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THE BIRTH OF WICSTUN DISTILLERY
Our story starts in 1984 when Jago Packer, our founder, started home brewing in his dormitory while away at boarding school in Scarborough.
It all started after watching The Great Escape, where they were making potato moonshine in a homemade still hidden in the bunkhouse.
Obviously, there was no similarity between boarding school and Stalag Luft 3!
Luckily Jago outwitted the house masters by hiding the demijohns in the roof void, luckily, they were never found, but in the dead of night, you could hear them bubbling away.
This sparked a passion for home brewing, which has continued throughout his life with everything from cider to beer, wine to mead.
Jago took a break from homebrewing when he joined the Army and went to the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst to train to be an Army officer in the Kings' Regiment; this took him to many interesting places, from Northern Island to Buckingham Palace, The Falkland Islands to York. His final posting was in Strensall, North Yorkshire, running a training team, and this is where he met his future wife, Lisa. They remained in the York area after getting married and soon Jago started home brewing again.
As his children became adults, they too started to show an interest in his home-brewing antics, which eventually led to the question, "why don't we try to make spirits?".
So after a lot of research, pain, planning and testing (or should we say sampling the products) eventually, the first Wicstun Gin was born.
Soon after, the main flavours started to evolve and our hobby naturally turned into a business.
In 2021, Jago and his wife, Lisa, started the process of licencing and registering as a distillery. Finally, in March 2022, we were delighted to become the first fully licenced distillery based in Market Weighton, East Yorkshire.
Since then, Wicstun Distillery has gone from strength to strength with many new flavours in the pipeline, producing a range of Yorkshire Gin, Vodkas and Rum.
In January 2024, we decided that it was time to expand so we could increase our production capacity and have more room to develop new flavours, so our search for new premises started.
Once the new location was found, we had to start the process of licensing and converting the building into a distillery.
On the 28th of March 2024 the new distillery received all of its licences and we were able to prepare to open to the public.
THE ORIGIN OF THE NAME WICSTUN
The name Wicstun is Anglo-Saxon in origin, meaning ‘dwelling’ or ‘dwelling place’, and indicates that there was a village here sometime before the compilation of the Domesday Book of 1086 when Market Weighton is referred to as ‘Wicstun’, a district of 15 villages and 117 farms valued at £30. Held by the King, it was the chief settlement of the ‘Wicstun Hundred‘
Market Weighton’s most famous resident was born and lived in the town who was William Bradley was born on the 10th of February, 1787, the fourth of thirteen children. By the time he was 20, Bradley stood a towering 7ft 9 inches tall (2.36m) and weighed 27 stones (172kg).
After many years with a group of travelling showmen billed as “The Yorkshire Giant“ , he retired back to Market Weighton where he died on the 30th May 1820 aged 33.
Originally buried in the grounds of All Saints’ Church, Market Weighton, he was later re-interred inside the church.
Market Weighton was also the home of Anne Lister (3 April 1791 – 22 September 1840) who was an English diarist, famous for revelations for which she was dubbed "the first modern lesbian.."
She was muscular in appearance, dressed only in black, and highly educated, and later was known, generally unkindly, as "Gentleman Jack". Her final significant relationship was with Ann Walker, to whom she was notionally married in Holy Trinity Church, Goodramgate, York, which is now celebrated as the birthplace of lesbian marriage in Britain.
