Geoff Brandwood - Brewery Historybreweryhistory.com/journal/archive/123/Pub.pdf · 110 The Journal...

110 The Journal of the Brewery History Society

Just as the production side of the Britishbrewing industry has seen immensechanges over the past half century, so toohas its distribution arm. Nowhere is thismore apparent than in public houseswhich is where the majority of beer (of alltypes) is still consumed.1 In the 1950sand until the coalescing of the 'Big Six'brewers between then and 1972, drinkerswould probably go to their local pub, con-sume beer from a local, British-ownedbrewery, in a pub owned by that brewery,find a choice of rooms to drink in, andexpect to pay a price that reflected theplushness of the room or the lack of it.The customers would expect to be shield-ed by etched or frosted windows from thegaze of passers-by; many a workingman's pub had a room from whichwomen were excluded; drinks might bebrought to the table in 'better' rooms; but,if they fancied a night at home drinkerscould go down (or quite likely send thewife or kids) to the pub's jug and bottle forsomething to bring back.

Fifty years on this picture has been trans-formed. Eight out of ten pints brewed in

Britain come from international groups,only one of which is British-owned,2 andnone of which owns a chain of pubs.Pubs tend to be single room spaces (orinterconnected ones), prices are uniformthroughout, much etched glass has beenreplaced by clear panes, women may notlegally be excluded from particular areas,and the jug and bottle has been substi-tuted by the alcohol shelves at majorsupermarkets or, for many people, the

The vanishing faces of the traditional pub

Geoff Brandwood

Figure 1. The Sherwood, Hall Green,Birmingham in August 1998. The bar-backand (left) one of the room divisions in this1930s suburban pub: all this was ripped outa few months later when the pub was com-pletely opened up.

111Brewery History Number 123 Summer 2006

thriving cross-Channel trade that exploitsduty differentials between the UK andFrance.

The article that follows looks at theseshifts in more detail and examines other,smaller scale changes that have affectedthe traditional pub in recent decades.

The meaning of the 'traditional pub'

A word of explanation is required at theoutset. The term 'traditional pub' is usedhere to relate, almost exclusively, toEnglish and Welsh pubs as they enteredthe 1960s. Scottish and Northern Irishpubs have long had rather different own-ership, architectural, and fitting out prac-tices, so their inclusion here would donothing for the clarity of what will be said.The term needs something of an apologysince the pub has been an evolving andtransmuting institution for centuries: itmay seem rather wilful to suggest thatpresent-day pubs which exist in huge

numbers and still play host to millions ofpeople every week - and are thus part ofpopular culture - are not in some sense'traditional'. They clearly are but theyare different in various ways from thepubs generally encountered before the1960s. The sudden and radical changesthat have taken place since have seen tothat.

Measuring change

The loss of a considerable amount of anyheritage asset leads to a desire to pre-serve what is left. Thus the great brewerymergers of the 1960s and the very realthreats to traditional beer led to the foun-dation of the Society for the Preservationof Beers from the Wood in 1963 and theCampaign for Real Ale in 1971. The latterwas phenomenally successful andensured that real ale (as it becameknown) survived, and is probably nowavailable in a historically unprecedentedrange and quality. With the ale tide turn-ing CAMRA began to take an interest inthe loss of traditional pub interiors whichwere clearly being lost in large numbers.Early moves were made in York where aPub Conservation Group was started inthe late 1970s. By 1985 this group hadformulated what became CAMRA'snational 'Manifesto for Pub Preservation'and, in 1987, felt confident enough topublish, for York, CAMRA's first consid-ered listing of historic pub interiors.

Serious moves to create a 'NationalInventory' of historic pub interiors were

Figure 2. The King and Queen, Warrington. Atypical, opened-out (in 1996), modern interior.


begun in 1991. It was expected that some-thing like 500 examples might be foundamong the UK's 60,000 pubs. Thisproved to be an over-optimistic view. Bythe mid 1990s it was clear that the figurewould settle out at about 200 - that is,less than 0.5% of the nation’s pub stock.Broadening the net to cover more alteredpubs but ones still of regional historicvalue, the total remained pitifully small.The first 'Regional Inventory', for Londonpublished in 2004, included just 133 pubsout of some 5,700 in the capital. Suchlists include what would once have beenregarded as very ordinary interiors whichwould, indeed, have been the norm; nowtheir rarity makes them very special sur-vivals.

