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    Pub Name History
    Pub Name History
    Pub Name History
    Ebook122 pages2 hours

    Pub Name History

    By Albert Jack

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    About this ebook

    From the Author of the Internationally Bestselling Red Herrings & White Elephants, Pop Goes the Weasel, What Caesar did for My Salad, Shaggy Dogs, They Laughed at Galileo:

    The pub was once described by seventeenth-century diarist Samuel Pepys as the 'heart of England while the church is its soul'. These days I would say he is only half right. There remain over 56,000 pubs in Great Britain, half of which are filled with youngsters who play loud music on a jukebox that sounds like somebody is hitting his lawnmower with a hammer, while the next-door neighbour shouts at him over the fence. The other half, however, are the perfect place to while away an afternoon with a pint and fine conversation while quietly contemplating what to do next. Well, that's what I do.

    The pub histories told in this collection are some of my favourite pubs and are extracts from my popular book The Old Dog and Duck (There are many more histories in there.) So take a seat in your favourite armchair by the fireside and join me on a pub crawl along memory lane and around history corner. We may be some time.

    Contents

    1 – The Blind Beggar

    2 – The Bucket of Blood

    3 – The Case is Altered

    4 – The Crooked Billet

    5 – The Eagle and Child

    6 – The Elephant and Castle

    7 - The Flying Dutchman

    8 – The French House

    9 – The Garibaldi

    10 – The George and Dragon

    11 - The Green Man

    12 – Harry's Bar

    13 – The Hero of Inkerman

    14 – The Horse and Hounds

    15 – Jack Straw's Castle

    16 – The John Snow

    17 – The Marquis of Granby

    18 – Molly Maguires

    19 – Molly Malone's

    20 – The Oddfellows Arms

    21 - Pickled Parson

    22 – The Red Lion

    23 – The Royal Oak

    24  - The Seven Sisters

    25 – The Star and Garter

    26 – The Volunteer

    27 – JD Wetherspoon

    28 – The White Hart

    29 – The White Lion

    30 – The Widow's Son

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherAlbert Jack Publishing
    Release dateJan 26, 2021
    ISBN9781386962533
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      Book preview

      Pub Name History - Albert Jack

      Albert Jack

      Albert Jack Publishing

      Copyright Page

      PUB NAME HISTORY

      THIRTY POPULAR PUB NAME ORIGINS

      (2021 eBook Edition)

      Copyright © March 2105 Albert Jack

      Cover Design: Albert Jack

      Production: Albert Jack Publishing

      All rights are reserved to the author. no part of this may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

      This is largely a work of non-fiction although the author could not resist the temptation to be creative with historical detail wherever possible.

      Albert Jack Publishing

      PO Box 661

      Seapoint

      Cape Town

      South Africa

      albertjack.co.uk

      ––––––––

      About the Author

      Albert Jack is a writer and historian. His first book, Red Herrings and White Elephants explored the origins of well-known idioms and phrases and became an international bestseller in 2004.

      It was serialised by the Sunday Times and remained in their bestseller list for sixteen straight months. He followed this up with a series of bestsellers including Shaggy Dogs and Black Sheep, Pop Goes the Weasel and What Caesar did for My Salad.

      Fascinated by discovering the truth behind the world’s great stories, Albert has become an expert in explaining the unexplained, enriching millions of dinner table conversations and ending bar room disputes the world over.

      He is now a veteran of hundreds of live television shows and thousands of radio programmes worldwide. Albert lives somewhere between Guildford in England and Cape Town in South Africa.

      Including:

      Introduction

      1 – The Blind Beggar

      2 – The Bucket of Blood

      3 – The Case is Altered

      4 – The Crooked Billet

      5 – The Eagle and Child

      6 – The Elephant and Castle

      7 - The Flying Dutchman

      8 – The French House

      9 – The Garibaldi

      10 – The George and Dragon

      11 - The Green Man

      12 – Harry’s Bar

      13 – The Hero of Inkerman

      14 – The Horse and Hounds

      15 – Jack Straw’s Castle

      16 – The John Snow

      17 – The Marquis of Granby

      18 – Molly Maguires

      19 – Molly Malone’s

      20 – The Oddfellow’s Arms

      21 - Pickled Parson

      22 – The Red Lion

      23 – The Royal Oak

      24  - The Seven Sisters

      25 – The Star and Garter

      26 – The Volunteer

      27 – JD Wetherspoon

      28 – The White Hart

      29 – The White Lion

      30 – The Widow’s Son

      Introduction

      As long as there has been alcohol, people have gathered together to drink it. Many pub names offer helpful signposts to the very long history of communal drinking in the British Isles. Archaeologists have found evidence of brewing in the Middle East dating as far back as the eighth century bc. Although brewing in Europe goes as far back as 3000 bc, sadly they haven’t yet found any Druid watering holes (the Standing Stone?).

