Temperance Inns

In a post last month, I tried somewhat flippantly to question what exactly a pub was by presenting a hotel bar called London Pub (fig. 53). It seems, however, that there may be more examples of when a pub is not really a pub, namely the temperance inn.

Temperance societies first sprang up in the United States in the early-19th century, finding their way soon after to Britain. The movement faltered in the middle of the century, but regained strength by the end with such groups as the Sons of Temperance Friendly Society (still in existence — its grand headquarters can be seen in London on Blackfriars Road) pushing a message that had developed from one of mere moderation to the outright prohibition of alcohol.¹

One of the effects of these pressures on pubs (and on licensing magistrates) was the creation of larger, grander, apparently more cultured environments utilising the kind of decoration that can be seen in my previous post. More pubs during the early-20th century became family-friendly, offering food and games in addition to alcoholic beverages. However, at the same time, there was some pressure to create pub-like environments which dispensed with alcohol altogether. The “coffee tavern” and “temperance inn” were two such forms of this, though even at the height of the temperance movement in the early-20th century, there were never more than several hundred throughout the country.²

In London, there are still a few notable surviving buildings, such as The Lord Roberts (Upper Woodcote CR8, fig. 62), on a grand estate created by a local surveyor, William Webb. Opening in 1907, the Lord Roberts takes the form of a pub, it has a pub’s name and hanging sign, and it once offered food and drink to the residents of this suburban development. However, of course, it sold no alcohol. The fact that it has long since become a post office and small store suggests that the temperance cause was not greatly profitable in this area (where, one imagines, the wealthy residents hardly had need of a tavern anyway).³

Figure 62. The Lord Roberts (Upper Woodcote CR8), now closed.

Another former temperance venue is The Walmer Castle (Marylebone W1, fig. 63), originally listed as a “coffee tavern” and later a “temperance hotel” in the historical directories. A blue plaque on this building records it as the former residence of Emma Cons, a prominent suffragist and social reformer of the 19th century, who was also responsible for reopening the Royal Victorian Theatre near Waterloo as a “Coffee and Music Hall” in 1880 (it soon after became known as the Old Vic).⁴

Figure 63. The Walmer Castle (Marylebone W1), now closed.

Beyond these examples, there’s little evidence of the continued effectiveness of temperance at such an overt level,⁵ though of course political pressure continues to be exerted on what is perceived as the spectre of excessive drinking. The temperance movement may scarcely exist anymore, but it seems sometimes that it hardly needs to offer its own alternative venues, as pubs close in ever greater numbers. Still, that hasn’t stopped pubs like The Temperance (Fulham SW6) from honouring the concept in name without skimping on the alcohol.

Footnotes

[1] Even commercial interests became aware of this public feeling, and exploited it with “temperance ales” being brewed and sold on a promise of relieving drunkenness and ruin, as seen on this poster from the National Archives.
[2] There’s good discussion of the temperance movements in G. Brandwood, A. Davison and M. Slaughter, Licensed to Sell: The History and Heritage of the Public House (London: English Heritage, 2004), pp. 31-39.
[3] More about the history of the Webb Estate in Upper Woodcote can be found on the London Borough of Croydon’s website.
[4] As ever, one can find out more information from the Wikipedia entry.
[5] Only one temperance inn appears to survive in the United Kingdom (the Cross Keys in Cumbria).

What’s in a Name?

Sorry for such a long gap between posts. I’m working on something now, but just while we wait, here’s a brief one.

In my last post, I tried to settle on a definition of a pub so as to discuss the phenomenon of the gastropub, which to a certain extent is overtaking the very form of the traditional pub itself. We talked about the look of a place, we talked about the drinks available, the decor, the expectations of its drinkers, all kinds of things.

I therefore present this photo, of London Pub (Bloomsbury WC1, fig. 53), on Woburn Place.

Figure 53. London Pub (Bloomsbury WC1).

Is it even a pub? Despite its hopeful name, this could be considered a bar — and a hotel bar, at that.

The Gastropub

Unlike many of the previous topics, this one promises to be contentious, for it concerns the much discussed phenomenon of the gastropub. Everyone it seems has an opinion about them, roughly ranging from grudging acceptance to downright loathing. Given that even how to define such an establishment is itself debated, for me to discuss them I must start to offer some personal opinions, so I’m moving decisively to the first-person for this post. You may differ in your definition, but that’s to be expected. There’s no single defining element at work, though I’ve heard people trying to argue that things like serving handmade/hand-cut chips, or having a chalkboard with food specials, are the sole feature making a place a ‘gastropub’. Perhaps, though, they could feature on a checklist we might come up with, or a mathematical equation?

What It’s Not

Even the OED entry errs on the side of vagueness when grappling with the gastropub:

“gastropub, n. Brit. A public house which specializes in serving high-quality food.”

While one might quibble about how to define “high-quality” food, let’s start with what the gastropub is not. It’s not a restaurant. Which means that restaurants that happen to be located in former pub buildings, even really striking ones retaining their old signage and name — for example, Konstam at The Prince Albert (St Pancras WC1) — do not in any sense count.

