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Charabanc Fever
Main image above: ‘Sebastopol Inn, Ladies Outing, Preston’, from Preston Digital Archive on Flickr. A few weeks ago Doreen (@londondear) made us pause and think when she said she had been puzzled by...
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The Mystery of the Rock House Tavern
The Rock House Tavern. No trace of information about this one anywhere, its closure must have pre-dated the internet. The Courage sign still hangs proudly (pic 2). Thanks to @_richardford_ who first...
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Pub Entertainment, 1926
Looking for one thing, we found another: an essay by H.V. Morton entitled ‘Pub Crawlers’, published in The Nights of London in 1926. In this context, the crawlers are not drinkers as in modern usage...
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Pubs for ‘Men About Town’, 1920s
F.D. Ommanney’s 1966 autobiographical memoir The River Bank contains a fascinating account of how pubs fit into the London gay scene of the 1920s. Francis Downes Ommanney was quite well-known in his...
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Microscope as Brewer’s Life Blood, 1924
“As far as the practical brewer is concerned, complete knowledge of the correct use of the microscope is as necessary as his life blood, for it will save him a host of troubles. Indeed, it passes my...
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Pub Preservation: The Railway Hotel, Edgware
‘Railway Hotel Unloved’ by Matt Brown, from Flickr, under Creative Commons. We don’t usually get involved in campaigns or promote petitions but this one struck a particular chord with us. It was set up...
View ArticlePub Culture: The Lost Art of Spitting
One of the weirdest, grimmest things about our recent Big Project has been the amount of time we’ve spent reading about spitting. We knew it used to be common in pubs from the detailed coverage in Mass...
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QUICK ONE: The Flea and Sawdust School, 1927
The English Public House As It Is, a book by social observer Ernest Selley, was published in 1927. Re-reading it in search of a reference, we spotted a passage that hadn’t previously grabbed our...
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The Beer of the Future, 1924
More lager, daintier glassware, beer at the dinner table… These were some of the predictions made by brewing scientist Herbert Lloyd Hind in a talk given to a meeting of Scottish brewers on Burns Day...
View ArticleBeer delivery vans in Bristol between the wars
“In 1929 neither estate had a pub or off-licence, and tenants had to resort to vans selling alcoholic drink which plied the area.” That intriguing line appears in a paper by Madge Dresser called...
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