Pub Architecture in the late
19th Century Urban Areas In
conjunction with the tied house war, breweries started to build a
new type of establishment by the end of the 19th century. Indeed, many
landowners only granted long term leases of their pub sites to brewers
on the basis that they rebuilt or improved the premises. The landowners
realised that the brewers were falling over themselves for the key
locations and forced them to improve the properties on their behalf. At
the same time another movement was impacting on public house design. The
reduction of public houses in the city centre was something of a paradox
because they still served large demographic areas. The magistrates were
granting new licences to the pubs built in the burgeoning suburbs but
only at the expense of surrendered licences in the inner city. The
response of the brewers was to increase the size of their premises.
Magistrates in cities like Birminghamwere more than happy with this policy - Victorian values created
a motive among the municipal-minded to improve the condition of the
city's drinking houses and they saw "bigger but fewer" pubs as a
positive step forward.
Many
large breweries commissioned architects to design striking new buildings
to replace the original inns. Ironically the pub architect was not that
esteemed because the middle classes tended to disapprove of drinking
establishments in the Victorian period. And yet their opulent creations
are a testament to the enterprise of the Victorians. Indeed, a century
later, these buildings stand as a wonderful legacy of the period. The
sheer volume of the pubs being upgraded augured the age of the mass
produced building design. Another factor was the breweries desire to
establish what we would call today a "corporate image". Terracotta
became the fashionable facing brick in the late 19th century. Made with
finer clay than that used in standard bricks and fired at a higher
temperature, terracotta was moulded before the kiln and produced a
clean, crisp finish with finer detail and perhaps more importantly in
these grimy times, they remained fairly clean. Many moulds were produced
and catalogued so that architects could literally build by numbers.
Terracotta was ideal for creating ostentatious displays on corner
buildings and this was exactly what the brewers demanded. The public
house became a statement of intent. Although each of these terracotta
pubs have their own unique properties they share many characteristics.
The main entrance to the public bar was always on the corner with large
windows to attract passers-by.
The back
bar was an important feature of the newly-designed pubs. They were
invariably imposing and even monumental mahogany structures. Usually
with a pediment clock, they incorporated glass and mirrors to create
added depth to the room and also to attract pedestrians walking past
those large windows. And in the same manner of the exterior walls,
architects used tiles for the interior because they had the same 'off
the shelf' properties. Most were produced in the Potteries, the leading
firms being Minton, Wood and Kendrick. Advances in Lincrusta and
Analgypta also allowed more sumptuous wall and ceiling displays. All of
this combined to create the perfect mix-and-match pub. Criticised by
many architects of the period and indeed later, these “pub palaces” do
at least have an important place in the fabric of the city. Another
shared characteristic is the floor plan. The floor area of the saloon
bar was extended and had a long counter to maximise sales. An observer
of the day criticised the way the breweries had banished the parlour and
taproom and lamented that "most modern houses have converted bars where
the customer must come like a bucket to the well and fill himself and go
away again". The interiors however concur with the new class divisions
of the Victorians and the multi-roomed pub became fashionable. The smoke
room of the Victorian pub was more luxurious and usually accessed by a
separate passage from the street. This well appointed type of room was
popular with businessman and, perhaps more significantly, women. The
birth of social classes had inadvertently ushered in market segmentation
for the breweries. However, the magistrates viewed cosy snugs with
disdain because they perceived them as places where prostitution could
thrive. The construction bubble did burst. Indeed, the movement proved
to be the downfall of some brewers because their estate accumulation was
often unsustainable. many labourers and the
publican would pay the foreman a 'kickback' for such sales.
Beerhouses Public
houses before 1830 were either inns or taverns - the key
difference being that in an inn you could sleep as well as eat and
drink. Most publicans strived to gain inn status for this allowed them
to remain open as long as a bed was empty and simple victuals were
offered to any lawful visitor or traveller. The established inns and
taverns faced more competition from the abundance of beerhouses
springing up after 1830. The beerhouses were generally private dwellings
with one or two rooms converted following the controversial Duke of
Wellington's Beerhouse Act of 1830. The Act, designed to curb the rise
of gin consumption and to bypass local magistrates legislation, allowed
any householder or ratepayer, on payment of two guineas to the Excise,
to sell beer and cider from their property. The Act was pushed through
by Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, before he was ousted from
Downing Street. It was in response to increased agitation over the 200
year-old licensing laws which were seen as archaic. However, the issue
was to remain a political hot potato for the rest of the 19th century.