Attempts to save what is left have centredon a CAMRA/English Heritage project in1998-2000 to obtain statutory listing forthe best hitherto unlisted examples, theraising of awareness of among the public

and local planning authorities, and vigor-ous campaigning when a historic interiorcomes under threat.

The small rural pub

Although not confined to the period fromthe 1960s to the present, these yearshave seen the extinguishing of manysmall, basic rural pubs. A few do survivebut they are now a very fragile assetwhose future must surely be in questionas the owners/publicans grow older andgive up the business through incapacityor death. Such pubs are reminders thatonce the countryside was scattered withthousands of small pubs serving theirlocal communities and where the publi-can and his/her family may well havecombined pub-keeping with otherincome sources, such as farming, carry-ing, smithing, or paid employment in anearby centre. Until his death about fouryears ago, the licensee of the Cupid's

Figures 3 & 4. The Chough, Salisbury. An interwar brewers’ Tudor facade. Two doorways (centreand right) led to separate rooms. The right-hand doorway is now redundant as the interior wallhas been pierced by a large opening (right) and a smaller one (left) to create a linked space.


Hill Tavern, Grosmont, Monmouthshire,could make a coffin for the dead as wellas draw a pint for the living [Fig. 6].

Those who still run such pubs (or who ranthem in recent years) are not doing so onnormal business lines. The income fromsuch pub-keeping is tiny and does notprovide a livelihood in itself. Recent sur-vival has only been possible because thebuilding has been in the family, free ofmortgage, and the needs of the publicanare modest. In a few very rare cases,such as the Harrington Arms, Gawsworth,Cheshire, the pub is still linked to a farm.Any succeeding owner (if any) whether anindividual or a company will, perforce,

have to run things differently. A dramaticexample comes from Northern Irelandwhere a beneficent organisation like theNational Trust took over the buildinghousing the miniscule Mary McBride'sBar, Cushendun, Co. Antrim. It preservedthe wonderful little snug bar but the vastadditions, although not affecting snug'sfabric directly, overshadow it and mean itcan never be the simple, tiny local it waswhen Mary McBride was alive.

At the time of writing a handful of tradi-tional, unspoilt rural/village pubs surviveand have acquired an iconic statuswhich, in itself, means they have becomesomething they never were. Some key

Figure 5. The Cider House, Woodmancote, Defford, Worcestershire, perhaps themost rudimentary pub in the country. The hatch to the serving area is behind thetwo standing figures. The lawn acts as the main drinking area in good weather; theold bakehouse (left) in bad.


examples are: Harrington Arms,Gawsworth, Cheshire; Duke of York,Elton, Deryshire; Barley Mow, Kirk Ireton,Deryshire; Red Lion, Ampney St Peter,Gloucestershire; Sun, Leintwardine,Herefordshire; Star, Netherton,Northumberland; Cider House, Defford,Woodmancote, Worcestershire; Goat,Llanfihangel-yng-Gwnfa, Powys; DyffrynArms, Ponfaen, Pembrokeshire.

The multi-room pub

The traditional pub, as understood here,is essentially a multi-room establishmentand one which involves a hierarchy ofrooms. At the 'bottom' is the public bar(often simply entitled 'bar' on plans anddoor notices) where drink used to beslightly cheaper than elsewhere in thepub. This room will have a bar counter,have a more utilitarian feel than othersand, especially in times past, will be pre-dominantly a male preserve. Evidence of

the latter can often be found on planswhereby the room has easy access to agents' toilet, whereas female customerscould only find relief in facilities adjacentto a 'better' room. As touched on earlier,drinks in the public bar were a fractioncheaper than elsewhere; this was aneffective financial incentive towardskeeping customers in their appropriateplace.3

This idea of financial (and social) segre-gation was an entrenched feature of pub-going until well after the Second WorldWar. Pubs were still being planned in the1960s with public bars and other, moregenteel rooms. These went by a varietyof names, the most popular of whichwere 'saloon', 'lounge' and 'smoke (orsmoking) room’ - all more or less inter-changeable in terms of what they offered.In the north-east another couple ofnames were used for these 'better'rooms: the 'select room' was a cut above

Figure 6. The Cupid’s Tavern, Grosmont,Monmouthshire (in 1999; now closed), abasic country pub where pub-keeping andcoffin-making co-existed.

