Our Journey:
Over 120 Years of Craft, Grit and Village Heritage

A family butchers since 1903. Five generations. One unwavering standard.

At Eric Lyons, we have never believed in standing still. From our early days as a single Edwardian butcher in the heart of Knowle, five generations of our family have spent over a century perfecting the craft of premium butchery and master baking.
Today we are in the middle of our most exciting chapter yet. We are refurbishing our Balsall Common store, opening our fourth retail location in Codsall, Wolverhampton, and moving our entire production operation offsite. And with production leaving the Knowle flagship, that beloved store is set to grow to three times its current size. Every expansion we have made, every refurbishment we have taken on, and every pivot we have navigated has brought us to this moment.
Here is how we grew from a historic High Street farmhouse into the modern Eric Lyons family business you know and love today.

Pre-1900s: The Medieval Roots of Our Knowle Flagship

Before the Lyons family arrived, our flagship building on the High Street in Knowle already held centuries of history.
Our building began its life as the middle property of a row of three medieval timber-framed houses, flanked by the Red Lion pub and the long-demolished White Swan. Built as a classic rural farmhouse with an open hall living space, it was almost certainly home to someone of standing in the medieval village community.
Records from 1816 describe the premises as a “house and outbuildings.” By 1841 it was formally listed as a “house, butcher’s shop and yard.” The building had been a butcher’s for the best part of two centuries before our family ever walked through the door.
Hidden beneath the office floor is an ancient stone-covered well, long rumoured to connect to a secret tunnel running all the way to the parish church. The original wattle and daub walls, hand-woven sticks daubed with clay, sand, dung and horsehair, are still preserved in the loft to this day. The oak beams that held them remain standing. You can see some of them in the shop today if you know where to look.

1903: The Lyons Family Arrives in Knowle

Our great-great-grandfather, John Lyons, established his first butchery in Knowle in 1903, trading from a newly built block of shops near the old cinema on the High Street, roughly where Dorridge Autos stands today.
John soon moved the operation further up the street to a larger premises (where One Stop is now), handing day-to-day management to his son Phil. John then moved again to the bottom end of the High Street near the Lodge Road corner, consolidating the family’s growing presence in the village.
From the very beginning, this was a family built on movement and ambition.

1910s and 1920s: Service, Loss and Putting Down Roots

Phil Lyons enlisted in the Army on almost the first day of the First World War in 1914. He returned safely and continued to build the business, eventually establishing a shop in the Victoria Buildings on the corner of Lodge Road and Station Road, around 1928.
Phil also took on a first additional branch in the nearby village of Lapworth, an early sign that the Lyons name had ambitions beyond a single shop.
The decade was also marked by personal tragedy. Phil’s wife passed away shortly after the birth of his youngest son Bob in 1926, leaving Phil to raise Eric and Bob as a single father. The family worked as an extraordinarily close and resilient unit, keeping the business going through grief and hardship. As David Lyons recalled: “They were just sort of working as a close unit to bring the family up and run the shop as well.” 

1930s and 1940s: A Deal Over a Pint

Phil’s son Eric served in the Second World War. During his time away, he sent his wages home to invest in a slaughterhouse, which came with the Station Road shop. It was a sign of real conviction in the family’s future.
After the war, with Phil, Eric and his younger brother Bob all working from the Station Road shop, Phil set his sights on the famous High Street premises that had been run for forty years by local butcher Frank Harper. Frank, believing his son had been lost in the war, had decided to retire.
In 1946, Phil and Eric sat down with Frank Harper in the Red Lion pub next door and did a deal over a pint.
The purchase came with more than just a shop. It included a rear yard, outbuildings and a slaughterhouse stretching as far back as what is now St John’s Close. When the local council placed a compulsory purchase order on that rear land to build post-war housing, Phil negotiated a deal that secured permanent delivery access directly to the High Street in exchange. A brilliant bit of business.
The yard at the back became something of a farmyard, with free-range chickens and pigs roaming around. Eric even made his daughters Jeanette and Yvonne makeshift saddles so they could ride the pigs around the yard. On one occasion, several pigs escaped during an evening church service next door and had to be retrieved from the pews.

1950s: The Birth of the Eric Lyons Brand

In the early 1950s, Eric and his wife Pat purchased the High Street shop from Phil, while Eric’s brother Bob and his wife Iris took over the Station Road and Lapworth shops.
Eric set about modernising the frontage and officially renamed the business Eric Lyons.
The downstairs living accommodation next to the shop was converted into a separate retail space, which was taken on by Brian Chare as Chare’s Furniture Store. Eric and Pat moved their young family into the flat above.
The shop was also where Eric and Pat fell in love. Pat had come to work in the shop, taking money at the central cashier kiosk. As David puts it: “That’s where my dad and mum met.”

