Charles Wells

Captain Charles Wells (16 August 1842 – 1 April 1914) was the British founder of Charles Wells Ltd, which became the largest privately owned brewery in the United Kingdom, and the progenitor of the Wells Baronets of Felmersham.

Life Wells was born on 16 August 1842, the second son of George Wells, a cabinetmaker. He left Bedford Modern School at the age of fourteen and went to sea, ‘signing up with the shipping company Wigrams as a midshipman on the frigate Devonshire’. and offered command of Wigrams's first steamship.

While on leave in the early 1870s, Wells became engaged to Josephine Grimbly of Banbury, Oxfordshire. He subsequently sold off the coal business.

In 1903, Wells became a member of Bedford Borough Council, which he served until 1909. Four of Charles's sons became partners in the brewery on condition that they live in Wells's native town of Bedford. In 1910, the business was registered as a private limited company, valued at £150,000 and owning 140 pubs.

Charles Wells died in Bedford on 1 April 1914. He is buried at the Foster Hill Cemetery, a few metres east of the chapel.