GWR Route: Banbury to Wolverhampton

Soho and Winson Green: gwrswg2266

A 1934 GWR publicity photograph of Soho & Winson Green warehouse showing M&B bags of hops being carried in LNER bags. The following article appeared in the Great Western Magazine of March 1934 (page 141) – Great Western Warehouse Accommodation. It will be common knowledge that the Great Western Railway Company have provided spacious warehouses at all important goods depots, as well as at many smaller stations. The purpose of this accommodation is to attract new traffic, as well as to retain existing traffic to the rail. Upon completion of the warehouse at Birmingham (Soho), in December 1932, representatives of Messrs. Mitchells and Butler, the well known Birmingham firm of brewers, were so impressed with the facilities for storage that they took practically the whole of the top floor and a portion of the second floor. The main commodities dealt with by the firm are hops, barley and sugar. The latter traffic, which previously passed from London by road, is packed in casks and nearly 1,000 tons have been received. The traffic commenced to flow into the new warehouse early in October last. We reproduce a photograph showing some of the hops now on hand. The firm have ordered about five thousand pockets of hops to the warehouse, and a space of nine hundred square yards is now occupied. Up to the present about nineteen thousand 2 cwt bags of English barley have passed through the warehouse. The firm have already taken delivery of nine thousand bags and the sacks remaining in the warehouse occupy two thousand square yards.

Robert Ferris

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