The Victorian Era

What Was a Victorian Pub Like

Article · Cities & Entertainment · The Victorian Era, 1837–1901

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A Victorian public house was a far more elaborate institution than the simple alehouse it had been at the beginning of the reign. By the 1880s the typical British pub was a tied house leased from a large brewery, a richly decorated interior of mahogany, etched glass, and polished brass served in most cases by a barmaid, and the social centre of working-class life for men and (in their own separate parlour or bar) for women. The pub is examined in its social setting in Victorian Entertainment and Leisure and in Victorian London.

The Drink Trade Before 1830

The public house of the early nineteenth century was governed by a network of licensing laws dating from the seventeenth century. Alehouses, inns, and taverns each needed a magistrate’s licence; the licence carried duties on the beer and spirits they sold; and the number of houses was strictly limited. By the 1820s there were perhaps 50,000 public houses in England and Wales, most of them small premises in the established streets of the towns.

The Beerhouse Act of 1830 broke this monopoly. Any householder who paid the rates could sell beer on payment of a two-guinea licence, with no magistrates’ approval and no limit on numbers. The act was intended to encourage the consumption of beer over gin, but its practical effect was the rapid proliferation of a new class of cheap, unregulated premises: the beerhouse. By 1840 the number of drinking establishments in England and Wales had roughly doubled, to over 100,000.

The Gin Palaces

The gin palaces of the 1830s, 1840s, and 1850s were the first great Victorian contribution to pub architecture. The new heavy duty on spirits introduced in the 1850s and the new gas lighting and plate glass made the spectacular bar possible. A typical gin palace had a long, narrow frontage clad in mahogany-framed plate glass, etched and bevelled, with the proprietor’s name picked out in gilt and gas jets flaming behind; inside, the counter was of mahogany and zinc, the walls mirrored and stuccoed, the ceiling painted, and the floor tessellated. Famous examples included the Albion in Islington, the White Hart in Drury Lane, the Salmon and Ball in Bethnal Green, and the Blue Posts in Soho. The gin palace was a piece of calculated theatre, designed to draw the passing trade into a clean and glittering interior.

The Tied House

The second half of the Victorian period saw the rise of the tied-house system, under which the publican was the tenant of a brewing company, bound by contract to sell only that company’s beer in return for a low rent, a loan of fixtures, and a regular supply. The system grew rapidly after the 1869 Wine and Beerhouse Act, which ended the free trade in beer and again limited the granting of new licences, and after the 1880 decision of the House of Lords in Sharp v. Wakefield that confirmed a magistrates’ right to refuse renewal. By 1900 some 90 per cent of public houses in England were tied, and the great combine breweries dominated the trade. The big six were Whitbread, Courage, Truman, Charrington, Bass, and Tetley Walker, with Truman and Charrington based in London and Bass in Burton upon Trent. Many of their pubs survive in name, if not in form, to the present day.

The tied house was a striking building. Brewers competed to advertise their wares in tile, mosaic, etched glass, plaster, and wrought iron, and the corner pub of the 1880s and 1890s was a riot of green and cream faience, polished mahogany, engraved mirrors, and swinging pub signs. A.W.N. Pugin’s earlier work influenced many designs, and the commercial architects of the period, such as John Giles, produced standardised pub elevations for the brewery estates. The interior usually included a public bar of stone or tile floor and plain benches, a saloon bar with more comfortable seating and a higher price, a private bar for the regular trade, and a snug — a small, screened-off drinking compartment for women or for those who preferred privacy.

The Pub as a Social Institution

The public house served a much wider range of purposes than the dispensing of drink. Wages were often paid there on the Saturday night, and the publican was frequently the banker of his customers, cashing cheques and extending small loans. Friendly societies, trade unions, slate clubs, and political associations held their meetings in the upstairs rooms. The pub fielded darts and skittle teams, ran pigeon and dog shows, and organised outings to the seaside and the music hall.

Music and entertainment were central to the pub’s appeal. A piano in the back parlour was common from the 1860s, and a few pubs, like the Surrey Music Hall on the Surrey side of Blackfriars Bridge, doubled as small-scale music halls. Smoking was universal — pipes, cigars, and from the 1880s cigarettes — and the pub was, in the absence of a public library in most working-class districts, a place of newspapers, conversation, and gossip.

The pub came under sustained attack from the temperance movement of the period, which campaigned against drunkenness, against the tied-house system, and against the practice of paying wages in the bar. The 1902 Licensing Act, passed at the very end of the reign, introduced new restrictions on opening hours, and the tied houses of the Edwardian period were a slightly more sober institution than the gin palaces of mid-century. The Victorian pub nevertheless remained, as it had been for a century and would remain for another, the principal social institution of working-class Britain.