Figure 7. A simple screen such as that at theNova Scotia in Bristol Docks where it dividesthe small private bar from the public bar wasa cheap and easy way of creating multiplespaces in Victorian pubs.


Figure 8. The Doctor Johnson, Barkingside, LB of Redbridge. Built in 1937-8with a central servery surrounded by four separate rooms: public bar (bottomleft), private bar (bottom right), lounge (top left), saloon (top right). On the lefta detached off-sales shop.

Figure 9. The Doctor Johnson, Barkingside. The private bar.


the public bar but often had its own count-er to the servery, while the 'sitting room'was just that, a place where customerssat to drink and probably expected thatthey could be served at their tables (seeTable service below).

The catalogue of traditional pub roomnames is lengthy and the following is any-thing but all-inclusive: 'vaults' (often analternative name for the public bar), 'pri-vate bar' (usually relatively small andclearly slightly superior), 'snug' (a small,cosy room), 'dram shop' (a now rarenorthern term and a reminder of stand-upspirit-drinking bars) 'news room' (anothernorthern term, and suggesting a place fora little peace and quiet), 'commercialroom' (where commercial travellers might

be expected to congregate), 'porter room'(especially in East Anglia for a better classroom) 'music room', 'billiard room', 'clubroom' (all self-explanatory), and 'taproom'. The latter is a fairly common nameand is particularly curious as it is sugges-tive of drawing off drink. Yet this was notthe case. When compiling the bookLicensed to Sell: the History and Heritageof the Public House (2004), my col-leagues and I found that all tap rooms wehad encountered were slightly or, often,far removed from the servery. Since thenwe have discovered one example, theShakespeare in Dudley, West Midlands,where the (very small) room containingthe servery is named in the (apparently insitu) window glass as the 'tap room'. Justoccasionally one meets the vestiges of a

Figure 10. The Doctor Johnson, Barkingside. The public bar.


'ladies only' bar (e.g. glass in the Mitre,Bayswater, London, and a plan for theCrown, Aberdeen Place, London NW8).

Separate drinking spaces were formed inone of two ways: by solid walls which cre-ated truly separate rooms, or by screen-work which divided up large spaces intosmall ones. The latter, especially inLondon, could create diminutive drinkingareas. Mark Girouard's classic study,Victorian Pubs, shows a plan from 1888which has no less than ten compartmentsplus a 'dining saloon' all clustered rounda servery which extends in peninsularfashion into the centre of the pub.4 Theonly place where such extraordinarily tinydrinking compartments have survived isat the Barley Mow, Dorset Street,Marylebone, where a couple of boxeslooking like a pair of heightened Georgianbox-pews from a church, are attached to

Figure 11. Two unique, tiny drinking boxesare attached to the counter at the BarleyMow, Dorset Street, London W1. (MichaelSlaughter)

Figure 12. Many London pubs have a peninsula-like servery protruding into thedrinking area. Originally these would have been surrounded by a series of com-partments. The arrangements at the Prince Alfred, Maida Vale, probably refitted c.1898, are a unique survival. (Michael Slaughter)


the bar counter (their precise date isuncertain but they are no doubt lateVictorian) [Fig. 11]. A remarkable survivalof screened off compartments is at theArgyll Arms, Argyll Street, W1 (c.1895),while the Prince Alfred, Formosa Street,Maida Vale (c.1898), is the sole survivorof screened compartments rangedaround a peninsular servery [Fig. 12].Although we associate the opening up ofpubs with the post-war period, theprocess of removing extreme compart-mentalisation almost certainly got goingbefore 1939 although this has yet to beresearched.

Likewise the ascendancy of the modern,single-room pub has yet to be charted.Certainly in 1960 any new premises hadat least two rooms; by the 1970s, or atleast the latter part of the decade, theyalmost certainly would not.

The end of the 'offie'

Examination of old plans of pubs, theevidence of inscriptions in many anetched window, and the presence ofhatches facing entrance doors attest tothe importance of the off-sales trade inpubs prior to the 1960s. The pub waswhere millions of people bought drink totake home (unless they availed them-selves of home deliveries from a suppliersuch as Davenports of Birminghamwhose famous slogan of was 'beer athome means Davenports'). Just as onetype of drinking room in a pub might, in avery English way, take various names all

meaning the same thing, so the placewhere take-home drinks were obtainedwent under various titles: 'jug and bottle'(or less frequently, 'bottle and jug'), 'out-door department', 'off-sales counter','wholesale counter', 'family department'(a northern term) and more besides.

