Wolverhampton Springfield brewery


H&M Springfield Brewery Report

@MidlandsUrbanEye

BUILT: 1873 
DATES OF USE: 1874 - 1991 (After 1991 part was still being used for storage)
CURRENT STATE: Main site demolished, remaining structure empty and worn
CURRENT USE: Disused, set to be revamped
Notable events: Huge blaze (2004)
ADDRESS: Grimestone street, Wolverhampton

 The brewery was built in 1873 when the William Butler and Company needed bigger premises than their existing site in Priestfield. The site of the brewery before construction was relatively hard to construct on due to its wet, marshy landscape. A year after being built the brewery opened for business in 1874, and in its peak was producing 1.500k barrels of beer per week and employing upto 900 people. Multiple warehouses and external buildings operated on the site for a long time, Between 1881-3 a new brewing tower was constructed, enabling William Butler and Company to increase production from 400 to 1,500 barrels a week. In 1960 Mitchell's and Butler's acquired the company and the Cape Hill brewery kept the Springfield Brewery open and In 1992 a clock tower was built. After a decline in produce the brewery stopped producing at around 1991, it was then on it was only used as a storage depot. The site lay redundant up until 2004 when a huge fire caused by arsonists destroyed a huge chunk of the grade II listed building. Almost every burnable material perished in the blaze. More than 100 firefighters from crews across the West Midlands and Staffordshire battled through the night in a bid to save the Grade II listed building.
Former workers watched in disbelief as the building one of the city's most protected conservation sites perished in a thick raging blaze. It was reported that a large amount of 999 calls were made shortly before 10pm on the night of the fire after multiple people saw flames jumping through the windows and roof of the main building on the site. Firefighters had to request the opening of an extra lock in the adjacent Birmingham canal to release more water to douse the flames.Two crews from Wolverhampton initially attended but within thirty minutes 23 crews from across the region had been drafted in to fight the fire. 2 years later in 2006 Taylor Wimpey laid foundations on the site to build for around 140 homes, but a collapse in the housing market saw the plans to fall through, so the foundations and plans were removed from the site with few pipes and poles in the ground on the wasteland remaining. In 2011 Bough Brewery, a micro-brewery began producing Springfield Ale on the site however soon stopped.  The University of Wolverhampton purchased the site in 2014 – the start of ambitious plans to create a construction and built environment super-campus. November 2016 – the West Midlands Construction University Technical College opened its doors to pupils on the site for the first time. Over the plans to reconstruct the brewery site, parts of the brewery has began be worked on, Fire damage has been covered up and a piping house used to pump water from a natural spring has been restored, not much else has been done so far but locals are incredibly happy that they plan to keep the grade II listed building and restore it to its former glory, even if it won't serve the same purpose as before. At one point from when the micro brewery started operations in 2011, security staff were hired to protect the site from any further damage to be caused, although from our personal experience we've established there is either no security guarding the site anymore or the security isn't monitored and working fully.
Images from fire, restorations and previous states: 














Location: Grimstone St, Wolverhampton WV10, UK

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