ROBERT BROWN & SONS BRANDY BOTTLE

This new exhibit in our virtual Middlewich museum is a rare find indeed and has been contributed by Carole Hughes. It's a brandy bottle labelled by Robert Brown & Sons, wine & brandy merchants.
Even today some of the older residents of the town refer to The Vaults in Wheelock Street as 'Brown's Vaults' or, simply, 'Browns' and the pub itself has been so extensively modernised over the years that it is frequently mistaken for a new building, dating back only as far as the 1970s.
It was at the beginning of that decade that the Vaults came out of hiding behind the large buildings at the end of Pepper Street and was turned into the pub we know today.
Prior to that the building's main focus was on the off-licence trade, and the bars on the premises - the Black Bar and the Vaults - were hidden away at the back and only accessible via corridors.
This arrangement was, in turn,  a relic of the days when the owners of the premises were, among other things and as the label on the bottle implies, wine and brandy importers.