The demise of the trade was sealed in1962 when legislation opened the way fora boom in alcohol sales in supermarkets.Where there were physical compart-ments for off-sales, formed by solid wallsor screenwork, these became redundantand, naturally, were very often incorporat-ed in the rest of the trading area. The sur-viving evidence takes the form of disuseddoorways, signs of removed walling orscreens or a change in the detail of thebar-counter. Very occasionally in biginter-war estate pubs the sales depart-ment was a small shop slightly removedfrom the rest of the pub (as at the DoctorJohnson, Barkingside, London Boroughof Redbridge (1937) and the Railway,Edgware, LB of Harrow (1931)).

Table service

With the room(s) of higher status in themulti-room pub went the possibility oftable service. Hundreds of pubs withintact or vestigial multi-room arrange-ments also retain the evidence for tableservice in the shape of bell-pushesmounted on the wall. These were linkedto a bell or buzzer and perhaps anannunciator box (like those in the servicequarters of a country house) which


showed where service was needed.Rooms where there was table service didnot, of course, have their own counter,except perhaps a small hatch or a hatch-cum-door to the servery.

Like other aspects of the shift from thetraditional pub, the timing and course ofthe decline and virtual demise of tableservice is uncertain. The writer started hisdrinking career in Birmingham in the early1960s and remembers being surprisedon going to university in Manchester tofind waiters circulating in the rooms ofvarious pubs there, taking orders fordrinks and delivering them to the table.So far as is known the practice is defunctaround Manchester but still has life (andseemingly a continuous history) at a fewpubs on Merseyside.5 It occurs occasion-ally in west Yorkshire and elsewhere butgenerally is a modern, customer-orientedrevival rather a survival of historic prac-tice.

The tentative evidence suggests thattable service has a geographical dimen-sion. The continuance of the practice onMerseyside,and numerous pubs withbell-pushes in the Midlands and northsuggests the practice was commonplacethere. So far only one authentically oldexample of bell-pushes is known inLondon (the Forester, Ealing: 1909) [Fig.14], and the south is otherwise only rep-resented at present by the Bear, AlbertStreet, Oxford.6

The changing face of the servery

The bar counter was introduced intopublic houses around the 1820s7 and bythe end of the century was an almost

Figure 13. The fully tiles smole room atBellefield, Winson Green, Birmingham (in1998: now closed and vandalised). Mountedon the upper rail of the seating (left) a bell-push for table service.

Figure 14. Bell-push at the Forester, Ealing,the only known historic example in the capi-tal. Did this rarity lead to the need for theexplanatory lettering? (Michael Slaughter)


ubiquitous item, at least in larger urbanhouses. Its basic, practical function hasnever changed, creating a convenientseparation between the staff, drinks andmoney on one side and the customers onthe other. The earliest surviving countersare probably a few from the third quarterof the nineteenth century and in onerespect little has changed. The most pop-ular design of counter has provedextraordinarily long-lived and is still beingused today. Its details vary but the princi-

ple involves a series of bays, divided bypilasters, often the use of console brack-ets or another termination beneath thecounter top, and fielded panelling orsome sort of boarding as infill for eachbay. Of course, many modern pubs havebroken with this tradition but that thebasic design is still used at all testifies toits evident fitness for purpose.

Pictures of pub interiors in Victorian andEdwardian times show, apart from hand-pumps, such items as food showcasesand water heaters sitting on bar counters,but on the whole they are uncluttered.And so they remained until well after theSecond World War. From the 1960s twothings have happened. It has becomequite usual to mount a shelf or series ofshelves, mostly for glasses, as a gantryon the bar counter. Such features areoften very clumsily designed and assumegreat visual prominence. What hasfuelled their introduction no doubt is theincreased number of glasses in circula-tion due partly to the wider range ofdrinks available and partly the habit ofusing a fresh glass of each new drinkserved.