      So, officially, it was the industrious Romans, after they invaded in 45 bc, who first began to establish tabernae (‘huts’ or ‘shops’ – the origin of our word ‘tavern’) along their new road networks. These provided food, drink and accommodation for workers, soldiers and travellers alike.

      They were the alcoholic equivalent of today’s motorway service stations. The Romans traditionally despised beer as the drink of the conquered indigenous peoples of Britain: their tipple of choice was wine.

      The weather in Britain was much warmer then and vines and wine-making flourished, even if the locals preferred their own homebrew. When the taberna was fully stocked with wine, some grapes would be displayed outside the building by way of an advert (the Bunch of Grapes – or Crooked Billet if the birds got there first).

      After their empire began to crumble early in the fifth century and the Romans had decamped back to Italy, the Anglo-Saxons then took charge. Many of the larger Roman-established towns were abandoned and people moved into much smaller villages and settlements.

      Unlike their Mediterranean predecessors, the new settlers came from colder, more northerly climes and their drink of choice was ale. (Ale, incidentally, before the importation of hops in the fifteenth century, was the English term for beer.) The oldest alcoholic drink on the planet, beer has historically been seen in a much more positive light than it is today.

      For instance, the Mesopotamian story explaining how man evolved from the beasts and became civilized involved his being given lots of beer by a god. Ale was central to the Anglo-Saxon sense of community. One person in the village would brew it and his home would become the local drinking spot, mustering place and centre for gossip.

      In a precursor of the modern pub sign, the Saxon brewer would fix a bush (also the source of berries for flavouring the beer) outside his house to show the ale was ready for drinking (the Bush). These alehouses became so popular that in 965 King Edgar decreed that they should be restricted to one per village.

      When the Normans took over in 1066, they were keen to impose order on their new domain, mainly so they could work out just how much tax they could get away with demanding (the point behind the Domesday Book) and for a couple of hundred years at least they ignored alehouses. The kings concentrated on building new towns and castles; it was the Church that redeveloped the idea of the Roman tabernae.

      A network of monasteries all over the British Isles created guest-houses to offer lodging and refreshment to travellers. Many monasteries were renowned for the ale they brewed and for the quality of their entertainment. Contemporary depictions of monks (think of Friar Tuck) often showed them bingeing on food and drink.

      The Dove (the biblical symbol of peace – the bird returning to the ark with the first green shoot, marking the end of the flood and God’s anger with mankind) was commonly used as a sign for a monastic guest-house.

      As the Middle Ages continued and Crusades and pilgrimages became increasingly popular (Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem), the monasteries couldn’t cope with the demand and enterprising locals set up inns nearby. Their signs (to draw in a largely illiterate clientele of pilgrims and travellers) may well have mimicked easily recognizable images from the decorations inside churches, such as the Lamb, the Ark and various martyred saints (the Crown and Arrows). These hostelries were a large step up from scruffy local alehouses and some became celebrated landmarks. There is an area of north London named after a famous medieval pub, the Angel.

      In 1393 a law was passed that all landlords must identify their premises with a sign: ‘Whoever shall brew ale in town with the intention of selling it must hang out a sign, otherwise he shall forfeit his ale.’

      The principal reason for the legislation was so that the royal ale-tasters could easily identify inns when they arrived in a village or hamlet in order to inspect the quality of the ale and to collect any taxes due.

      It made sense for a landlord to display a popular image that could easily be remembered, and many early pub names can be identified from this period, such as the Plough, the Star and the Tabard (a tabard was a sleeveless jacket – a loose-fitting medieval bodywarmer – which was worn by everyone, from ploughmen to knights). The Tabard in Southwark was the famous inn (sadly burned down in 1669) where Chaucer’s

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