New Ferry butcher celebrates 180th birthday

Like many long-standing family businesses in Wirral, Edge & Son has been the cornerstone of the local community for generations, providing a familiar, friendly face to Wirral’s residents and keeping them well fed too.

The New Ferry business celebrates its 180th birthday this year not just making them one of the oldest businesses in Wirral, but the whole of the UK.

Edge & Son in New Ferry (Image: Wirral Council)

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.”

In the 1840s Wirral entrepreneur by the name of John Edge built a butcher shop on New Chester Road.

Callum said: “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!

“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.”

Edge & Son, which was voted ‘Top Retailer of the Year’ in the BBC Food and Farming Awards, use more than 30 local farms, spread across a 25-mile radius, helping their food miles to stay low.

Callum said: “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.

“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.”