A particularly disfiguring feature of pubssince the 1980s has been the explosionof branded, often illuminated dispensersfor keg beers, lager and similar. The earlyorigins can be traced back to the adventof the pump clip which is though to havebeen invented in the 1930s as a meansof identifying for non-local drinkers (suchas commercial travellers) whose beerwas for sale. But while the pump clip is a

Figure 15. The bar counter has become,since the early 19th century, an almost uni-versal feature of the pub and one of its mosticonic symbols. It is thought that less thantwenty pubs lack them, such as here, theCock, Broom, Bedfordshire, where cus-tomers are served at the doorway into thecellar.


fairly restrained piece of advertising thenew generation of dispensers is not.Clearly marketing executives have tried toincrease the size and visual prominenceof their dispensers to outshine those oftheir rivals. The consequent battery ofhardware has turned many a servery intoa castellated fortification through whichstaff have to thread drinks while trying notto spill them.

As well as such additions, there havebeen losses. A key one has been snobscreens whose function it was to give pri-vacy to customers in 'better' parts of somepubs, creating a sense of physical andvisual separation from the serving staff.Whilst widely known about, they are nowincredibly few original ones left, although,ironically, some have been installed inrecent years in mock Victorianising refits.The only ones in their original position andcondition seem to be at the Prince Alfred,

Maida Vale [Fig. 17], and the BartonsArms, Aston, Birmingham.

If the arrival of keg fonts has transformedthe appearance of beer service, therehave been changes too affecting the saleof spirits and fortified wines. Large wood-en barrels, as seen in many a Scottishand Irish pubs, were not a common fea-ture in English pubs but one still seesoccasional, now redundant ceramic dis-pensers, just over a foot high bearing leg-ends like 'Rum', 'Brandy', 'Scotch Whisky'and so on. The elegant glass dispenserswith a tap at the base which were widelyused in Victorian and Edwardian timeshave, so far as is known, vanished alto-gether (although their form is taken as thebasis for the modern lamps at the sump-tuously refitted St Stephen's Tavern,opposite the Palace of Westminster).Spirits and fortified wines were also some-times dispensed through banks of tapslinked to casks at some remove: the bestexamples are at the Queen's Head,Underbank, Stockport and the Haunch ofVenison, Minster Street, Salisbury [Fig. 18].

Figure 16. A plain, unadorned counter is avery rare sight in the early 21st century. Thisone, at the Turf Tavern, Bloxwich, WestMidlands, retains the simple appearance thatwould have been familiar to earlier genera-tions of pub-goers.

Figure 17. Snob screens at the Prince Alfred,Maida Vale, London. (Michael Slaughter)


Visibility and other changes

Here we may note a miscellaneous rangeof changes that have affected pubs sincethe 1960s.

Window glass. Of these the most signifi-cant visually is the attitude towards win-dow glass. The Victorian and early twen-tieth-century tradition was that pub cus-tomers expected and got some privacyfrom the gaze of the outside world. Thismeant the use of etched glass (and laterfrosted glass) which formed a screenbetween the world of the pub and theworld beyond. Decorative patterns wereaugmented by information such as nameof the pub, which brewery owned it, and,in the case of door glass, the name (andtherefore the status) of the room(s) on theother side.

But attitudes have changed. Privacy inthe pub matters far less today. Despitethe best endeavours of pub reformers

between the wars, there was still a moralcensure by large swathes of the middleclasses visited upon pub-goers until wellafter the Second World War. But in recentdecades this has probably declinedhugely (although research into social atti-tudes would need to confirm this), andthose using pubs probably care little forwhether they can be seen there or not.There is also the question of cost:licensees have frequently complained tothe writer about the cost involved inreplacing broken etched windows andrecite, usually with a good deal of exag-geration, that 'they are always gettingbroken.' Indeed, there is certainly a sub-stantial extra cost: such glass is not derigeur and not having it has no impact onthe bottom line - hence the prevaricationfor years by the owners of the magnifi-cent grade II*-listed Philharmonic,Liverpool, over replacing tawdry tempo-rary windows by correct materials.8Another major factor is women! A stan-dard argument for replacing etched glassby clear is that it is 'women-friendly': thatis, they don't feel they are entering asecret, threatening man's space; theworld of the pub therefore becomestransparent both physically and meta-phorically. The consequence of all this isthat many pubs have been denuded offine Victorian and Edwardian glass andthis has had a dramatic effect on theirappearance.

