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Page 4. The Pubs.
The Pubs
Although it appears inns and village ale
houses
existed in Saxon times, the concept of a public house as we currently
understand it dates from approximately a thousand years ago, when the
majority of travellers were nobility, freemen and monks. At that
time most of the country’s population were destined to live and die in
the village or town where they were born.
Hospitality and refuge were provided by the
great monasteries and churches scattered throughout the kingdom, whose
religious orders grew their own food and brewed their own ale. As
the population grew in size and the feudal system began to break up,
traditional
hospitality became more of a burden to the religious houses.
Monasteries
could no longer cope with or accommodate the volume of
travellers.
Gradually hospitality began to be dispensed from a house separate from
the religious buildings.
In providing this separate hospitality, the
religious orders no longer felt under an obligation to supply this
service
free of charge, and a visitor was expected to pay either in cash, goods
or labour. These “public” houses, now usually sited at the gate
to
the monastery or church were to survive long after the dissolution of
the
monasteries.
On the Isle of Wight, only the Cutters Arms
by the lych-gate to Carisbrooke church reflected this
arrangement.
This little public house, now sadly gone, could have been one of the
oldest
on the island.
As these public houses began to flourish,
other householders along England’s roads and paths began to cash in on
the idea, selling their surplus beer to travellers and advertising it
to
a largely illiterate population, by displaying a branch or bush at the
front of the house.
As towns grew and the number of inns
increased, human nature began to exercise its individuality and inns
began
to identify themselves with different signs. This idea of a sign
as distinct from a name took hold. People would speak of lodging
or meeting at the sign of the “Star” or the “Lamb”. They would
not
have spoken of being at a pub called the Star or the Lamb.
| St. Crispin, the patron saint of
shoemakers. An
old saying goes, "Cobblers and Tinkers are the best drinkers. |
The aristocracy, who were usually as
illiterate
as the rest of the population, developed a sign language of their
own.
This heraldic language was also borrowed for use on tavern signs,
giving
rise to names such as the Kings Arms and the Crown and Sceptre.
Of
course, other traders in towns also put up signs to indicate what they
made or sold and eventually regulations were passed by local boroughs
to
curb these sometimes dangerous structures.
Pubs were exempt and over the centuries,
publicans
and breweries proudly made use of their right to display a sign, having
moved on from the display of simple objects to elaborate paintings,
often
of the highest quality. Many inn signs had a local
root
or reference, for example, the “Bugle” to signify a young bull on the
Isle
of Wight.
The earliest known inn in Newport is believed
to be the “Swan” or “Le Swan”, the origin of the name having a direct
heraldic
link with the coat of arms favoured by Henry VIII and Edward III.
The Swan figures predominately in the ecclesiastical visitations to
Newport
in early days. Although the meetings of archdeacon and clergy
were
held in the “chapel”, the disposition of witnesses as to offenses
against
the law and order were taken at “Le Swan” in 1606 and probably before.
In the “Book of Licences”, House of
Lords papers. George White of Newport is named as the licensee of
the “Tapster and Pott” in that town. The licence was apparently
in
existence before that it is uncertain whether it was older than “Le
Swan”
or not. The Swan lasted until the 19th century when it was
rebuilt,
it was later pulled down in the 20th for its site to be occupied by the
present day County Hall in the lower High Street.
Looking at the record of pub names throughout
Newport’s history, one could be forgiven for believing that several
hundred
had been in existence.
However, as previously mentioned, human nature and
ingenuity
in devising new names and signs have been exercised throughout the
ages.
Name changes could signify a new publican, a change of brewer, or an
attempt
to gain popularity by taking a name commemorating a national event, a
new
monarch or a famous national military victory.
The disposition of public houses in Newport, initially
clustered around the markets, but as new dwellings fleshed our the new
town’s streets, inns sprang up to cater to the inhabitants.
| Mew Langton's brewery in Crocker Street, was
for many
years in Newport's history, the main source of good beer. I
remember
being bemused by the lack of an "L" and an "N" on the writing on the
side
of the maltings. The letters read, "W.B. Mew Langton & Co.
Brewers
to the late King". |
The larger inns faced onto the High Street and other main
routes
into the town. They not only provided board and lodgings to
wealthy
merchants and travellers but were places of entertainment for local
townsfolk.
Dances, concerts, recitals and spectator events
such as cock fights and boxing matches were provided. Societies
and
associations thrived in the private rooms in these
establishments.
