The North Brink Brewery was established in 1795, purchased six years later by William Watson and Abraham Usill. Both recognized that survival in the brewing trade meant controlling distribution — they set about acquiring tied public houses until they had forty. Watson died in 1836; the brewery passed through several partnerships and two auctions before coming under the control of the Elgood family in 1878. They renovated the building in the Georgian style, and most of it remains in use today. It was among the first classic Georgian breweries built outside London. The family now in its fifth generation — Nigel and Anne Elgood's three daughters, Belinda Sutton, Jennifer Everall, and Claire Simpson — run the business. It is Grade II listed, designated in 1983.

The First World War reached Wisbech from the air. A Zeppelin fire-bombed the brewery during the conflict; the bomb's shell is preserved in the brewery museum, where visitors can examine it as an artifact of the night the war came to this particular corner of the Fens. The Second World War made different demands. Some of the metal vats and tuns were melted down for the war effort — but the brewery retained its 17th-century Eagle Foundry liquor vat, a survivor that predates the brewery building itself. When air raids threatened, the cellar that once served as the cold store for beer became an air-raid shelter. The entrance remains visible from the current cold store, though the cellar itself is now unused.

Behind the brewery lies a garden that the Campaign to Protect Rural England has promoted as worthy of preservation. Two-hundred-year-old trees shade a lake and a maze. The landscaped mound at the center of the garden looks decorative; it is actually the exterior of the original cold store — a buried brick vault that once kept the beer cool before refrigeration. In the First and Second World Wars, that same structure doubled as an air-raid shelter. Above it, Brewery House stands as the most visible sign of the operation from outside. The garden combines the practical and the ornamental in a way that reflects the brewery's character: function and beauty folded together over generations.

Elgood's produces a roster of ales that reflects both brewing tradition and the brewery's local connections. The Double Swan donates its proceeds to the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust reserve at Welney — a nod to the wildlife conservation sites that lie within a few miles of Wisbech. The Cambridge bitter won a CAMRA Gold Award in 2006; the Black Dog mild took a CAMRA Silver. For the 2011 royal wedding, the brewery produced Windsor Knot. And then there is Flag Porter, the resurrected 19th-century recipe brewed from yeast recovered from the Channel's depths — which, when first tasted by those present, was said to have smelled of wet boots. The finished product, refined through months of careful cultivation, is somewhat more appealing.