A raucous crowd is gathered outside the gin distillery—one woman pours gin into an infant's mouth, another into the mouth of a man in a wheelbarrow. Meanwhile, a fight breaks out between two injured or disabled individuals.
Townsfolk plead with the pawnbroker to buy their wares so they can buy more gin—the carpenter sells his tools, while the housewife sells her pots and kettle.
The top-right quadrant shows death and decay on Gin Lane—a man has hanged himself in an abandoned building, while structures crumble from neglect.
A man and woman lie drunken on the stairs—the woman, whose legs are covered in syphilitic sores, fails to notice her child falling over the railing, while the man, gaunt and starved, holds an empty cup. He is accompanied by a black dog symbolizing death.
So pub owners banded together on a campaign of improvements to pubs across the country, adding amenities and comforts to make them a compelling option for people’s time and disposable income.
Pub culture never seemed to really take root in the United States, and there’s no simple answer for that. Americans have always seemed to have a more prudish and cautious view of alcohol consumption—we are far stricter on underage drinking than our English counterparts, and nights out at bars are often party-like affairs rather than relaxing in a cozy environment. But much of it can likely be chalked up to a shorter history and a bout with prohibition in the early 20th century.
But even the famed British pub’s future seems to be in doubt. From 1982 to 2015, the number of pubs in the United Kingdom dropped by 25%, while the population has grown by 14%. Back in 2014, pubs were closing across the British Isles at a blistering rate of 31 a week.
“It’s the friendliness of it, it’s the people,” says Dr. Chaplin. “You feel like you’re stepping back in time. The whole essence of a traditional English pub is that you arrive as a stranger, and leave as a friend. That’s the best way to summarize it.”
Why? It might just come down to simple economics. About half of Britain’s pubs are owned by large corporations, who are beholden to shareholders to provide growth and value, which drives up costs for consumers. Add in a global recession and cheap beer offered at supermarkets, and things look grim for the local pub.
Still, there is a dedicated core of traditionalists fighting to keep their local pubs afloat. The pub offers an experience that is uniquely British, and not easily replicated. It’s an aesthetic and culture that has developed across millennia—nothing that can be replicated or scaled in a vacuum. Let that die, and you’ve let centuries of history die with it.
The Victorian Age brought an expanded middle class to the United Kingdom, and thus the lounge bar became less of a luxury and something the masses could enjoy. After World War I, pubs started to face some competition for leisure time as more people opted to go to movie theaters and dance halls rather than their local pub.
“They gave them inside toilets, carpets on the floor, space where women could sit quietly, things that made the whole experience of pubs more widely acceptable for women and families alike,” says Dr. Chaplin. This is part of what distinguished the pub as a cultural center: it wasn’t simply a location for a night of drinking (as we might expect from bars in the U.S.), but a place where an entire family could comfortably gather and meet with their neighbors. While the idea of a toddler hanging out in a dive bar seems utterly bizarre from an American perspective, a family in a pub was a normal sight, and the comfortable home atmosphere contributes to that. This again helped to further finalize the image of the British pub as we know it today.
The Fate of the Pub
What then, became of the rowdy sawdust covered public bar?
But while people of varying economic classes would congregate at the pub, well-to-do folks didn’t necessarily want to mingle with the riff-raff...
"Gin Lane," 1751
William Hogarth
Hogarth created and distributed this print in an effort to highlight community concerns about excessive gin drinking, and drum up support for legislative measures aimed at curbing consumption.
Number of pubs in the U.K. as of 2015
50,800
CREATED WITH:
Learn more about Dr. Chaplin's research at patrickchaplin.com
Pub Carpet images by Nana KoeKoek
Image Credits:
RECORD HOLDING PUBS
SHORTEST NAME
OLDEST
LARGEST
The Nutshell
17 The Traverse, Bury Saint Edmunds IP33 1BJ, UK
Lakeside Inn
Marine Parade, Southport PR9 0HJ, UK
The Signal Box
Lakeside, Kings Rd, Cleethorpes DN35 0AH, UK
SMALLEST
Q Inn
3 Market St, Stalybridge SK15 2AL, UK
The Moon Under Water
68-74 Deansgate, Manchester M3 2FN, UK
Ye Olde Fighting Cocks
16 Abbey Mill Ln, St Albans AL3 4HE, UK
Ye Olde Trip To Jerusalem
1 Brewhouse Yard, Nottingham NG1 6AD, United Kingdom
The Bingley Arms
Church Ln, Bardsey LS17 9DN, UK
Smoking banned in all pubs in Britain.