Masonic lodges, local societies, self improvement classes and political
clubs used their facilities for meetings. The pubs were centres for the
cultural life of the town as well as providing a source of oblivion
from
the daily grind for Newport’s poorer citizens. However, by
the early nineteenth century, this public drunkenness due to gin and
spirit
consumption was becoming a local and national scandal.
In 1830 Goldbourne’s Act empowered any householder
and rate payer to open his house as a beer shop merely on the payment
of
two guineas to the local Excise Office. This was an attempt by
the
government to encourage beer drinking and wean the general populace off
gin spirits by taxing it heavily.
The only advantage the regular inn keeper enjoyed
over the two guinea licensee was the freedom to sell liquor after 10:00
o’clock at night and before 4.00 a.m. in the morning.
These beerhouses proliferated as the century wore
on, the drunkenness and squalor induced by excessive gin drinking now
replaced
by that of excessive ale drinking.
Many became dens frequented by thieves, rogues,
drunks and prostitutes. The large military presence in the town
compounded
matters. Off duty soldiers with money in their pockets and little
by way of entertainment were often the instigators and victims of
trouble
in the town’s numerous back streets.
Garrison Town
Troops march past the Crispin Inn at the
top of
the High Street. |
Many of the names of Newport’s pubs and
beerhouses
betray these military links, amongst which were the Valiant Soldier,
the
Trooper, the Battle of Waterloo and the Military Arms.
From the early part of the twentieth century,
the number of pubs in Newport began to decline. Licensing Acts
drew
up national guidelines for magistrates to refuse renewal of licences on
the grounds of trade (the lack of it) and the number of public houses
necessary
per head of population. A redundancy fund was set up, financed by
the pubs themselves to compensate landlords for loss of their
livelihood.
Many of the smaller beer houses were swept away as were many of
Newport’s
well known inns, some of them hundreds of years old.
| Mew Langton, Newport's Brewers, display their
dray for
the camera. |
However, by the 1960’s, Mew Langton & Co., the town’s local brewer
and its rival, Brickwoods of Portsmouth, still managed a respectable
number
of outlets in the town. Then catastrophe struck. A take-over of
Mew
Langtons by Strongs of Romsey, initially made to protect the character
of the local trade, went horribly wrong when Strongs itself was taken
over
by theWhitbread giant, Brickwoods succumbed a few years later and the
town’s
pubs found themselves under this single company’s control.
| Seventy years on in the 1960's, Mew's dray
poses again
for the camera in Crocker Street |
This unusual monopoly situation was exploited
mercilessly by the new regime and the majority of Newport’s pubs were
to
face closure, sale and transformation. Even the largest of hotels
was not immune from these asset stripping tendencies and the town
centre
lost the historic Bugle along with its other well established pubs.
By the time legislation to curb the abuses
of local monopolies was enacted, the damage done was irreversible and
the
Whitbread company found it could dispense with its Island depot
on
the old Mew Langton brewery site and deliver direct to its remaining
outlets
from the mainland. However, in the late 1990’s, a “Hogshead
Tavern”
had been opened in the lower High Street by a subsidiary of the
Whitbread
giant. This Victorian style theme pub is an attempt to recreate a
lot of what was wantonly destroyed a generation before.
Most of the photographs in this book relate
to those that closed during the twentieth century, but I have tried to
include as much historical material as possible. No building is
frozen
in time until it is destroyed. Pub names change, buildings are
enlarged,
altered, and rebuilt.
Where possible, I have tried to include more than
one photograph of a site to show this. Also included are excerpts
from press reports, licensing hearings and inn directories. These
are the windows to the past that belong to us all.
The pubs are all still there, the old pubs
that haunt Newport’s street. They hold the voices of men, women
and
children, the songs, the shrieks of laughter, the drunken curses, the
clink
and shatter of glasses, the toasts, the applause, the music.
They are all still there, as are the sigh
of coals in the grate, the ticking of a pub clock, the thud of darts in
a board, the quiet murmurings whilst cards are played and the whisper
of
lovers in the snug.
They are all still there in our collective
memories and consciousness. And when they are all
gone,
then perhaps the words of Hilaire Belloc, the essayist and historian,
who
died in 1953 may come to haunt us instead.
“When you have lost your inns”, he once wrote,
“drown your empty selves,
for you will have lost the last of England”.
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