1960s: The Pie Kitchen and the First Big Redevelopment

In 1965, Eric demolished the old timber barns and pigsties at the rear of the shop and rebuilt the entire back-of-house operation. New covered storage, indoor fridges and a modern preparation area replaced the dilapidated outbuildings.
Most significantly, a dedicated Pie Kitchen was created. Eric had trained as a chef during his Army service and had long dreamed of producing his own baked goods. Now he had the space to do it.
The Pie Kitchen transformed the business. Within a few years, Eric Lyons was not only selling pies over the counter but supplying Solihull Civic Hall, the flight catering operation at Birmingham (Elmdon) Airport, and the staff canteens of Massey Ferguson and Standard Triumph. Deliveries arrived by train to Dorridge Station, collected by the van driver Bill.
Above the new production area, a new flat was built. Eric, Pat and the children moved in, and the old flat above the shop was converted into showrooms for Chare’s Furniture and office space for the butchers.
The 1965 redevelopment was the moment Eric Lyons became more than a butcher’s shop. It was the moment the business became a food producer.

1970s: The Next Generation Steps In

Eric’s eldest son John completed food college in 1971 and joined the family business, helping to manage the growing pie operation alongside his father.
By 1979, John stepped away from the retail side to establish an independent pie manufacturing facility in Witton. His younger brothers Peter and David then took complete charge of the flagship High Street shop, bringing fresh eyes and professional training to a business that had served Knowle for over seven decades.

1980s: Stepping Up Under Pressure

When Eric’s health declined in the early 1980s, David became a company director at just 18 years old. It was a baptism of fire.
The business was facing difficult financial times, with some commercial wholesale debts weighing heavily on the books. David and Peter took a decisive strategic call: they pivoted away from risky commercial contracts and refocused the business entirely on premium, direct-to-consumer retail.
It was one of the most important decisions in the company’s history.
“We had to knuckle down and sort of bring it through some tricky times,” David recalled. “But we brought it forward.”

1990s: Opening Up the Space and Launching Ready Meals

By 1990, the shop was beginning to feel dated. That year, the same year David married Lisa, the business undertook a significant refurbishment. The wall dividing the butcher’s shop from the adjacent Chare’s Furniture space was knocked through, creating one large, open-plan retail environment for the first time.
A single continuous counter was installed, new displays were added and the browsing experience was transformed.
Crucially, this refurbishment included the introduction of the shop’s first self-service freezer, launching the now-famous Eric Lyons frozen ready-meal range. Steak and kidney, steak with red wine and mushroom, chicken balti, Caribbean chicken, Indonesian lamb… the range grew steadily over the years, always led by quality and flavour.
The ready-meal range that millions of customers love today was born from a decision taken in 1990 to move with the times.

2015 to 2018: The Full Flagship Refurbishment

By the mid-2010s, Nick and Dan (the fifth generation, David’s sons) were spending increasing time in the business. Nick had come out of food college and could see the shop was beginning to show its age: loose wall tiles, ageing fridge counters and wiring that had done its time.
What started as a conversation about refreshing one section of the shop quickly grew into something far more ambitious.
In 2015, David met shop fitter Andy Cusack at the MeTex trade show at the NEC. Andy visited the Knowle shop, immediately saw its potential and became a driving force behind the transformation. The first design plans were drawn up on 24 September 2015.
Three years of planning, design refinement and a frustrating delay with Solihull Council planning followed before the build finally began in autumn 2018.
The refurbishment ran for 13 weeks and the shop refused to close throughout. In a logistical feat, the retail counter was relocated into the back preparation rooms, the kitchen temporarily moved into a tent outside, and the team kept serving customers through a West Midlands winter. As Nick described it: “There was one time we had a storm and there was just a sheet of water going down the back entrance.”
The finished shop was revealed at a celebration launch on the night the Knowle Christmas lights were switched on in December 2018. Customers, builders and staff came together with beer, wine and homemade cupcakes, and the doors opened properly the following morning.
Key elements of the refurbishment included:

• A fully modernised shopfront, retail area, butchery preparation section and bakery kitchen
• Exposed oak beams preserving the medieval character of the building
• A large hanging dry-aging display in the front window, championed by Nick to bring customers back in touch with where their meat comes from
• Discovery of the ancient well beneath the back corner, which Nick is determined to incorporate into a future redesign

As Nick put it: “It was very modern, but we kept all the iconic old features in there.”

