Spot the Difference #116; Greenall Whitley & Co Ltd

Today brought home the importance of this website and especially this theme, particularly for those collectors with an interest in the history of the beers and breweries. I guess it is over 35 years since I acquired the beginnings of my label collection. There was a number of post war Greenall’s labels in that box. It is a brewery that I have built up a decent collection of labels. Today I discovered a variation I had not seen before. I was inspired to look through one of my duplicates boxes by an email from agm. Not a sought after label, but I get great pleasure in finding things like this.

So, you need to sort the difference and this will enable you to accurately date at least one the of labels. Let us know.

4 Comments

  • Pete S

    Not wishing to give too much away at this early stage. but is the right hand labels from mid to late 1970’s?

  • Peter D

    No

  • John L

    I struggled to find any difference initially, but then noticed the omission of Salford from the right-hand label. That suggests that that label dates from between 1958 (the takeover of Magee Marshall in Bolton) and 1961 (the takeover of Groves and Whitnall of Salford). The left-hand label was superseded in 1968, when Greenall Whitley introduced new labels. I suppose it’s conceivable that a further variant, with the addition of Wellington, was introduced in 1966 when the Wrekin Brewery was taken over, and ran for a couple of years – but I think that pretty unlikely. One slightly puzzling twist, however, is that I find I have a label identical to the right-hand label (i.e. with Salford omitted), but with minimum contents wording. These are deep waters…

  • Peter D

    Thank you John. A very helpful response. I have not seen anything from GW with Wellington mentioned. Anyone know any different?
    As regards the minimum contents label, who knows? I wonder if the first ones were overprints of existing labels to use up old stock?

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