Women in pubs. Of little impact on thefabric of pubs, the coming into force on 1January 1976 of the Sex DiscriminationAct was a landmark socially and meant

Figure 18. A bank of spirit cocks at theHaunch of Venison, Salisbury. Between themand the outside window is a tiny snug.


the end of the 'G.O.', the gents' only barthat flourished especially in the north.Lettering in the left-hand bar at theLoggersheads, Church Street, Shrews-bury records for posterity, not doubt witha hint of regret, 'GENTS ONLY until1975'. The one impact in terms of pubarrangements is that the enforcement ofwomen's rights is that they now canexpect toilet facilities: there can nowscarcely be a pub anywhere without aladies' although the Grill, Union Street,Aberdeen did not have one until the lastfew years.

Inside toilets. Quaint though it may be tocontemplate the stars from the outsidegents' (aka 'the Planetarium') at the Bell,Aldworth, Berkshire, outside toilets are

largely a thing of the past. In recentdecades many have been brought insideor had covered access to them installed.When carefully planned this is clearly anasset but occasionally the visual impactcan be intrusive and have an adverseeffect on the character of a pub.

Spittoons. The general gentrification ofthe pub, as represented by eradication ofoutside toilets, is mirrored in the disap-pearance of the spittoon and spittoontrough. The latter, as a receptacle forhuman expectoration (and other sundrydetritus) running at the base of the barcounter, was still a regular feature ofinterwar pubs and examples are knownfrom a few built after the Second WorldWar (e.g. the now-demolished Maltese

Figure 19. The Prince Arthur, Walton, Liverpool, has a distinctive Taylor Walker tiled frontage ofc. 1905. The windows have etched glass to create the sense of separation between the pub andthe outside world.


Cat, Roehampton, SW15, built byYoung's in 1961).

Numbers on doors. Many a pub door car-ries a number, or occasionally letter.9They are usually screwed on and are thesilent witness to a now-defunct and large-ly forgotten requirement by H.M. Customs& Excise. Every licensee had to identify tothem the rooms in their premises andnumbers (or letters) were a convenientway to do this. '1' might be the public bar,'2' the saloon, '3' the cellar and so on.Unfortunately the exact timing for the

demise of this requirement has not beenestablished but it is believed to be in theearly 1960s - thus, yet another exampleof the changes since that fateful decadewhich have affected our pub stock.

Smoking. The banning of smoking inpubs from 2007 in England and Wales(already in place in Scotland) will have anaffect on the atmosphere of pubs in moreways than one. Physically it will mean thedisappearance of ashtrays which havebeen a ubiquitous item of pub furnishing(and product advertising) for decades.On a very minor level, a reminder ofsmoking in pubs in former days can beseen in brass match strikers screwed tothe upper parts of bar counters in manytraditional pubs.

The decline of regionalism

Returning now to the broad picture, thepub, like most aspects of retailing, hasseen the squeezing of regional differ-ences in recent decades. Just as one rowof high street shops now consists of muchthe same companies and fascias as anyother, so pubs have mostly lost theirregional distinctiveness. Apart from a fewframed panels about the site and locality,there will be nothing to mark out a newJ.D. Wetherspoon pub in London fromone in the north of Scotland. The shift toopen-plan pubs since the 1960s has seento that but here we may note some of theregional differences that may still bedetected.North and south: the drinking lobby. An

Figure 20. The corridor at the Swan with TwoNecks, Stockport, expands in its centre toform a drinking lobby with enough space for afew tables and chairs (right) and customers tostand (left) at the counter.


oft-mentioned feature of northern pubs,especially those straddling the Penninesin the Greater Manchester/ westYorkshire areas but of wider distribution,is the drinking lobby. A classic arrange-ment is shown in the picture of the Swanwith Two Necks, Stockport dating fromc.1930 [Fig. 20]. Even the bar at the heartof the famous Philharmonic in Liverpool(1899-1900) is, in effect a drinking lobby.It is entered directly off Hope Street andis surrounded by a series of other rooms.The form is not unknown in the south: forinstance, the Stockport plan is replicatedat the Old Green Tree, Green Street,Bath (1928), but, nonetheless, the drink-ing lobby is more of a northern featurethan a southern one.

London compartmentalisation. This hasbeen touched on above. Although tradition-al pubs had multiple spaces the extremesmallness that was commonplace inLondon is not matched elsewhere.

