There is no better way to finish a stressful week at work than an evening at the pub, simply saying the word around someone from Britain makes us salivate and yearn for a picture-perfect pint. This institution is considered to be one of the staples of British culture alongside the Monarchy, queuing, and bad weather; they are the scene of many of our best and worst decisions. But how did they come to be? And where did these wonderful places come from? Join me as I journey through the history of the English pub, and the beverages drunk by their patrons.

The ‘Queen Vic’ as featured in *Eastenders* between 1992 and 2010

The first places in these lands that could be recognised as pubs were not English at all, but were in fact established by the Romans. Alongside new roads and towns, establishments were erected to sell wine to these new visitors – they were known by the Latin name taberna, meaning a shop that sold wine; they were the Roman equivalent of a motorway service station but a lot cheaper (and cleaner). These vendors would place vines outside of their shops as an early form of sign to denote their status as wine sellers as these were associated with Bacchus, the Roman god of wine. Many people who came from the Roman Empire, and those wanting their favour, preferred to drink wine – like that grown in modern-day Kent – as a cultured and civilised beverage. This contrasts with the majority of the native Britons who preferred ale made from grain but shortly after their creation these tabernae began to cater for the local tastes by also stocking their favourite drink. It appears that even since the Roman occupation this distinction between the admired and wealthy wine drinkers with the penniless pint patrons has existed and was widespread. Within a few centuries the Romans were gone but these shops remained standing and with time their name eventually changed to become the word tavern.

By the dawn of the Medieval period, these taverns were not alone in serving the needs of the people of England as they had been joined by inns and alehouses in delivering booze; at this point it is important to establish the differences between the three. Taverns were mainly associated with recreational drinking and focused on selling an array of wine for wealthy customers just as they had originally done a millennia prior. The alehouse however was a lot more humble and catered for the lower classes with ale, often operating from the houses of ordinary people. The inn on the other hand was created to serve the needs of travellers with bedchambers, stables, food, rest and beverages and were often located next to places of popular travel, such as pilgrimage sites like Canterbury or busy roads such as Watling Street. These establishments accommodated for all sorts of people and allowed for an intermingling of classes; a place where a knight, monk, miller, and a wife of Bath could mingle – as depicted by Geoffrey Chaucer.

Nevertheless, all three of these places were key social centres in Medieval life, just as they are today, with talk of sport, gossip, games, job opportunities as well as song and merriment. With the consumption of water being unhealthy, beverages such as ale, wine, cider and mead were vital. These were served in gallons, pottles and quarts inside of tankards. These institutions were vital for the functioning of their local community as well as for the ability of people to travel safely; from King to commoner the importance of these establishments was unquestionable, so much so that the measurements of alcohol they should serve were detailed in clause 35 of Magna CartaThere is to be one measure of wine throughout our kingdom, and one measure of ale, and one measure of corn, namely the quarter of London”

Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham (2013), claims to date from 1189, which would make it the oldest pub in Britain

Predictably the importance of these valued businesses led to controls on who could operate them and on the ale they sold, beginning with the Assize of Bread and Ale in 1266, which regulated prices and established a licensing system for alehouses and taverns. Inns avoided these licences as their primary purpose was to house travellers but they certainly could not avoid the ale tasters; these were people recruited to inspect venders, their prices, and ultimately, to drink their brews with punishments for bad batches ranging from fines to pouring the polluted stock over its seller. Just to make you even more jealous of these ale tasters, local authorities paid them to do it –these lucky men were being paid to drink beer!

Interestingly, a considerable amount of the alcohol brewed was done by women, usually wives or widows, as well as monks in their monasteries who would sell their brew to the poor for donations (and drink it themselves!) Legislation concerning the display of signs denoting drinking establishments soon followed in 1393 and further restrictions in the Tudor period saw powers given to Justices of the Peace to restrict the opening of new alehouses and the games played inside of them. Despite this, the number of new drinking establishments continued to rise in this period and by 1577 there were four hundred taverns, two thousand inns and seventeen thousand alehouses in England and Wales. No matter what the authorities tried, the proliferation of these heavenly places continued unabated with most people in Tudor England agreeing with William Sheakespeare's Henry V when he said "I would give all my fame for a pot of ale and safety".

