Famous award-winning family butchers to change hands after 180 years

A butchers described as “the cornerstone of the local community for generations” is about to see a major change as it celebrates its 180th anniversary. Like its hometown which is seeing major new developments go up in its centre, it’s now looking to hand over the business to the next generation.

Edge and Son which is located on New Chester Road in New Ferry was set up in 1844 and is considered to be one of the oldest businesses both on the Wirral and the UK. It uses more than 30 local farms within 25 miles, was once voted Top Retailer of the Year in the BBC Food and Farming Awards, and was recently highlighted by Wirral Council as “a cut above the rest” as part of a local authority shop local campaign promoting independent businesses.

During the time the butchers has been open, it’s seen two World Wars and periods of rationing where people were restricted on how much meat they could buy. It also saw further decline in New Ferry following a devastating explosion that ripped through its high street in 2017.

Callum Edge, who is the fifth generation of his family to run the business, started washing up every night at the butchers at age 13 after cycling there after school. Growing up in Parkgate, he has now been there for more than 50 years with the butchers kept going by customers further afield and regulars from the nearby Port Sunlight village.

During that time, he said New Ferry had changed a huge amount with shops closing but added: “That isn’t just New Ferry but shopping in general. The shops that have stayed are those who specialise in something.”

He added: “I think artisan type shops like ourselves, we are not on our own. They are doing well right across the country. It’s because they are different. It’s not what you can get from the supermarket. People want to know where it’s coming from and how it’s prepared and talk to us. We can tell them the whole story with the meat they are buying. We give them the full story rather than here’s a packet, beep, and it’s goodbye.”

To stay open, the butchers has maintained its focus on producing high welfare and more sustainably farmed meat, something they said has become more and more popular. Callum said: “We can really see that growing. So many more young people are aware of their food and where it comes from. Those are things this business has focused on for 180 years and we are focused even more now.”

In recent years, things have been difficult for New Ferry’s high street. At 9:15pm on March 25, 2017, the day before Mother’s Day, the Homes in Style store in the middle of the town exploded in an insurance job gone wrong injuring 81 people, two of them seriously.

More than 200 buildings were damaged to varying degrees with the impact felt across 1.5km of the town. Bricks from the building rained down several hundreds metres away on the other side of the railway line, the high street was closed off, and many locals in New Ferry still vividly remember that night.

The butchers lost its front windows as well as its shutters due to the shock of the blast but while some shops were forced to shut for months due to safety concerns, Edge and Son were back open after one day.

More than seven years later, work is underway by Wirral Council to regenerate the town centre with developments going up on the explosion site as well as the former locations of the homes and businesses opposite that were destroyed. Planning permission has also been granted to redevelop a car park and a former Co-Op into another housing development while funding is due to be spent by 2026 to revamp the pedestrian area.

Like many other businesses, the butchers saw an impact on trade in New Ferry following the explosion but it has long since recovered. However Callum remembers going down to London to try and petition the government alongside then-Wirral South MP Alison McGovern to provide help for businesses impacted by the explosion, adding: “We feel if it happened in Westminster, it would have been fixed in weeks. It has been overlooked.”

With the addition of 70 new homes close to the town centre, Callum hopes this will see more customers come into the butchers next door with new families moving to the area, adding: “That relationship between the countryside and the town centre really works. I think the regeneration of New Ferry is going to really help.”

However he thinks things do need to go further with derelict shops and store fronts restored, adding: “It needs grants to put people into them. It just needs to look pretty.” The need for parking close to the town centre was also highlighted as this was a regular complaint from customers coming in, an issue that’s been raised as a concern over the redevelopments.

Now after 50 years in the business, Callum believes it is time to hand the business over to the next generation. Having stayed in his family since Callum’s great great grandfather John Edge built the shop, it will soon be run in partnership with nearby farm Storeton Belted Galloways.

He said: “I am old and actually I really believe I have a responsibility to the team here, a team of 13 and if there is a legacy I would have, it’s that a lot of them have bought their own homes and it’s quite a young team. We are really proud of where we have got to. A lot of people hang onto things for far too long and it really needs a younger lease of life to move on.”

Going forward, Jess Bowling and her husband Tom, who run the Wirral farm, will be taking it over alongside shop butcher Jonathan Carrol with a view to take the shop into the next century. Going forward, Jess said: “What we want to do is recognise where the meat has come from. It’s really important that each bit of meat is associated with that farm. People will know exactly where it has come from.”

She added: “There are so many opportunities and so much we have spoken about to do with the food to make the business grow

“All this history and they have been here for a long time. That drew us to take it over. You don’t get many places like this anymore. It’s like a flashback to 100 years ago but in the best possible way.”

However Jonathan said they would still be keeping the shop very much the same in partnership with their current suppliers while continuing to improve. One big focus of the Storeton farm is the concept of regenerative farming which gives farmland time to recover as well as help wildlife.

Jonathan said: “It gets a bad name, cattle farming, but that is the intensive farms where they use the machinery that requires petrol and produces the greenhouse gas emissions. In that way, it’s almost the opposite.

“With the history that the shop has got, we have been here for 180 years and I do not see why we wouldn’t be here for another 180 years.”