L-shaped corridor plans on Merseyside. Apopular arrangement here for corner sitepubs around 1900 was an L-shaped corri-dor (much used for stand-up drinking)with a doorway at either end and whichembraced a public bar in the angle of thestreets. Examples are the Lion,Moorfields, Liverpool [Fig. 21]; the PrinceArthur, Walton, Liverpool; and the Stork,Price Street, Birkenhead. Leading off thecorridor away from the public bar were'better' rooms such as a news room. It issaid that the arrangement was favouredfor supervision purposes by the policewho expected to be able to enter by one

entrance and leave by another.

Architecture and decoration. It is not sur-prising that local brewers sometimesdeveloped their own very distinctivestyles. Once established these couldbecome self-perpetuating and could rein-force brand loyalty and recognition.Birmingham brewers (notably Holt's andMitchells & Butlers) built many a 'tile andterracotta' pub around 1900, so-calledfrom the red terracotta facing on thefrontage and extensive use of tiles fordecoration inside. They often have ashared, simple but effective plan with apublic bar in the angle of the streets and a

Figure 21. Part of the L-shaped corridor atthe Lion, Liverpool.


smoke room tucked behind, and commondecorative tilework and ceilings. Fiveexamples within walking distance of oneanother in the Digbeth area make aninstructive group: the Anchor, BradfordStreet (1902); Eagle and Tun, BanburyStreet (1900); the Market Tavern, MoseleyStreet (1899); the White Swan, alsoBradford Street (1899-1900); and theWoodman, Albert Street (1896-7). Most, ifnot all, are by the local architects James &Lister Lea. Rich glazed frontages ofc.1900 were a speciality of Brickwood'saround Portsmouth, and such frontagesare also commonly found on Tyneside. By1914 there were at least seven pubs inNorth Shields faced entirely in glazedfaience.10 Good surviving examples in thenorth east are the Berwick Arms, TrinityTerrace, North Shields (1913); the HalfMoon, New Elvet, Durham (1908-9);Wardle's (formerly the Albert Hotel), AlbertStreet, Hebburn (1908); and the Wheat-sheaf, Carlisle Street, Felling (1907).

1989 and its consequences

The simplistic sketch of the traditional pubat the start of this article included thenotion that one's local was probablyowned by the brewery whose beers it sold- that is the long-established brewery tie.In the past decade and a half this piece ofindustrial vertical integration has beenripped apart.

The tied house system had a long historystretching back to the eighteenth centurywhen brewers began buy up leases or tie

up a publican's business through loans.The process accelerated in the nineteenthcentury, especially towards its close. By1948 75 per cent of on-licences inEngland and Wales were owned orleased by brewers11 and the emergenceof the 'Big Six' brewers between 1955 and1972 served to concentrate pub owner-ship. Between them they owned over halfthe nation's pubs.

This state of affairs led to governmentinquiries and, finally, the Supply of Beer(Loan Ties, Licensed Premises andWholesale Prices) Order 1989, usuallyreferred as the Beers Orders. Brewerieswere not permitted to own more than2,000 pubs and the big brewers foundthemselves having to sell off 11,000 ofthem - that is, over one in six of the totalstock. The resulting irony is well-known.The sell-offs have gone far beyond theoriginal intentions with the largest brewersdivesting themselves of pub-owning alto-gether with this role being taken up bymassive pub-owning companies - pubcosfor short - which have no interest in theproduction side of the business other thansetting up hugely discounted bulk supplyarrangements from companies that stillbrew. As stated earlier, none of the big,international players who supply 80% ofthe beer consumed in the UK own a pubestate. Even S&N Pub Enterprises man-ages 1,100 pubs for their owner, theRoyal Bank of Scotland, despite the 'S&N'tag signifying the largest UK-owned brew-er (Scottish & Newcastle). Between themthe two largest pubcos, Punch Tavernsand Enterprise Inns, own almost one in


three of the country's pubs. This amountsto very roughly 9,000 each, althoughnumbers can fluctuate with the constantrounds of acquisitions and sell-offs. A farcry from the 2,000 pubs thought sufficientfor any brewer to own! It is not surprisingthe government rescinded the BeerOrders in February 2003. The largest pub-owning brewers are Wolverhampton &Dudley, and Greene King at around 2,000pubs each and the latter now topping thatfigure. Greene King now dominate partsof East Anglia in exactly the way the 1989orders were meant to prevent.

