The Great British Pub
For more than half a century, the government ran the pubs of one English city, and kept going until 1973. That is just one oddity of Britain's favourite public living room.
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Quick Facts
- Medieval sign law
- 1393, when Richard II ordered alehouses to display a sign
- Beerhouse Act
- 1830, letting almost anyone brew and sell beer from home
- Most common pub name
- The Red Lion, widely cited as number one
- Highest pub in Britain
- Tan Hill Inn, North Yorkshire, at about 1,732 feet
- Remotest mainland pub
- The Old Forge, Inverie, Knoydart, reached only by boat or a long walk
- Smoking bans
- Scotland in 2006; England, Wales and Northern Ireland in 2007
- Scottish ale grades
- 60/-, 70/-, 80/- (shillings), named for old invoice prices
- Famous oldest-pub claimants
- Ye Olde Fighting Cocks, St Albans; Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem, Nottingham
The pub the government ran for decades
In 1916, with munitions workers flooding into the Carlisle area and drunkenness a wartime worry, the government did something extraordinary: it bought the pubs. The Carlisle and District State Management Scheme took over breweries and inns and ran them with an eye to restraint rather than profit. The experiment kept going long after the war. Parliament passed the act to abolish state management in 1971, and the scheme was finally sold off in 1973, some 57 years after it began. That makes it one of the stranger bits of British nationalisation. It also left a mark on pub design. The state-run pubs favoured food, games and plain comfort over the serious drinking den.
From Roman taverns to a sign on a stick
Britain has been drinking in public places since the Romans built taverns along their roads. Over the centuries the alehouse took shape: a home where someone brewed a bit extra and hung out a sign. That sign became law in 1393, when Richard II required alehouses to display one so the official ale-tasters could find them. Pub signs have been with us ever since, and they are why so many names are pictures. The Red Lion is commonly cited as Britain's most frequent pub name. Red lions are widespread in heraldry, and the name has several possible origins. The Royal Oak recalls Charles II hiding in an oak tree after the Battle of Worcester in 1651. Then came the Beerhouse Act of 1830, which let nearly anyone sell beer from their front room. The country filled with new pubs almost overnight.
Snugs, screens and the Victorian showpiece
The Victorians turned the pub into theatre. Gin palaces of the 1830s onwards dazzled with gas lighting, etched glass, polished mahogany and tiled floors. Inside, they divided drinkers by class and purpose with partitions, bars and tiny snugs. Belfast's Crown Liquor Saloon, now owned by the National Trust, still has its snugs with doors that close and a bell to summon service. The formula was so successful that a century and a half later, a pub with original etched glass and a proper snug is treated as a national treasure.
How a pub actually works
Visit a pub today and the rules are unwritten but firm. Ordering and paying at the bar is traditional in pubs, but many also offer table service. Wetherspoon, for example, delivers food and drinks to tables when customers order through its app. Rounds are sacred. If someone buys you a drink, you owe one back, and slipping away before your turn causes real offence. The pub quiz, a fixture on weeknights across the country, took off in the 1970s. The ritual of last orders has changed too: the 2003 Licensing Act ended the fixed 11pm closing time in England and Wales, with changes arriving in 2005. The social side was recorded long ago. In 1937 the researchers of Mass Observation, led by Tom Harrisson, began studying the pubs of Bolton, and their findings appeared in the 1943 book The Pub and the People.
Regional quirks and rivalries
Order a pint in the north of England and you may get it through a sparkler, a nozzle on the hand pump that gives a tight, creamy head. Southern drinkers often prefer a flatter pour, and the argument has never been settled. Scotland has its own language of ale, with the old 60/-, 70/- and 80/- grades. Those figures refer to the shillings once charged per barrel, so lighter beers carry the smaller number. Wales had a unique dry streak. Under the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act of 1881, pubs there were shut on the Sabbath. Later, individual counties held votes on whether to open, and the last of them, Dwyfor, voted to go wet in 1996. Northern Ireland's bars are often a mix of pub, shop and social hall, and Belfast's Victorian bars are a major draw.
Superlatives and oddities
Everybody wants to be the oldest. Ye Olde Fighting Cocks in St Albans is one of several claimants to the title. Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham is built into the rock beneath the castle and claims 1189. The Tan Hill Inn in North Yorkshire is the highest in Britain, at about 1,732 feet, and has been cut off by snow more than once. The Old Forge at Inverie on Knoydart is the remotest on the mainland, with no road to it. And the Nutshell in Bury St Edmunds is famously tiny, with a longstanding claim to be Britain's smallest pub. Its bar measures about 15 by 7 feet, so you are almost certainly on friendly terms with a stranger by the end of the first drink. (The Signal Box Inn in Cleethorpes is smaller still, at roughly 8 by 8 feet.) The pub has faced closures, smoking bans and changing habits. Yet every village and city street still seems to keep one as its meeting place, and some are now rescued and run by the locals themselves.
Notable people
- Richard II
- Charles II
- James VI and I
- Tom Harrisson
- Charles Madge
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