Cheers! Albrighton church toasts host of real ales at third annual beer festival

Beers from south Shropshire to north Wales, Derby to Shrewsbury, were on tap for the tasting at Albrighton's St Mary Magdalene Church, for its third annual beer festival held across Friday evening and most of Saturday.

The unusual event is now a fixture of the village's calendar, but from monastery-brewed beers to turning water into wine, the presence of alcohol in holy history is not as taboo as some might assume, organiser and church organist Gerald Leach said.

He said: "I first got the idea from going to Liverpool Metropolitan Cathedral. Down in the crypt they had a sign up saying they held a beer festival there and it was the biggest, best attended event of any that they do. I thought if they can do it, so can we.

"I'm always very keen, as is the vicar, to open the church to more of the community than those that come on a Sunday. It is a village asset.

"I think a beer festival works really well in here. People who have never been in a church before have come in and looked around, and found it's a very interesting building – we have six Earls of Shrewsbury buried here, and one Duke.

"There are people who disapprove but I think they are coming around now to the idea that it is respectable – as are a lot of the CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) events. There's never any trouble," he said.

Reverend Mary Wade, who was a curate when the festival first started but took over as vicar last year, said: "Gerald suggested it to the previous vicar, Gill Warren, and she said 'let's give it a go'. It has grown exponentially since then."

She said the festival was also a fundraising event for the conservation of three stained glass windows, including the 14th century east window and two others, one made by famous stained glass window-maker William Warrington in 1858.

She added: "It brings people in who wouldn't normally come here. Last year it led to conversations with people in the village I would not have had otherwise."