J.W. Lees Brewery
UK business
J.W. Lees & Co (Brewers) Ltd is a British brewery and pub company in Middleton, Greater Manchester, that has produced real ale since 1828. J.W. Lees is the oldest operating brewery in Manchester. The brewery owns and operates 150 pubs, inns and hotels mainly in North West England and North Wales. It also owns wine distributor Willoughby's.
History
The brewery was formed in 1828 when retired cotton manufacturer John Lees purchased land in Middleton, Lancashire and built Greengate Brewery, from which the company still operates. His grandson, John William Lees, took over the company in 1876. The Greengate Brewery was rebuilt in 1876. The business was re-incorporated in 1955 when R.W.T. Lees-Jones bought the share capital of the company back under single ownership.
The company is still family owned and operated. When William, Simon, Christina, Anna and Michael Lees-Jones joined Richard and Christopher at J.W. Lees in the 1990s, they were the sixth generation from the founder to work in the company.
“J.W. Lees Brewery” enters the record as uK business. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Lees, Brewery and business can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 19, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6104441. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 1 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1828, 1876 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “J.W. Lees Brewery” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.