Many of the new beerhouses throughout the land named their pubs in
honour of the Iron Duke. Their pub signs tended to display Wellington in
his military roles and often celebrated his battle achievements that had
captured the imagination of the public. However, more often than not,
the new publicans were showing appreciation to the man who had helped
them set up in business. Although many beerhouses
were eradicated under later legislation, many survived and
evolved into fully licensed premises. By 1890 almost half of
Birmingham's 2,178 public houses were beerhouses. The local magistrates
determined to regain control by issuing full licences to acceptable
houses whilst refusing to renew licences of disreputable joints.
Birmingham's Early
Public Houses Digbeth is the birthplace of the modern city
of Birmingham. It is in Digbeth that the earliest inhabitants settled on
the banks of the River Rea. It was in the seventh
century that Berma's tribe established a camp settlement here, the
attraction being the area's plentiful water supply.
Consequently, it will not come as a surprise therefore to learn
that Birmingham's early pubs were concentrated in the
Digbeth area. By the mid-18th century
Digbeth had a large number of inns and taverns, mainly along the ribbon
development of Digbeth and Deritend High Street. The Old Crown
Inn is the most famous of the town's old
coaching inns. Thought to have been built in 1368 by Robert O the Grene,
it did not open as an inn until 1684 by which time The White Hart was
well established as a favourite haunt with local blacksmiths.
The
historian William Hutton claimed that The White Hart was the source of
the plague outbreak in 1665. Other pubs to open along Digbeth were The
Cock and Redd Lyon, The Swan, The Garland and The Starr. By 1767 there
were 32 licensed public houses in Digbeth High Street, some of which
prospered until relatively recent times - The Old Leather Bottle, The
Three Crowns and The Nelson Inn. The industrial revolution created much
speculative development in and around Digbeth and Deritend, particularly
following the arrival of the canals. Roads leading off the main
thoroughfare started to be developed in the 1790's, including Birchall
Street and Rea Street.
Coaching-Inns
and the Coaching Era The earliest recognised coach route was a regular
three-times-per-week service operated between London and Chester in
1657. However, it has to be stressed that most roads in Britain were in
such a pitiful state that it was not until the establishment of the
Turnpike Trusts in 1667 that a network of routes could be established.
It took almost a century to get things sorted - the Romans were much
better at this sort of thing! The mail coaches of the mid-late 18th set
the standard in terms of speed and timetables. The so-called 'golden
era' of the coaching period was roughly 1780-1830. Existing taverns and
inns on recognised routes offered a warm welcome, hot food and vital
support services for coaches passing in front of their premises.
Naturally, other pubs sprang up en-route in order to cash in on the
travelling boom.
Established inns were responsible for horsing coaches
over an agreed stage, the standard being approximately 12 miles in each
direction. This became known as the 'ground' of the inn. The larger inns
and hotels offered luxury to patrons of wealth and standing. Other inns
catered for their particular niche markets. The waggon trade also
utilised the services of wayside inns that included wheelwrights and
blacksmiths. The arrival of the railways marked the decline of the
coaching era and, although services continued to run later in the 19th
century, the so-called 'golden era' was short-lived.
A Pub on Every Corner There was a pub
on almost every corner of the newly developed urban areas in the
mid-19th century. Speculative builders, who tended to lease the land
from the large private estates, would find it easier to sell or sub-let
a public house and the funds would help to infill the spaces between the
taverns with relatively cheap housing. The incoming residents could then
enjoy their purpose-built community pub. Prospective publicans snapped
up the ready-made urban taverns.
The
Homebrew House
Most public
houses, including beerhouses, produced their own beer in the
early-mid 19th century. The beers varied considerably from brew to brew,
particularly in the small beerhouses, due in part to the lack of
training, cleanliness, poor quality malt, hops and contaminated water.
However, ales produced in larger pubs were generally superior because of
the greater economies of scale they could derive. Increased competition
and the dissemination of brewing skills between established alehouses
were other key factors.
Pub
Checks and Tokens Many publicansissued their own tokens during the 19th century. Indeed, this was
a fairly common practice in taverns and beer
shops. Most of those issued in Birmingham and the Black Country were
made by local diesinkers and stamping workshops. Also serving the role
of advertisements, these tokens were generally called checks. The
publicans name was also stamped on the check. This would mean that
that it could only be spent when he was the licensee - if you turned up
just after the publican had left the pub you were out of pocket because
the new gaffer would not honour it.
