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Geoff Brandwood, Maurice Gorham - Slightly Foxed Issue 28, Edward Ardizzone

Cheers!

When I began my under-age drinking in the early 1960s this rite of passage took place in pubs that were, in many respects, different from those of today. And it is not just the pubs themselves that have changed – the drinks then on offer have now, in some cases, almost vanished. My initiation, as it turned out, took place during a pivotal decade in the history of the pub.

Drinking establishments – taverns, inns, alehouses, bars – have, thankfully, been around for a very long time. The Greeks and the Romans relaxed in them, and they were liberally sprinkled throughout our medieval towns and cities. They became part of the fabric of our society and, as such, were incorporated as crucial backdrops in many great works of literature. It was from the Tabard Inn in Southwark that Chaucer’s story-telling pilgrims set off for Canterbury over 600 years ago, aided and abetted by its genial host. Falstaff ’s roisterings at the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap provide one of the enduring images of the pub, and pubs play key roles in several of Dickens’s novels.

Dr Johnson made time between writing and compiling his dictionary to enjoy the pleasures of the pub, famously declaring to Boswell, ‘There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.’ In more recent times George Orwell set down for readers of the Evening Standard a description of his idealized, imaginary pub, the Moon under Water, where perfection was embodied in ‘architecture and fittings [that] are uncompromisingly Victorian’ and where he could find ‘draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio’.

Orwell was writing in 1946 at exactly the same time that another enthusiast, Maurice Gorham (1902–75), was touring pubs in austere, post-war London. A journalist and broadcaster, Gorham had a passion for the English pub which he shared with his friend, the artist and illustrator

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When I began my under-age drinking in the early 1960s this rite of passage took place in pubs that were, in many respects, different from those of today. And it is not just the pubs themselves that have changed – the drinks then on offer have now, in some cases, almost vanished. My initiation, as it turned out, took place during a pivotal decade in the history of the pub.

