- Paperback: 40 pages
- Publisher: Shire Publications Ltd (1 Oct 2003)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0747805733
- ISBN-13: 978-0747805731
- Product Dimensions: 14.9 x 0.4 x 21.1 cm
- Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (1 customer review)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 489,998 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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More About the Author
Product Description
Product Description
The Victorian public house evolved out of the traditional tavern and the humble beerhouse in response to the novel challenge of the garish but soulless gin palace. Incorporating such innovations as large plate-glass windows, gas lighting, the hydraulic beer-engine and the island bar, the reinvented pub become a central feature of working-class life. Deserted by the bourgeoisie, the public house served the working man as his club, debating society, job centre Masonic lodge and recreation room. As the Temperance movement battled in reduce the absolute number of drink outlets, the licensed trade responded by upgrading their size, glamour and efficiency, culminating in a massive pub building boom in the last decade of Victoria's reign. The exuberant creations of this era have since suffered much from demolition, alteration and conversion to other uses but thousands remain to be cherished and celebrated for their continuing significance in our national life.
About the Author
Richard Tames is the creator of the Shire Lifelines series, to which he has contributed titles on 'William Morris', Brunel', 'Josiah Wedgwood' and 'Robert Adam'. He lectures on social history for Syracuse University's London Programme and is also a qualified Blue Badge guide.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Everyone who pulls or downs an honest pint of beer in Britain should read this book. Drinking in Britain is serious business, and few took it as seriously as our Victorian forbears. They revolutionised public houses, building and re-building them, in a high street re-branding equivalent to the replacement of the corner teashop by the fast-food outlet in the late 20th century. In The Victorian Public House, Richard Tames chronicles the rise of these new drinking establishments with rich tipples of scholarship and amusing anecdote.
Tames, an acknowledged authority on London, skips jauntily through the history of Inns and Taverns, reminding us en passant that brewing ale was a daily task for the medieval housewife, and takes us through to the explosive growth of the public house in the 19th century. It is fair to apply the word staggering to the raw statistics. In 1816 there were 48,000 licensed alehouses in England and Wales, of which just 30 per cent belonged to the breweries. By 1900, there were 100,000, of which 90 per cent were owned by the brewers. This phenomenal growth came on the back of reduction in duty, a sustained rise in working-class purchasing power, advances in brewing, and the railway revolution. It led, initially through the proliferation of the gin palace, to a whole new concept in drinking and entertainment - brand new and newly refurbished pubs, new comfortable saloon bars, music halls and the great railway taverns themselves. Along with it came a raft of legislation - on opening hours, fines for public drunkenness, age limits and other measures, such as the outlawing of the payment of wages and of the liquid inducement of votes on licensed premises.
Tames' captions to the colour and black and white illustrations are little gems in themselves: learn them all and you could become an instant pub bore with such titbits as what glass 'snob screens' were for, the origin of the word 'navvies', why the owner of 'Crocker's Folly' in St John's Wood, London, committed suicide, the reason why there were so few pubs in Carlisle, and the location in London of a statue of the man who suggested that the best thing Britain could do was to ship every publican off to the colonies. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when Tames reminds us that in 1881 undergraduates at the Oxford Union Debating Society voted that Bass bottled beer had done more for humanity than the printing press.
For less than the price of two pints in most London pubs, this latest in the series of Shire titles that specialise in 19th century social history is the ideal gift - alike for those who go down to their local and for those who just enjoy pubs. Take a copy with you next time you pop out or drop in for a quick pint, and you may discover where you are.
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