The gastropub is, then, quite rightly, a pub.¹ But how, after all, do we define a “pub” in the first place? We could say that if you can go in and just have a drink, it’s a pub for our purposes. You may not feel entirely comfortable just ordering a drink (these are gastro-pubs for a reason), but it should be possible without any undue attitude on behalf of the venue.

Then again, this doesn’t take account of the differences between a bar and a pub. One place which is local to me, where a person can happily just have a drink but which I don’t think of as a pub, is Masons (Ladywell SE13, fig. 50). It’s in a single-roomed former pub building; it even has a pub-like name (from its original name, The Freemasons’ Tavern). However, it’s fairly obviously a restaurant as well, and not a gastropub. There are many other places — whether housed in former pub buildings or not — that bill themselves as “bar/restaurant” or “restaurant/bar” which are, in essence, restaurants.

Figure 50. Masons (Ladywell SE13). Not a gastropub, but a bar/restaurant.

A pub doesn’t have to offer real ale (plenty of them lost their handpulls during the mid-20th century, as lager gained in popularity post-World War II), and then again there are places like the bar area at St John Restaurant (Clerkenwell EC1), which has several handpulls for ale. You could argue that pub decor is distinctive, perhaps emphasising wooden panelling, it might even be carpeted, but then there are plenty of places which shun these expectations and are no less pubs. Being able to sit at the bar doesn’t make it a pub (since you can do that at Masons), and if you are expected to stand while drinking it’s probably a bar, but some bars have seating and some cramped centrally-located pubs have a real dearth of it (The Coach and Horses in Covent Garden WC2, for example). It’s really a very subjective thing in the end.

In other words, you know a pub when you’re in it.²

More Food Than Drink

Taking the set of establishments we accept as pubs, then among those which could be called gastro, there are those which emphasise the food over the drink, and vice versa. It’s this first category which I would single out as the canonical gastropub and which have given rise to a certain characteristic style (which one can even see creeping into restaurant decor, just to further confuse matters).

They may not fully be restaurants but they certainly share characteristics, such as being laid out for service. Many fêted gastropubs will have a room, or several rooms, or another floor, laid out for service. Some may have only a few tables, or even just a bar stool area by a shelf, for drinking (especially during busy service periods, such as lunchtimes or dinner), which is I think fairly miserly, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a pub. The Running Horse (Mayfair W1), to take one example, may be dominated by tables laid for service, but it’s still a pub.

The most famous — claimed, in fact, as the pioneers — are The Eagle (Clerkenwell EC1) and The Anchor and Hope (Southwark SE1, fig. 51), and fit into this category. The latter has a separate drinking area, but those crowding it are often waiting for a table in the coveted dining area next door (for which no bookings are taken). When I visited on my own, hungry, during a downpour, I was seated at the bar on the drinking side. The food was great, and there was quite a crush of people around me getting drinks in, but as a pub, it remains marginal.

Figure 51. The Anchor and Hope (Southwark SE1).

Even if not prominently laid for service, a gastropub will share other characteristics with restaurants, like offering a full multi-course menu, with daily specials (often to be found on that omnipresent chalkboard, just to emphasise the regular turnover of dishes). Your food might be preceded by some bread to nibble on; if you’re lucky, you may even get some olives gratis.³

More Drink Than Food

If most people consider the appellation “gastropub” to be a criticism — those people for whom a pub is the social heart of a community (a community perhaps primarily comprising beer drinkers) — then there must be a place for a good pub which happens to also care about serving food that matches the quality of its beer and wine. This post in fact was prompted by a conversation with my friend Kake⁴ about whether The Selkirk (Tooting SW17, fig. 52) was a gastropub. I disagreed: I don’t believe it is, at least not according to my definition in the section above. It’s simply a pub which happens to offer a good, regularly-changing menu. Thankfully, many such places exist, all striving to strike that ideal balance between serving their community, but also serving good food and well-kept drinks — and surely this should be part of that service. Thankfully, the time when the idea prevailed that pubs should just serve beer — and usually only to men, at that — has long since disappeared.

However, some will certainly consider these pubs (the ones which make just a little more effort with their food) to be gastropubs, and there’s little sense in arguing too strongly that they’re not. They may, after all, still have separate dining areas, or employ a trained chef with grand pretensions,⁵ and it’s admittedly a very fine distinction to make — that these places, unlike the ones in the section above, don’t force you to think about food when first you enter their doors.

Figure 52. The Selkirk (Tooting SW17).

This doesn’t mean that all pubs serving food succeed. All kinds of factors may adversely affect their attractiveness as a destination, but most often, they’re sunk by a lack of quality control. A lot of pubs have introduced menus in recent decades, more so again since the smoking ban was introduced to London (and England) in 2007, and that is to be welcomed, but not all of them really care enough not to just source their meals from a professional catering company.⁶ And if you’re doing that, I don’t think you can be called a gastropub. Young’s is an example of a PubCo (it’s also a brewer, of course) who have upgraded a lot of their pubs over recent years according to a template emphasising food and hospitality, but in so doing have at times removed the vitality from them (though by no means from all of them: they still have some fantastic pubs).