Drinking establishments – taverns, inns, alehouses, bars – have, thankfully, been around for a very long time. The Greeks and the Romans relaxed in them, and they were liberally sprinkled throughout our medieval towns and cities. They became part of the fabric of our society and, as such, were incorporated as crucial backdrops in many great works of literature. It was from the Tabard Inn in Southwark that Chaucer’s story-telling pilgrims set off for Canterbury over 600 years ago, aided and abetted by its genial host. Falstaff ’s roisterings at the Boar’s Head in Eastcheap provide one of the enduring images of the pub, and pubs play key roles in several of Dickens’s novels. Dr Johnson made time between writing and compiling his dictionary to enjoy the pleasures of the pub, famously declaring to Boswell, ‘There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn.’ In more recent times George Orwell set down for readers of the Evening Standard a description of his idealized, imaginary pub, the Moon under Water, where perfection was embodied in ‘architecture and fittings [that] are uncompromisingly Victorian’ and where he could find ‘draught stout, open fires, cheap meals, a garden, motherly barmaids and no radio’. Orwell was writing in 1946 at exactly the same time that another enthusiast, Maurice Gorham (1902–75), was touring pubs in austere, post-war London. A journalist and broadcaster, Gorham had a passion for the English pub which he shared with his friend, the artist and illustrator Edward Ardizzone (1900–79). Gorham and Ardizzone spent a good deal of time in London’s pubs and together they collaborated on a celebration of them in The Local (1939), the text by Gorham and the accompanying coloured lithographs by Ardizzone. Although well-received, it was soon overtaken by catastrophe: the unsold stock, along with the artwork, went up in smoke when Cassell’s premises in Belle Sauvage Yard caught fire during the Blitz. As a result the original edition is now a rare item and copies change hands for in excess of £300. (Happily, Little Toller Books have just published a new edition, at a much more reasonable price.) Its virtual extinction turned the authors’ minds to preparing a much revised version after the war. Published in 1949 and appropriately entitled Back to the Local, it is (with its scarce companion-piece) probably the most delightful and evocative book ever produced on the English pub. Not only is it beautifully written, it is also extremely informative, giving us valuable insights into the world of the pub sixty years ago. When I first encountered pubs they were still very much as portrayed by Gorham and Ardizzone. Each was generally divided into several rooms, hierarchically organized. The term ‘public bar’ is familiar to all, but any spaces still so named today are scarcely distinguishable from any other part of a pub. Then the public bar was the working man’s domain, a spartan place of much vertical drinking and smoking. For the more respectable and better-dressed there was the saloon or, better still, the lounge. These were rooms with tables, carpets and upholstered seats, where ladies (if in the plural) might go unaccompanied. In between there was the private bar (very much a London term) which even in Gorham’s day was tending to disappear. The names of the rooms or spaces, the way they were furnished, and the social composition of their clientele varied from pub to pub because it was (and, of course, still is) impossible to speak of a ‘typical’ pub. In the early 1960s I was certainly aware of the social distinctions of the various rooms. There was a definite sense of raffish slumming about entering the uncarpeted public bar with its thick pall of smoke. Greater social status and greater comfort came at a price, for different prices were charged in different rooms. This was universal into the ’60s and beyond. Now it is all but extinct. The ultimate expression of a desire for respectability and privacy was the presence of snobscreens. These were small swivelling screens at head level which, when closed, screened the lounge or the saloon bar from the public bar on the other side of the counter. They can still be seen at the Prince Alfred, in London’s Maida Vale, and just creep into Ardizzone’s sketch of the saloon bar at this still magnificently appointed late Victorian pub. Back in 1949 it was very likely that you would purchase alcohol for home consumption from your local pub. Not any more: the big shift came about with legislation in the early 1960s liberalizing the sale of alcohol from supermarkets. Gorham and Ardizzone have a lovely short chapter on the Jug-and-Bottle (or Bottle-and-Jug) as it was most commonly known, which had, in Gorham’s words, ‘a taint of furtiveness that is not shared by the rest of the pub. There is a sort of sneaking assumption that whilst it would be disgraceful to be seen drinking in a pub, it is consistent with respectability to use the Bottle-and-Jug. The theory, presumably, is that in this bar you are buying for your husband and not for yourself, but some of the customers give you the impression that if they have got a husband, he won’t get much of what they buy.’ The provision of food is a vital component in the success of huge numbers of pubs today but it has long been so. Gorham tells us that ‘Before the war it could be claimed that London pubs provided as good food of its kind as you could get in England.’ Afterwards, in the economically exhausted nation, ‘Food is a problem now for the pubs as for everybody else . . . you sigh for honest bully-beef or genuine Spam.’ Perhaps! Still, things were gradually picking up, although what is now put about as ‘traditional pub fayre’ – scampi and chips, lasagne and the like – lay some way in the future, as did the ‘gastro-pub’. The Second World War had had a sobering effect in more ways than one. The average strength of beer fell by 15 per cent during the war and was on average lower than it had ever been with the exception of the Great War. Then, under the teetotal Lloyd George, beer had been cut both in its strength and in the volume in which it was produced, a fact that was thought to contribute to the unrest affecting the country from 1917. Mindful of this, in the second great conflict the government tried to keep up beer production, at least in terms of volume, but there were still problems, as Gorham tells us in a heartfelt chapter. Supplies often ran out, and he explains how the arrival of the brewer’s dray was ‘rather like the sighting of the relief force from the walls of Lucknow’. ‘The worst of the famine’, he tells us, ‘was in the summer of 1946, when . . . too many people were chasing too little beer.’ In 1949 what we now refer to as ‘real ale’ – traditional English ale which is still working in the cask – was overwhelmingly the dominant drink sold in the pub. Lager, although available in Britain since the late nineteenth century, was ‘still not a very popular drink in pubs, except in fairly high-class Saloon Bars during very hot weather’. So Gorham, his artist friend and their fellow drinkers were consuming ale, chiefly mild or bitter. Nowadays mild – the weakest and cheapest of beers, dark in colour – has disappeared from the London drinking scene and, indeed, most other parts of Britain. But back in 1949 it was the standard drink in public bars – ‘a pint’ without qualification, we learn, meant a pint of mild, just as ‘a pint’ in the saloon would summon forth bitter. Mild and other styles of beer are among the mentions in Gorham’s fascinating ‘Glossary of Terms commonly used in connection with London Pubs’. Brown ale, Burton (‘a draught beer darker and sweeter than bitter’), ‘mother-in-law’ (stout-and-bitter), ‘old’ (the same as Burton), and Scotch ale (similar to Burton) are all terms for ale that would perplex bar staff today. On the other hand there are now far more types of drink available. Ardizzone’s affectionate illustrations show bar counters encumbered by nothing more than a few hand-pumps and the odd glass. Today, banks of lager, stout, cider and even wine fonts line our bar counters. A final change worth highlighting is that of pub ownership. In Gorham’s day pubs were mostly owned by breweries, and most of these were local. In the late 1950s and early 1960s many brewers amalgamated, and this process has continued to the point where there is now only one brewer – Fuller’s – of any size in Maurice Gorham’s former drinking grounds. What is more, most pubs are no longer owned by brewers at all. The government’s ‘Beer Orders’ of 1989 forced brewers with tied estates of over 2,000 pubs to divest themselves of pubs beyond that number in an ill-thought-out attempt to stimulate competition and promote consumer choice. As a result many big brewers sold off all their pubs or formed separate holding companies. Most houses now belong to pub companies with no brewing interests, the largest of which have far more pubs than the big brewers ever did. Were Messrs Gorham and Ardizzone to return to Earth for a posthumous pint today they would find a London pub world both familiar and unfamiliar. Many of their haunts are still there, although others have gone. They would probably be shocked that there is no longer a separate, comfortable saloon or lounge in which to relax, and no doubt alarmed by the brightly illuminated fonts on the bar counter, huge television screens and flashing gaming machines. They would be amazed by the post-2007 absence of cigarette smoke and would wonder at the range of food available. As for the ale, they would almost certainly find ours a marked improvement on their thin, post-war pint. The pub changes – it always has and always will. The joy of Gorham and Ardizzone’s classic book is that it captures it at a particular moment in history.

Extract from Slightly Foxed Issue 28 © Geoff Brandwood 2010


About the contributor

Geoff Brandwood is an architectural historian whose interest in the Victorian and Edwardian era developed through studies of churches. He then became involved with the Campaign for Real Ale’s fight to preserve historic pub interiors. Churches and pubs? Holy buildings both, he says.

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