The George Hotel and Pilgrim Inn, Glastonbury, (2024), a late 15th-century inn built to accommodate pilgrims

This case of affairs continued into the seventeenth century,despite the rise of Puritanism in England and the rule of Oliver Cromwell, Lord Protector of England (and his warts!), new regulations were passed and old ones were tightened in an attempt to close surplus drinking establishments and control the behaviour of their patrons who were seen as disloyal and sinful. This was at least somewhat true, as the Gunpowder plotters met for drinks in places such as The Duck and Drake Inn and many Cavaliers in alehouses drank heaths to the King, but nevertheless such vital institutions could not be brought down so easily. Even the emergence of coffee houses and, later, chocolate houses, did not prove to be adequate competition for the beloved boozer, with many of them, especially inns, incorporating these new drinks into their own supplies. Taverns and alehouses were still the ideal place to find tasty beverages, intellectual conversation and good fellowship; so alluring were they, that during the Great Fire of London of 1666, Samuel Pepys went to an alehouse “and there stayed till it was dark almost and saw the fire grow”. Others like Pepys perhaps loved them too much, if such a thing is possible, like the protagonist in the contemporary ballad ‘I tell you, John Jarret, you’l break’ (1630) who, on the cusp of bankruptcy, looks back at his time in drinking establishments and says:

“I went into an Ale-house,
Where all my Coyn I had drown’d;
In company with good-fellows,
I had spent an hundred pound.”

Inside of The Chequers pub in Oxford, (2024), originally an inn established in 1279

Alehouses and taverns were not the only businesses profiting from such behaviour, and especially so towards the dawn of the eighteenth century as greater development of coaches for public transportation gave a second rise to the humble inn. This was the era of the stagecoach with long cross-country journeys together with highwaymen such as Dick Turpin, for the purposes of safety and comfort, these inns were vital for travellers. They became larger and more numerous to cater for all of these new customers with stables for the horses along with food, drink and beds for the humans. The luxury of these would differ however depending upon if you were a rich human or a poor human with the former receiving a warmer welcome and access to the innkeeper’s private room, known as a saloon. One of the drinks served in these saloons was beer. As a product of hops mixed with ale, it had a longer shelf life and was very delicious. These establishments were open day and night to facilitate the needs of arriving guests and with the creation of timetables for these coaches, innkeepers could estimate an approximate time of arrival, allowing for the better preparation of food, drinks and beds. This constant flow of traffic made for great profits with William Chaplin, the largest owner of coaches and inns in London, earning close to the sum of half a million pounds a year at its height. But the phenomena of the coaching inn lasted little more than a century as the emergence of trains made many of them impractical for travellers. But during its lifespan, a new spirit was haunting England.

With French alcohol blockaded thanks to the Nine Years War (1688-97) and the new King William III popularising his native alternative– gin became a new drink of choice after previously being considered as medicine for gout. Spirits had existed since at least 1649 when they were taxed, being referred to by that year’s Book of Rates as ‘strong waters’. It was during the beginnings of the Industrial Revolution that the drink managed to get an obvious and devastating stranglehold on society. With duty imports on gin at just two pence a gallon and no requirement of a licence for its sale, it quickly became the poor-man's alternative to beer with each drinking institution serving it to their customers by the pint. As well as the existing retailers, a new type was created solely for the sale of gin, often referred to as dram shops and by 1725 there were over six thousand of them in London alone. William Hogarth depicted the horrors of ‘Gin Lane’ in 1751 where poverty, negligence and ill-health were rife and compared it to ‘Beer Street’ where jolly healthy people were drinking pints of beer by an alehouse sign. The negative impact of gin on the poor of society was horrific, so much so that the government actually tried to do something about it, restricting its influence with Gin Acts in 1736 and 1751, creating licences and raising the duty on the devilish drink. The subsequent price rise helped to reduce the consumption of gin by three quarters, with many drinking establishments staying loyal and becoming gin palaces while for most the life of the pub returned back to normal. Yes, you read that right; by this point in time the tavern, alehouse and inn were now being referred to as public houses, with the shortening of 'pub' arriving a century later.

