Wirral family-owned butchers shop Edge & Son celebrates its 180th birthday and says the same families have been coming to the shop for more than a century

It was in the 1840s when Queen Victoria married Prince Albert and the world’s first postage stamp was introduced – and it was also when Edge & Son first opened.

In 1844 John Edge opened his butchers shop on New Chester Road in New Ferry and 180 years later the business is as popular as ever. Generations of families going back more than a century have bought their meat from the outlet.

Callum Edge, the fifth generation to run Edge & Son, said: “After the Second World War my grandfather was in charge of rationing meat for Chester and Wirral, so it’s always been very close to our heart to feed the local community.”

He added: “My great, great grandfather built the shop in 1844. At about this time he sold some grazing land to Billy Lever for only a few quid, who used it to build the village of Port Sunlight.”

Surprisingly the business, which pre-dates motor vehicles, the invention of the telephone and modern-day refrigeration methods, is strikingly similar to its 19th century incarnation.

Callum explained: “We haven’t changed a lot. We’ve retained the same physical nature of the business and our principles around farming and sustainability.

“We’re a nose-to-tail butcher as our belief is that the whole animal should be eaten and not just the ‘choice’ cuts. As a result, we hardly have any waste. The bits we can’t use get processed to generate power.

“We sell a lot of the same things we did when the shop first opened. Bone broth, dripping and tallow are still big sellers and many regular customers include offal in their diet as it is extremely nutritional.

“But we’ve moved with the times too. My grandfather served in the Vehicle Regiment during World War I and was surprised to return home when the war ended to find out that we still delivered with horses! He introduced the business to its first vehicle.”

More than 30 local farms spread across a 25-mile radius supply meat to Edge & Son. Its commitment to selling quality fresh meat is one of the many reasons the shop was voted ‘Top Retailer of the Year’ in the BBC Food and Farming Awards.

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“With Wirral being such a green area, we have fantastic local farms, our nearest of which is only two miles away. We feel a great responsibility to our local farming community and never buy factory-farmed livestock,” said Callum.

“We have a loyal customer base of ‘Edgetarians’, with families that have been coming to our shop for over a hundred years. It’s wonderful our name gets passed from one generation to the next. We thank them for believing in what we do.”

This story first appeared on the Wirral Council news website