Pub history · No.18 of 18 · Ironbridge
The Coracle Micropub
2018 | The baby of the crawl
After beginning in 1728, we've finally reached the 21st century.
The Coracle Micropub at 27 High Street opened in May 2018.
But the premises weren't sitting empty waiting for someone to invent craft beer.
Before becoming a pub, the High Street property had housed a succession of traditional businesses, including a printer, a jeweller and a butcher. CAMRA's local branch records all three previous uses.
Then two beer enthusiasts transformed the premises into a micropub in 2018.
And the name couldn't be more Ironbridge.
Coracles have been used on the Severn for centuries, for fishing, ferrying people and goods and simply crossing the river without paying a bridge toll. The Ironbridge Coracle Trust records their documented use in the Gorge for more than 350 years.
Photographs of local coracle makers and river users inside the pub deliberately connect the modern micropub with that much older tradition.
Which makes the Coracle a rather fitting place to finish.
Our youngest pub has a name borrowed from one of the Gorge's oldest forms of transport.
How we know this date
- DocumentedThe Shropshire Star reported the micropub's planning application in March 2018, and CAMRA photographed the premises trading in May 2018. The youngest date on the list is also the best documented.Source: Shropshire Star; CAMRA
- DocumentedCAMRA's local branch records the High Street building's earlier lives as a printer, a jeweller and a butcher before it ever sold a pint.Source: CAMRA local branch records
This is a working date. If you have a document or photograph that changes it, we'd genuinely like to see it.
The Coracle Micropub · Ironbridge
Can you help with The Coracle Micropub?
We're still researching this pub. Old photographs, licences, newspaper cuttings, brewery documents or family memories all help — and if you have evidence that changes our date, we'd genuinely like to see it.
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