horse feed, etc.
The Swan had closed as a pub as long ago as
1879 when it became a temperance club known as
The British Workman. The parish magazine of
September of that year announced that new
premises for the club had been opened in the
Swan’s old brewhouse. At the opening, St. Michael’s
Vicar Samson spoke of the Swan’s two advantages
over the club’s former location in a cottage near
the vicarage: “its greater convenience and it being
the conversion of a public house into a place which
is intended to counteract drunkenness”. The
article added that a skittle alley and quoits ground
in the garden of the Swan was planned.
Among the many Shrewsbury family documents
at the Staffs Record Office is a large bundle of
papers relating to ownership of the Swan. They
trace its title and that of adjoining properties back
to when its malthouse was sold by Thomas Birch
to John Ottey in March 1765 for £75. The earliest
reference to it being called the Swan is in a deed
of June 1790 which describes it as “the dwelling
house in Brereton know by the sign of the Swan”.
At an earlier date the Swan apparently had
another name as a deed of October 1794 relating
to ownership of two adjoining houses, refers to
them as “adjoining a house heretofore in the
possession of John Warburton called the Boot and
Shoe but now called the Swan”.
Illustration shows the ‘Swan Inn’ to the left of
the Cedar Tree Hotel.
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