The Old Swan Inn

My Great-Grandmother, Jane Elizabeth Roberts, was born in 1865 into a family of publicans in the brewery town of Wrexham, North Wales. Her parents, Seth and Elizabeth Roberts, were landlords of the Cross Foxes public house in Abbot Street, Wrexham, and at the age of seventeen Jane followed them into the same business. She left home to live and work at the Bridge End Inn in the nearby village of Ruabon, where she worked as a servant for the innkeepers, Thomas and Sarah Jones.

Left: The Roberts Family, in the doorway of The Cross Foxes, abt 1885

Right: The Cross Foxes (recently renamed The Fox and Firkin) in 1999.

In 1882, Jane married David Brown (left), a bottle-maker from Oswestry in Shropshire. He had been drawn to Wrexham by the dozens of independent breweries operating in the town, which guaranteed him a steady flow of business. David and Jane moved into a small house at No.35, Beastmarket, where their first child, David, was born (and died) the following year. In all David and Jane Brown had thirteen children: David (1883); David (b.1884); William (b.1885); Seth (b.1889); Charles (1892-4); Harry (b.1894); John (b.1896); Lily (b.1898); Emily (b.1900); May (b.1902); Nell (b.1903); George (b.1906) and Bessie (b.1908).

David Brown died in 1910, when he was forty-seven years old and his youngest child just two. His widow Jane moved back to Abbot Street, and became landlady of the Old Swan Inn, just across the road from the Cross Foxes. The Old Swan Inn was the Brown's family home when War broke out in August 1914.

Left - Jane Brown and her seven youngest children, at The Old Swan, 1913.

Back Row - Lily, John, Emily, May. Front - George, unknown, Nell, Jane Brown, Bess, unknown.

Right - The Old Swan Inn in 1998. The Old Swan is still a working pub today,
almost 200 years after it first opened for business.