2020: Pandemic Pivot and the Birth of Nationwide Delivery

In March 2020, the first national lockdown arrived overnight. Nick and Dan built an online shop within hours and launched three essential product bundles: a meat pack, a pie and ready-meals pack, and an everyday essentials pack containing milk, butter and bread.
The response was immediate and overwhelming. With supermarket delivery slots fully booked for weeks, the phones went wild. The shop front was closed and the entire retail area was converted into a picking and packing operation, with the team producing and delivering fresh goods directly to local doorsteps.
“We pivoted very quickly,” Nick said. “Overnight we had hundreds and hundreds of orders.”
What began as a community lifeline during the pandemic has since grown into a thriving nationwide delivery service, bringing Eric Lyons pies, meats and ready meals to food lovers across the UK.

2024: Bentley Heath Opens

On 25 October 2024, Eric Lyons opened its second retail store at Widney Road, Bentley Heath, taking on the site formerly home to Vernon James butchers.
The premises were completely refurbished and relaunched as a modern Eric Lyons food hub, carrying the same premium meats, handmade pies, deli goods and ready meals as the Knowle flagship.
The Bentley Heath opening taught the team valuable lessons about multi-site trading. Parking, for instance, proved far more significant than anticipated: “There was a lot of customers who shopped in Knowle who now go to Bentley Heath because the parking is way better,” Nick noted. Local tastes also varied more than expected, with Bentley Heath customers showing a strong preference for products not stocked in Knowle.
The experience sharpened the team’s approach to every subsequent opening.

2025: Balsall Common Opens

In November 2025, Eric Lyons opened its third store on Station Road, Balsall Common, bringing the family’s trusted food-hub model to another thriving West Midlands community.
Balsall Common is one of the most recent communities in the borough to be formally reclassified as a town for planning purposes, reflecting the growth and services now available there. Eric Lyons is proud to be part of that local high street. The store offers the full range of premium cuts, handmade pies, ready meals and deli goods, all prepared with the same care and expertise the family has developed across five generations.

 

2026: Our Biggest Leap Yet

This year marks the most significant operational step in the 120-year history of Eric Lyons.
Three thriving retail shops and a nationwide delivery operation have done exactly what they were meant to do: they have outgrown the production space behind the Knowle High Street shop. To meet demand without ever compromising on quality, 2026 brings four milestones running in parallel.

Balsall Common Refurbishment
Our Balsall Common store, opened in November 2025, is already getting a fresh new transformation. In the coming months, the site will undergo a full refurbishment, bringing it fully in line with the modern Eric Lyons look and feel that our customers know and love.

Moving Production Offsite
Our master bakers, chefs and food preparation teams are moving into a dedicated offsite production facility. This gives our craftspeople the space, equipment and modern infrastructure they need to keep making every pie, every ready meal and every cut of meat to the exact standard five generations of this family have stood behind.
It is the direct descendant of Eric’s 1965 Pie Kitchen build. The principle is identical: give the makers the right space and the quality will follow.

Opening Our Fourth Store in Codsall
By the end of 2026, Eric Lyons will open its fourth retail store in Codsall, Wolverhampton, extending our village food-hub model to a brand-new community.
The vision Nick has set out is simple and bold: “Every village is only as good as its high street. If we can create the food hall within that high street and incorporate the greengrocer, the butcher, the deli, everything within them, that’s what we can do.”

The Knowle Flagship, Tripled in Size
Moving production offsite unlocks something extraordinary for our founding store. With the back-of-house production space freed up, the Knowle flagship will grow to three times its current retail size. More of your favourites, more choice, more of the experience that has kept customers coming back for generations. Plans are also in discussion to bring the ancient medieval well into view for customers, and to introduce new experiential elements that will make Knowle unlike any food shop in the region.

What Comes Next

Butchers are closing across the country and our goals for the next few years is clear: more stores, each one a genuine food hub for its village, built around the same uncompromising standard that has defined this family since 1903.
As Nick puts it, “If any of them close down, we can take them on. With a modern uplift. That’s what we try and do.”
Five generations. One family. Always moving forward.

Your Opinion Matters

We have always grown by listening. From the customers who first walked through our doors in 1903, to the regulars who come in every week today, your feedback has shaped every decision we have made. As we head into our most exciting chapter yet, that is not changing.
Whether you want to share what you love, suggest something new, or just have a chat, come and find us in store or drop us a message on our socials. We read everything.

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Visit us in Knowle, Bentley Heath or Balsall Common, or shop our full range online at ericlyons.co.uk