Charles Wells (brewer)

Captain Charles Wells (13 August 1842 – 1 April 1914) was the British founder of Charles Wells Ltd, now the largest privately owned brewery in the United Kingdom, and the progenitor of the Wells Baronets of Felmersham.^[1][2][3][4]

Biography

Wells was born on 13 August 1842, the second son of George Wells.^[5][1][2] He left Bedford Modern School at the age of fourteen and went to sea, ‘signing up with the shipping company Wigrams as a midshipman on the frigate Devonshire’. ^[1][2] Wells was made a Captain on 16 December 1868^[6] and offered command of Wigrams's first steamship.^[1][2][7]

While on leave in the early 1870s, Wells became engaged to Josephine Grimbly of Banbury, Oxfordshire.^[1][2] Josephine’s father, although in favour of the match, said that ‘Charles Wells must leave the sea and find a new and less dangerous career’.^[1][2] In 1872 Charles and Josephine married; they had five sons (one of whom, Richard Wells was created a baronet) and three daughters.^[1][2]

In 1876, Wells became a brewer when he took over a coal wharf, a malt house and brewery in Horne Lane, Bedford and thirty five public houses, sold to him at public auction in December 1875.^[1][2][8] He subsequently sold off the coal business.^[1][2]

In 1903, Wells became a member of Bedford Borough Council which he served until 1909.^[2] Four of Charles’s sons became partners in the brewery on condition that they live in Wells’s native town of Bedford.^[1] In 1910, the business was registered as a private limited company, valued at £150,000 and owning 140 pubs. ^[1]

Charles Wells died in Bedford on 1 April 1914.^[1]

References