I called in at the Crown in Market Street, Oakengates. The town had a medieval market and then became a cog in the local industries in the 19th and 20th centuries. Today it’s a suburb of burgeoning Telford.

Market Street, which is a short thoroughfare, once had 15 pubs. It’s down to its last five today, of which the Crown is the linchpin, a great champion of cask ale. It dates from 1835 and once had only one room: it was the result of the Duke of Wellington’s Beer Act that enabled anyone to sell beer from their own homes if they paid a guinea a year for a licence.

John Ellis has run the pub since 1995. It had been a Wrekin Brewery tied house and was passed on to Greenall Whitley of Warrington, who had allowed it to fall into dereliction..

John has transformed the Crown. He sells only one regular beer, Hobson’s Bitter, but his battery of pumps serve beers from micros all over the country. He keeps meticulous records and says he has sold 2,000 different beers in eight years.

He stages an anuual Shropshire Beer Festival every July but there are many other beery events throughout the year, as well as regular live music.

And the chairman of CAMRA, Paula Waters, held her wedding reception in the Crown, which makes it a VIP — a Very Important Pub.

www.crown.oakengates.net

This column originally appeared in What’s Brewing. Roger Protz is one of the foremost writers on beer in the World today. He is the Editor of CAMRA’s Good Beer Guides and this article appears with his permission.