2007
Pub owners band together on campaign to improve pub standards.
1920-1930
Middle class grows during the Victorian Age.
1850-1900
The "Gin Craze."
1700-1750
Henry VIII dissolves monasteries.
1536
Claimed foundation of the "Oldest Pub in Britain," The Bingley Arms.
905 A.D.
Romans build road network across Europe.
100 A.D.
Rudimentary beer brewing happening across the British Isles.
1500-500 BC
To understand why pubs have carpets, you have to look back at the role of the pub in English history...
Enter the Public House. While pubs had been popular prior to the Dissolution of the Monasteries, they really started to gain popularity shortly after. A 1577 survey in England found 16,000 alehouses, taverns, and inns—one for every 187 people in the country.
It was a country that loved a good night of drinking. In fact, things started to get a bit too rowdy at one point. Around the early 1700s, gin became the beverage of choice for many—and one with far more potency. So widespread was gin consumption during this period that it came to be known as the Gin Craze.
The higher alcohol content caused some obvious problems, and soon political and religious leaders were pressuring government officials to do something about the epidemic of public drunkenness. But they didn’t want alcohol banned altogether; on the contrary. Beer drinking at the time was viewed as a wholesome and healthy activity for the community—they just wanted the stronger stuff more controlled to reign in the debauchery seen in the streets. As a result, lawmakers took heed and passed a series of increasingly effective measures that served to further engrain a beer drinking pub culture.
Pubs began to offer a different room that offered a more refined drinking experience—the lounge bar, or saloon. While the public bar often featured bare wood seats, limited drafts, and a floor often covered in sawdust (to make for easy cleaning when drinks or other liquids often encountered in a night of drinking were spilled), the lounge bar was a more comfortable drinking setting. Lounge bars featured cushioned seats, booths with privacy walls, and carpet on the floors.
While one might get rowdy with the lads in the public bar after a few rounds, guests in the lounge were expected to behave in a more reserved fashion. This fact was reinforced simply through the atmosphere itself—the cushions and carpet provided a quieter, more homelike feel, and what self-respecting Englishman would stomp, yell, and create a mess in someone’s home?
“The behavioural expectations of somebody drinking in the saloon bar would be totally different, and the expectations of those customers would be totally different than the public bar,” explains Dr. Patrick Chaplin, a pub historian and man with an honest-to-God PhD in darts history.
Dr. Patrick Chaplin
Pub Historian
So while carpet may seem like a counterintuitive flooring decision in a bar, the area of the bar covered by carpet was not the place for a boisterous night out. As a result, the lounge area was far less likely than the public bar to suffer from spilt drinks or other messes, and it helped create an environment more desirable for those looking for a quiet drink.
If you were to design the perfect drinking establishment, I bet you would choose a floor that was easy to clean. Maybe concrete slab, or tile, or perhaps even a nice warm hardwood to give it that “homey” feel.
But I bet you wouldn’t pick carpet.
Carpet seems like a terrible choice for a bar. Hell, I don’t even like carpet in my apartment. Spill any liquid on there, and it’s stained. Let that liquid creep deep below the fibers, and you’ve got a mildew problem. It holds odors, it has to be vacuumed constantly, and it typically doesn’t last nearly as long as harder floor coverings. After all, there’s a reason why many restaurants opt for floor surfaces they can run a quickly mop over.
And yet, in spite of all that, the carpet has become a central design tennant of the prototypical British pub.
British pubs exude a certain design aesthetic that’s a bit hard to nail down. There’s not an agreed upon set of design standards that define a “British Pub,” but you certainly know when you’re in one. The design of the pub was guided more by circumstance than by any effort to achieve a certain look. While many other design trends were guided by creative leaders, the pub style was born through circumstance. The result of that topsy-turvy path is an atmosphere that you can’t really recreate—it just needs to happen organically.
Pubs have a long history in England—there’s a contentious debate amongst several who claim to be the oldest in the nation—dating back to the Middle Ages. Prior to the pub, people would often gather at monasteries, where monks traditionally brewed beer to serve to travelers and townspeople. However, Henry VIII dissolved monasteries in the United Kingdom starting in 1536 (so that he could divorce his wife), which meant people needed a new place to enjoy a beer and some conversation.
HAVE CARPET?
WHY DO PUBS Have Carpet?
by Andrew Littlefield
When it comes to flooring choices in a bar, carpet doesn't seem like a wise choice. But the patterned carpet has become a central piece of the British pub aesthetic.
How did that happen?
Fancy a Pub Game?