These pubs were seen by society as much more wholesome and cheerful when compared to the devastation of gin, and the government decided to bolster them with the 1830 Beer Act. Unfortunately, this did not give everyone free beer, but it may as well have done since it reduced its tax and abolished the requirement of a licence to sell it. Pubs were most certainly back to life, and with twenty-four thousand of them existing in the year the act was passed; they were certainly going to pull pints for patrons for still a while yet! The pub as it was in the mid-nineteenth century would be instantly recognisable to anyone of us today, if they had not been up till now, especially so with widespread adoption of beer pumps. Yet another change in transportation created a new form of inn, the railway hotel, that could cater for hundreds of guests while providing refreshments like alcohol on the side. The rising temperance movement did highlight the evils of drunkenness and the impact it had upon families, influencing the government to once again act against pubs. But, yet again, their popularity continued seemingly unabated as 60 percent of all alcoholic beverages drunk between 1870-1914 consisted of beer, with another 30 percent being spirits. Even Arthur Sherwell, a temperance advocate and author, conceded in 1904 that “the opportunity for enjoyment of social and friendly intercourse open to … the community has centred in the public houses” with a contemporary pub patron going even further by stating:

“To the great mass of manual workers the local public house spelled paradise. Many small employers of labour still paid out their weekly wages there … After the squalor from which so many men came there dwelt within a tavern all one could crave for - warmth, bright lights, music, song, comradeship”

The Eagle and Child, Oxford (2024), where writers like J. R. R. Tolkein and C. S. Lewis would meet in ‘the Rabbit Room’

But the development of the pub was not yet over, as the turn of the twentieth century would truly create the places we all know and love today. The development of the automobile gave the individual even greater potential for travel than trains a century prior, meaning people could drive to a remote pub, get drunk and go straight home, in a time when driving while drunk was more of a sport than a crime. But the pubs themselves were about to change too, as more and more of them were being purchased by breweries and companies; this was not a new phenomena but thousands of them being owned by a single entity certainly was. In fact by 1972, 39,500 pubs in Britain, 60 percent of the country’s total, were owned by six brewing companies, creatively referred to as ‘the big six’. These pubs, known as tied houses, only stocked the beer created by the brewery that owned them, leading to independent pubs labelling themselves ‘free houses’. Opposition to these companies mounted with the creation of organisations such as CAMRA (Campaign for Real Ale) along with further government legislation creating the Pub Code to give greater autonomy to these tied houses and giving the loyal pub patron a greater choice of beer.

The George Freehouse, Sutton Courtenay (2023)

This brings us up to the current day, with the wonderful pub still living on despite recent events contributing to a sharp decrease in their numbers. But with that said, in 2019 there were still 47,200 pubs in Britain, which would have been seventy-one per one-hundred thousand people, still an extremely high number. If we have learned anything here, it is that seemingly nothing can kill this beloved institution; be it powerful Puritans, juicy gin or tough temperists. The pub is, and has been for over a millenia, a vital institution in the history of Britain; from their beginnings as Roman wine bars to many separate drinking establishments and their gradual consolidation into a single brand of heavenly house. The pub was, is, and will no doubt continue to be in the hearts and livers of all Englishmen for a long time to come. Cheers.

Author - Brandon Fisher (Instagram: @brandn_fisher)

Bibliography

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Images:

File: Henry Singleton The Ale-House Door c. 1790. jpg. Wikipedia. Accessed 19/04/2024. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Henry_Singleton_The_Ale-House_Door_c._1790.jpg

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Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, 2013. Wikipedia. Accessed 19/04/2024. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ye_Olde_Trip_to_Jerusalem

The Chequers Pub. @brandn_fisher.

The Eagle and Child. @brandn_fisher.

The George Freehouse. @brandn_fisher.

The George Hotel and Pilgrim Inn. @brandn_fisher.

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