Pete Brown - The Pub: A Cultural Institution — From Country Inns to Craft Beer Bars and Corner Locals

When individual old pubs stake their rival claims to be the oldest in Britain, they choose their parameters carefully. A building may be only 300 years old (only!) but the pub may have been mentioned by name centuries before that. It probably burnt down and was rebuilt in the same spot. So is it the same pub or a different one? Another pub might be built on foundations that are 800 years old, even if most of the structure is Georgian. So is it 800 years old, or 200?

You can get into similar debates with the whole notion of the pub. Some pubs with certain characteristics are called inns. And the most famous inn of all time is the one in Judaea where there was no room on Christmas Eve 2000 years ago. Does this mean inns are at least 2000 years old? Or are we using a slightly incorrect word in our translation from ancient Hebrew?

These are the kind of questions that could keep a conversation going down the pub for an entire evening, but lets cut to the chase: if you define a pub as a place where people gather to consume alcohol and drink, laugh, chat, confide, bond and flirt, then the first pub was probably a pleasant woodland clearing or desert oasis some 50,000 years ago. If you define it as a building specifically designed for this practice, pubs of some description are as old as the earliest cities around 10,000 years old. But if you want to know about the British pub the institution that ostensibly serves the same function as bars and cafes, but has a quite different character thats a story that begins in the Middle Ages and carries on evolving today.

Anyway, back to those pub names you were collecting. As you gather a few more, you might notice some subtle distinctions. You might find a Kings Head Tavern and a Kings Head Inn, for example. Does it make any difference? Probably not. We might refer to a pub as a hostelry, watering hole or boozer. Some pubs are developing a tedious habit of referring to themselves as a Bar and Kitchen or Craft Beer House, as if this somehow makes them more special than mere pubs. Inns, taverns and alehouses are just different words for the pub, and we frequently use them interchangeably.

But that wasnt always the case. Historically, the inn, the tavern and the alehouse were different establishments with different functions, and even had different licensing conditions. Each establishment contributed something to the DNA of the modern pub and that at least starts to explain why the pub is so singular in its character.

Pub signs like these are the descendants of large visual icons that identified pubs when most people couldnt read.

Cask ale barrels on traditional stillage at The Rugglestone Inn, Devon a sight thats not as common as it once was.