From the point of view of the average pubcustomer, it is debatable whether he orshe would notice much differencebetween the old brewery-owned and thenew pub-owning regimes. The main out-ward change is that pubcos (other thanthe Wetherspoon chain of some 650pubs) have no interest in creating arecognisable brand, in contrast to thebrewers. In any case, so much of thedrink consumed in pubs is of national (orinternational) brands which have vastlyweakened any sense of loyalty from cus-tomers towards a local region or produc-er. In terms of the publicans and the pubbuildings, it is sometimes suggested thatthe new pubcos have a more cynicalfinancial attitude than the brewers theysupplanted and who are popularlybelieved to have operated in kind, pater-nalistic lines. The latter may well be trueof some of the smaller independent com-panies but behind the mythic ideal, publi-cans in the past could feel very hard doneby the brewers. In terms of the buildings

themselves it is true that pubcos see themas assets to be sweated. However, it wasmainly under brewery ownership that thevast changes in traditional pub fabricstook place in the quarter century down to1989, and it has to be questioned whetherpubco attitudes are very much differentfrom those that preceded them.

The past three or four decades, then,have seen massive changes affecting ourpubs, both in terms of their physical fab-rics and the pattern of ownership. Pubs,for the most part, are no longer multi-roomed, hierarchical establishments,while the close links between brewer andpub have been substantially weakened.However, truly traditional pubs do stillexist, albeit in reduced numbers, as thelistings in the CAMRA national and

Figure 22. When tradition is gone, invent it!The romantically named ‘Famous OldPorterhouse’ in Liverpool seeks to capitaliseon a vague sense of history in a new pub.


regional inventories show. Many of ushope that they will continue to thrive andsurvive, and there is every reason whyshould. Traditional pubs are part of ourheritage and heritage is something thatcan and should be used for marketingpurposes. Like so many aspects of pres-ent-day retailing, success depends onspecialisation and market segmentation.We now have a greater range of types oflicensed premises than at any time in his-tory and there must surely be a place forthe truly traditional pubs that do survivewithin this rich portfolio.

[Photographs: All are by the author exceptfor those credited to Michael Slaughter.]

Note: As at October 2006, the HarringtonArms, Gawsworth (p. 112) is being sepa-rated from the farm business to which ithas been historically linked.

References

1. The figures for 2004 show that 60% ofbeer (all types) was drunk in the pub and40% was supplied through the off-trade(according to the British Beer and PubAssociation). The corresponding figures for1984 were 85.3% and 14.7%. Thanks to IainLoe of CAMRA for this information.

2. Protz, R. (ed.), Good Beer Guide 2006(CAMRA Books: St Albans, 2005-6), pp. 827-9. The exception is Scottish & Newcastlewhich repays the international interest in theUK by having interests in France, Belgium,Russia, east European states, China, Indiaand Portugal.

3. At present the only example known tothe writer of such differential pricing is at theCricketers, Woodford Green, LondonBorough of Redbridge where a pint costs 4p.more in the saloon than the bar.

4. p. 74: the Equestrian Tavern,Blackfriars Road. Irritatingly he does not citehis source for this extraordinary plan. Whileresearching for (2004) Licensed to Sell: TheHistory and Heritage of the Public House,English Heritage: Swindon, I was unable,unfortunately, to discover any comparablydramatic plan in the London MetropolitanArchives. The best example was the BluePosts, St James's, 1896 (reproduced on p. 63of the book), which looks very much the ves-tiges of a similar arrangement still traceableat the Red Lion, Duke of York Street, nearby.

5. Full details are given in Licensed toSell, op. cit., p. 108.

6. Other examples must surely await dis-covery but, imperfect as the research is,there does seem to be a difference in tradi-tions between north and south.

7. Clark, P. (1983) The English Alehouse:A Social History1200-1830, Longman:Harlow, p. 276.

8. Which were insisted upon by LiverpoolCouncil, much to its credit.

9. Letters seem to have been populararound Merseyside and in Birmingham.

10. Pearson, L. (1989) The NorthumbrianPub, Sandhill Press: Morpeth, p. 111.

11. Revealed by a Brewers' Society ques-tionnaire quoted by Gourvish, T.R. andWilson, R.G. (1994) The British BrewingIndustry 1830-1980, Cambridge UniversityPress: Cambridge, p. 408.

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