Checks
existed for all values between 1d and 3d - ale in the mid-late 19th
century was 2d or 3d a pint. 2½d was the price of a bottle of
stout. Checks were one publican's method of ensuring their money came
back over the counter. Another incorrigible method was to establish an
agreement with local foremen to pay his workers in the pub on Saturday
evenings. This sort of activity was rife in areas like Digbeth where
large numbers of migrants used popular drinking houses as places to seek
labour. The temptation to launch into a heavy drinking session with
fresh pay proved irresistible to many labourers and the publican would
pay the foreman a 'kickback' for such sales.
The
Supply-of-Beer
[Tied Estate] Order 1989
During the 1960's
there was a mad period of buyouts, takeovers and mergers that led to the
closure of many small independent breweries, some of which were
family-owned and had been operating for centuries. By 1972 the so-called
'Big Six' [Allied, Bass Charrington, Courage, Watney [Grand
Metropolitan], Scottish and Newcastle and Whitbread] dominated the
domestic market to the point that they supplied 82 per cent of all beer
brewed in UK. Distinctive regional beers were harder to find and many
felt that an important part of British heritage was being lost. It is
important to remember that many of these regional breweries were
themselves guilty of crushing competition by acquiring their rivals.
However, the choice of beers in Britain's public houses seemed to reach
an all-time low in the early 1970's, due mainly to the aggressive nature
of the Big Six. Some would argue that it was even worse in 1989, the
year in which the Monopolies and Mergers Commission reported that these
companies, largely through tied-house agreements, had established a
monopoly situation and that the public were suffering as a result.
Essentially, they were ordered to reduce their tied estates and allow
the sale of a guest beers. Of course, the breweries managed to get
around this by financing new pub companies [later to be dubbed Pubco's]
in order to maintain their extensive estates. Some breweries even
stopped brewing and concentrated on retailing which was more profitable.
Despite the bending of rules, some pubs were sold off to individuals and
many 'new' free houses did emerge in the 1990's. In fact, there was a
golden period during which time bargain-priced pubs were up for grabs.
This era was however short-lived as soaring property prices resulted in
breweries realising more money by selling pub sites for redevelopment.
In some parts of the country beer choice has increased - but often guest
ales are only available to tenants at premium prices as the pubco's tend
to control the wholesaling of beers to their own estates. Nevertheless,
beer choice in some parts of the Midlands is much better than it has
been for many a decade and, through government tax incentive schemes,
there are more small breweries than there have been for eons.
The
Tied-House
War
During the late
19th century many breweries started to acquire public houses, developing
large tied estates. A key reason for this was a bill passed
by Parliament in 1869. It was in that year
that the Government passed the Wine and Beerhouse Act. This was designed
to restrict the number of beerhouses by restoring the power of local
magistrates. The Act succeeded in suppressing the vast number of
licensed premises in large urban areas. In fact, it was to have another
key influence. Public houses that existed before the Act had a degree of
protection and, as such, they and the site they occupied, accrued a
premium. Any pub on a prime corner position became a target for the
brewers. Up until the late 19th century brewers had relied on providing
loans to local publicans to tie them to their product. This ensured that
they had outlets for their beer. Britain by this time was changing
rapidly in the late Victorian period, particularly with innovations in
transport. Breweries around Great Britain, and in particular those of
Burton-on-Trent, suddenly started to view other towns and cities as
potential areas of expansion. Regional brewers were forced to respond by
developing their own pub estates. Changes in legislation had reduced the
number of public houses in the towns and cities and the values of those
remaining started to increase sharply in the 1890's. A major obstacle
for brewers was raising the large sums of capital required to expand
their estates. In Birmingham for example, Ansell and Son were originally
maltster's and hop merchants but moved into the brewing business in 1881.
They became a limited company in 1889. The timing was not coincidental -
3 years earlier Guinness raised £6 million when they became the first
brewery to float on the stock exchange. Their strategy was so successful
it inevitably led to a rush of other companies with a fervent desire to
raise capital. Subsequent brewery flotations between 1886 and 1889
raised £185 million. With money to burn the prices of public houses
started to increase. It was the beginning of the tied house war. In
Birmingham The Holt Brewery Company were at the forefront of this
movement - no doubt helped by the fact that Henry Fulford, a large
shareholder, was a member of the Town Council for Nechells and Chairman
of the Markets and Fairs Committee. Butler's Crown Brewery were second
before they merged with Henry Mitchell in 1898. Third in the pecking
order was Ansell and Son. By the end of 1898 the Aston-based company had
increased their tied estate to sixty-four public houses. Indeed,
Ansell's became so successful they would late acquire their rivals The
Holt Brewery. Buying out competition was often a cheaper method of
acquiring public houses, an important strategy in expanding market.
