'Jarra legend' - Tributes pour in after death of South Tyneside pub boss who revolutionised real ale trade
“One of the great characters and a true Jarra legend.”
Tributes have been pouring in to an entrepreneurial pub boss who revolutionised the real ale trade in South Tyneside by building his own brewery.
Jess McConnell, whose death was confirmed in a Facebook post by his daughter, shook up the local industry after buying the then derelict Robin Hood boozer in Jarrow.
Together with his wife, he reopened it in 2002 with a micro-brewery inside and quickly struck beer gold by crafting the award-winning Rivet Catcher ale.
The outlet was also named a CAMRA pub of the year several times, and other notable and popular beers followed.
They included Joblings Swinging Gibbet, Red Ellen, named after Jarrow’s famous MP of the 1930s, Ellen Wilkinson, and Jarrow Bitter.
Realising he needed a home for the 10 barrels of beer they could brew at a time, he also bought The Maltings, opposite South Shields town hall, and the Old Albion Hotel in Jarrow, among others.
They followed on the heels of several pubs the former stage comedian and singer had opened during the previous two decades, including his first in 1983, the renowned Jarrow Lad, previously the Queens Hotel.
He also enjoyed success by owning and operating other watering holes, among them the Magnesia Bank in North Shields, and Sunderland's The Isis.
In 2022, the then 70-year-old revealed to the Gazette he was ending his beer career by handing in the keys of the Albion Gin and Ale House, in Walter Street, Jarrow, to a new tenant.
In a separate interview in the same year, he disclosed how a proposed investment into his Jarrow Brewery Company business in 2015 had fallen flat, causing him to endure financial difficulties.
Jess said he had picked himself up by going back on the stage, a line of work he had done before entering the pub trade.
It was a previous professional life that had seen him and then performing partner Terry Joyce enjoy such success they won a North East Comedy Act of the Year gong in 1980.
He again returned to pulling pints in around 2019 by taking on the lease of the Albion, his last boozer.
In a Facebook post, his daughter Janine McConnell wrote that her dad had “lived life to the full, was “a true entertainer” and “one of life’s good ones”.
She added: “He lit up every room and made sure everyone had the best of time in his pub.”
Jess’s death was also marked in several other posts by friends who remembered him as a “lovely man” and a “great bloke”.
Jarrow MP Kate Osborne paid tribute to Jess with a post on Facebook. She said: “Really sorry to hear of the passing of Jess McConnell - one of the great characters and a true Jarra legend.
“Jess was a gentleman at heart and a much-loved part of the Jarrow community. He will be greatly missed. My thoughts are with his family and friends at this extremely difficult time.”