Children’s charity Wood Street Mission has launched a Victorian-style beer to help raise awareness about the high levels of child poverty in Salford and Manchester.
The 3.6% bitter – half the strength of some beer brewed in the nineteenth century – has been brewed by Manchester’s Marble Brewery to mark the opening of an exhibition: Queues, Clogs & Redemption, charting the work of the charity since the mid-Victorian era.
Queues Clogs & Redemption looks back at Wood Street Mission’s work from the days of “rescuing” street children from poverty in Salford and Manchester over the past 150 years.
The bitter 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.
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.”
It’s available in local pubs around the central Salford and Manchester area, including The Gas Lamp on Bridge Street.
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 today despite the affluence of parts of our cities, one in three local children is living in poverty.”
This summer Wood Street launched a pledge to provide £1 million of school uniform to families in Salford and Manchester.
It found there was a huge 33% hike in the number of families needing help with the cost of uniforms in Salford before the new school years started in September.
The exhibition is open on Wednesdays and Fridays until 9 October at the Wood Street Mission offices.
