"There is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is produced as by a good tavern or inn"
Samuel Johnson
Pubs have been a vital element of British community life for many hundreds of years. Pubs have been in existence since at least the eleventh century when almost every other household welcomed passers-by to drop in and refresh themselves with a tankard of the local brew.
Like the church, pubs were central to the life of a community. Indeed many early public houses came into being because of the need to provide church builders with a place of relaxation. As time moved on, the responsibility of innkeeping passed to local lords of the manor. This partly explains why many inn signs and names reflect important local or national aristocratic names or heraldic symbols. ‘The Red Lion' remains the most common pub name, and many of these date back to the sixteenth century.
Coaching inns, many of which still exist on key routes, declined in importance in the nineteenth century when the railways became the most prominent form of transport. In the Victorian era, large extravagant pubs became the norm and thousands of examples of these fine buildings still exist on the street corners of most towns and cities. The industrial revolution also marked the creation of large regional brewers which bought up pubs in their area and began to supply them with their own beer. Publicans became tenants, paying low levels of rent to brewer landlords and agreeing, in return, to exclusively sell their beer. The pub ‘tie' was born and this remains an important aspect of the pub scene today.
But not all was rosy for the future of the pub. During the end of the last century and throughout the First World War, drinking alcohol became a major social and moral issue and this led to the creation of controls and licensing laws to protect the British public from the evils of alcohol abuse. Indeed the licensing hours which resulted from this have only recently been changed in the new Licensing Act in England and Wales.
During the inter-war period methods of transport continued to influence the type and style of new pubs. As the motor car grew in importance, so too did the popularity of roadside inns reflecting the art-deco design preference of the time. During the late 1960s and early 1970s ‘merger fever' led to the creation of six huge national companies which spelled the end of many regional and family brewers. Companies like Bass and Whitbread began to merge with and buy out other brewers and their pub estates in a quest for market power.
Throughout the 1980s the majority of pubs were in the control of a handful of companies. Many of the traditional names and regional pub identities began to disappear as companies tried to segment the market. The themed or concept pub was born and establishing corporate identity on a national scale changed the face of the pub scene forever. Pubs no longer existed only to serve local communities, but became ‘destination pubs' offering a similar experience to an increasingly sophisticated customer.
At the end of the 1980s the extent of the market power of the big brewers led to a government investigation which aimed to restrict this power. But the resulting legislation was a watered down version of the recommendations of the Monopolies and Mergers Commission report. Restricting the number of pubs big brewers could own and tie meant that many thousands of pubs were put up for sale in the early 1990s. This led to the creation of several large non-brewing pub-companies which invariably signed supply deals with the selling brewers. It did not lead to more choice for consumers as initially intended and served only to accelerate the move towards managed concept pubs.
A pub can never serve to meet the needs of all people. But modern investment trends have led to our high streets becoming saturated with large themed pubs which are often aimed at the high-spending under 25 year old group. Lack of investment in local community pubs continues to threaten their survival, as owning companies plough millions into the development of short-term concepts to please a fickle group of customers who will soon move onto the next popular theme.