Gastropub Chains

Having dismissed Young’s as not being truly gastro, there are nevertheless several up-market chains which focus even more robustly on this end of the pub market. Perhaps most prominent among them are the increasing number of pubs owned by Gordon Ramsay Holdings, starting with The Narrow (Limehouse E14, fig. 53) back in 2004, and whose estate is increasingly extending over West London.⁷ One might expect these to actually be closer to restaurants, but my experience in The Narrow, at least, has been that the majority of the pub is given over to drinking (with a separate, shorter bar menu available to these areas), and that the ale has been well-kept (if rather unchanging).

Figure 53. The Narrow (Limehouse E14).

Another currently-expanding chain of gastropubs is that owned by Ed & Tom Martin (under the sober business sobriquet of the ETM Group), often refitted Victorian-era boozers with an added food enticement — though at least one, The Botanist (Sloane Square SW1), qualifies more as a bar than a pub.

So What Is the Gastropub?

You know a gastropub when you’re in it. Just don’t expect everyone to agree with you.

Footnotes:

[1] By instinct, I almost appended “first and foremost” there, but that would itself be controversial.
[2] I conducted an entirely scientific poll of people’s opinions over at another blog of mine, and the consensus basically returned to this formulation. One of my favourite suggestions was that it’s a pub “if it has a group of old giffers in the corner”. More carefully reasoned was a combination of food availability and whether it serves beers or prefers cocktails — in that bars tend not to offer food and tend to be able to make cocktails, whereas pubs do not, but they may well have food. For as good an example as any on the Internet of the way these discussions can continue at great length without resolution, here’s a thread from the message board ILX.
[3] This was my girlfriend’s experience at one pub mentioned under this heading. Most often, though, you’ll pay for the extras. However, if there’s a cover charge, it’s clearly not a pub. Table service with the “optional” service charge automatically added to your bill is more of a grey area.
[4] She runs the Randomness Guide to London, an unflashy and uncommercial review site to which I contribute the occasional review myself. In fact, I link to them in the sidebar for all the pubs I visit.
[5] Perhaps employing a chef who doesn’t cook from pre-prepared ingredients and menus is the key to the “gastropub”? Though I suspect even here there will be exceptions.
[6] The Spirit Group (owned by Punch Taverns) and Nicholson’s (owned by Mitchells & Butlers) seem to me to be chief offenders in this regard.
[7] Beyond the reach of my photos, though I’m working on that!

Public vs Free Houses

It’s not really feasible for me to continue much further without actually discussing the origins of the pub, and the terminology that surrounds their definition.

The use of the word “pub” as we know it largely developed during the 19th century, which isn’t to say that these establishments were new, or that there was no drinking culture predating the Victoria era. Quite to the contrary, in fact. Rather, before this time there was a greater variety of terminology, referring to many different kinds of establishment. “Pub” itself developed from the “public house”, which was but one type of institution (also known as an “ale house”), alongside the earlier coaching inns (which provided accommodation to travellers) and taverns (focused more on wine and food). Some of these survive in name, but very few still retain their original architecture. One such is the famous George Inn (Borough SE1, fig. 6) with its galleries facing a central court.

Figure 6. The George (Borough SE1).

The 18th century, following changes to licensing laws in 1830, also saw the rise of smaller and far less elaborate establishments with more restrictive licences, called “beer houses”, often no more than a single room or two with a basic frontage — the last remaining beer house to be converted to a fully licensed pub, as recently as 1998, was The Fox and Hounds (Belgravia SW1, fig. 7). To a certain extent these were a reaction to the phenomenal development of the dram shop during this era, trading primarily in spirits (originally brandy, but more and more focused on gin), many of which by the middle of the 18th century had flourished into the rather more grand gin palaces. By the Victorian era, then, “public house” or “pub” were fairly catch-all terms and could be used to refer to any of these establishments.

Figure 7. The Fox and Hounds (Belgravia SW1).

Prior to the 18th century, the majority of public houses brewed their own beer. As legislation developed and competition grew, and especially during times of economic hardship such as in the mid-19th century, fewer and fewer publicans were brewing their own beer, and independent breweries began to buy up premises and supply their own beer, allowing the publicans to lease the property. By the 20th century, the majority of pubs were owned or run by breweries and these premises (also known as “tied pubs”) were required to supply the products of that brewery.

As such, the concept of the “free house” developed, being a pub not tied to a brewery.¹ In theory this means it is independent, ostensibly “free” of the brewery’s influence. However, this terminology often masks the fact that these pubs may still have agreements with breweries to supply a certain proportion of that brewery’s products. Moreover, in the latter part of the century, a great number of pubs began to come under the ownership of pub company conglomerates (PubCos) with no tie to a particular brewery. Such pubs, for example those of the JD Wetherspoon chain, are also often called “free houses”.

A few truly independent pubs do still exist, providing a constantly changing selection of interesting beers (fig. 8), but looking to the name of the pub will often be of no help in identifying them.

Figure 8. The Claret Free House (Addiscombe CR0).

Bibliography:
Paul Jennings, The Local: A History of the English Pub (Stroud: Tempus, 2007).

Footnotes:
[1] My Flickr set of pubs labelled “free house”.