The Swan Taphouse

The Swan sits right on the Wharfage and belongs to the great period of change immediately following construction of the Iron Bridge.

The building has 18th-century origins and began life connected with the malting trade before becoming an inn serving the growing riverside community.

Merchants, ironmasters, labourers and travellers all moved along this stretch.

Local tradition even connects the Swan with meetings associated with the Iron Bridge itself.

Again, we're treating that as tradition unless documentary evidence turns up.

But that is exactly why we're doing this research.

One old document can completely alter the story of a pub.

A coaching inn and a boating inn

Local research tells us the Swan was working as a pub by 1781 at the latest, and that it served two kinds of traveller at once.

Coaches ran overland to Shrewsbury twice a week, and a daily trow service worked downriver to Stourport.

That river service was run in conjunction with the wharf next door, which throughout its history was almost always in the hands of the landlord of the pub.

Stand outside today and it takes very little imagination: the horses on one side, the trows on the other, and the Swan in the middle of it all.

The river comes in

Being on the Wharfage has always had a price.

The Swan flooded severely in the great flood of 1795, along with most of the riverside pubs of the era.

And it was still there in March 1947, the flood older residents remember above all others, when the Severn rose ten feet in a single day and boats were rowed along Ironbridge.

Brewed every Thursday

Historic England records that part of the building was a malthouse, and the memory of brewing here has lasted in local families.

Garry Owen-Owen recalls that his great-grandfather, Harry Owen, brewed for the Swan every Thursday.

The Americans at the Swan

In the Second World War the Swan was popular with American airmen based at Atcham, who were also known to drink at the Old Queen's Head.

It narrowly avoided destruction in 1940, when a German raider dropped a stick of bombs over Ironbridge, the river and Benthall Edge.

George Hayward kept the Swan in those years, and he is remembered for keeping order.

Margaret Ann Roberts, born in December 1939 and living with her grandmother on Lincoln Hill while her father served in the RAF, remembers her granny walking down to the Swan every night for her beer and coming back up the road at nine o'clock with the news that the Americans had been fighting over the women, and that George Hayward had slung them out.

She was listening from her bed. It is the kind of detail no list entry will ever give you.

Community memories

The coaching, trow, wartime and brewing details above were contributed by local people through the Ironbridge through the Dale Yesteryear community group.

We record them as testimony and local research, and we would welcome any documents that pin them down further.