Drink in Victorian Norwich Part II
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Drink in Victorian Norwich Part II Rob Donovan Chapter 3: Drinking places and their Victorian period and, if there was change, importance for what reasons. In order to understand the social as well A number of sources shed light on such as the economic importance of the drink- questions.1 Newspapers provide a vital ing place for the inhabitants of Victorian primary source and can help establish a Norwich, the historian needs to have an hierarchy of social importance for the understanding of the events and activi- drinking places of Norwich. It is clear from ties associated with these buildings. It is newspaper reports that throughout the obvious that the working class drank and Victorian period a few select inns are the met together in their public houses and venues for the dinners of various political, beerhouses, but other issues related to business and trade organizations at their leisure-time are less clear. How which members of the urban elite are in many drinking places also served food? attendance.2 Careful reading of other How important was musical entertain- items can provide glimpses into the social ment? How many women went out to world of the drinking places of the working drink? Which sporting activities took classes: the public houses and beerhous- place there? What other kinds of activity es that comprised the great majority of the may have taken place there - legal or ille- drinking places of Norwich. The reports of gal? How many drinking places also court proceedings - criminal, civil, and of served as brothels? What kinds of soci- the coroner - can offer insights into the eties and clubs were associated with games played, the music heard, the rela- drinking places? Not all such questions tions between the sexes, as well as the are easily answered - there are occasion- relations between drinkers and the police. al contemporary references to the provi- With respect to Victorian Norwich, the sion of food, for instance, but the extent pages of the Norfolk Chronicle, the of the practice remains problematic - but Eastern Daily Press and the Norwich they do all bring into focus the wider Mercury have been informative.3 issue of how the working class used their leisure time and raise the further question Working-class memoirs and diaries that of how far this use changed during the shed light on the social world of the drink- Brewery History Number 132 67 ing place would have provided valuable wrought iron and underneath them walls of evidence. In the absence of any discov- sinuously bending and elaborately engraved eries of these, I have nevertheless been glass were lit from the inside by an inner row fortunate in being able to use two early of blazing globes. secondary sources - Hawkins (1910) and Wicks (1925). Both provide evidence for Innumerable glass-paned doors swung open the social world of the public house in and shut to reveal the warmth and glitter the Victorian period, particularly in the inside: little secret sparkling private bars, big second half of the reign, but also, in the public bars with deal-lined walls and sawdust case of Wicks through his research for on the floors, or saloon bars rich with ferns, example on 'The Pleasure Gardens of carpets, mirrors, a glowing fire and a view Old Norwich', in the first half too.4 through to the billiard room and to distant fig- ures leaning out of the dark over the brilliant- A comparative perspective is also impor- ly lit tables.6 tant. Knowledge and understanding about the importance of the drinking Most drinking places in Norwich would place in other urban locations during the not have matched the opulence of their Victorian period helps provide a context London counterparts but a description of for the analysis of the social importance the vista along Norwich thoroughfares of the Norwich drinking places. Mark like St. Martins Street (Oak Street) and St. Girouard's study of Victorian pubs, Augustines Street in the north, and King focussed on London, offers conclusions Street, Ber Street and St. Stephens Street about their social importance in the capi- in the south, would have been similar in tal and is of particular value.5 At the end essentials.7 Engraved glass, decorated of the Victorian period, most of London's plasterwork, and the bold pub sign and working population still walked to and advertisements for the brews and spirits from work, often several miles a day, along on sale inside are all evident in surviving such main thoroughfares as Bishopsgate, photographs, and the game of billiards Shoreditch and the Mile End, Bethnal was an essential part of Victorian pub life Green, Tottenham Court and Old Kent in Norwich too.8 These Norwich drinking roads which were 'studded and in places houses were offering access to a world of crowded with pubs' whose function was solace and comfort far removed from the to provide drink and comfort for weary still unsanitary and crowded conditions of workers. Girouard's description of such a much working-class accommodation at vista is both scholarly and evocative: the end of the Victorian period. As the street lights dimly lit up in the twilight Girouard acknowledged the importance the pubs lit up far more brightly; long rows of of the London pubs not just for travellers monstrous lanterns stretched out into the but also for residents who would become street on curling and caparisoned tentacles of 'regulars' at their 'local': 68 Journal of the Brewery History Society The pubs on the main thoroughfares usually auctions were held in them. In spite of bitter had a residential hinterland behind them opposition from Lord Shaftesbury and others, which they served as well; residential areas wages were still often paid out in pubs: work- had their quieter and smaller neighbourhood men went there to pick up jobs or read the pubs … Markets, barracks, the docks, newspapers and tradesmen to change business and commercial areas … produced banknotes. Most pubs let rooms or took their own drinking pattern in the surrounding lodgers, often on a sufficient scale to justify area.9 their calling themselves hotels.11 The pattern of drinking places in Norwich As in London, so too in Norwich - sport, was similar to that of the capital. There entertainment, societies, inquests, letting was, for instance, a greater density of of rooms to lodgers: all these played their public houses on the main thoroughfares part in Norwich pub life. However, before and around the markets, and around the continuing with the analysis of Norwich Pockthorpe barracks and the docks area drinking places, a study of pubs and to the south. Sales and profits could be beerhouses in two other urban locations significantly higher in some of these pubs with some points of similarity in terms of - as for instance at the 'Queen Caroline' density of drinking places and size of in St. Martin Oak, the 'Light Horseman' in population will help widen still further the Pockthorpe, and the 'Clarence Harbour' comparative framework and demonstrate in Thorpe.10 the degree to which the social importance of the drinking place for the working Despite the introduction of Sunday morn- classes was universal. Bradford in the ing closing in 1839, and the further cur- industrial north of England had around tailment of opening hours in 1864, 1872 600 drinking places at its peak in the late and 1874, London pubs were still open 1860s serving a population of 140,000; for fourteen and a half hours from Portsmouth on the south coast had near- Monday to Saturday and for seven hours ly 900 public houses and beerhouses in on Sunday at the end of the Victorian the late 1860s serving a population of period. As Girouard pointed out, these around 118,000. Norwich at this time had long opening hours were one reason for a smaller population of nearly 80,000 and their intensive use by the Victorian work- around 675 drinking places.12 ing class at a time when many alternative attractions and meeting places now taken In Bradford, Paul Jennings has shown for granted were not then in existence: how the public house functioned as an informal information exchange for the Pubs were local centres for sport and enter- various trades as well as a source of tainment and for dissemination of information, more general news because of the news- as well as meeting places for innumerable papers kept there.13 As elsewhere, public local groups and societies. Inquests and houses were also used by working men Brewery History Number 132 69 70 Parish Public Barrels Gallons Parish Public Barrels Gallons House of Beer of Spirit House of Beer of Spirit North of the river Pockthorpe Light Horseman 322 63 St. Martin Oak Queen Caroline 329 77 Dun Cow 282 42 Little Buck 149 27 Robin Hood 180 20 Keys Castle 122 26 Anchor 171 60 Dun Cow 121 42 Griffin 151 24 Kings Arms 117 30 Journal of the Brewery History Society Bird in Hand 143 15 Royal Oak 115 15 Horse Barracks 131 61 Flower Pot 70 7 Windsor Castle 118 31 St. Augustine Green Hills 211 57 Cellar House 105 149 Rose 193 33 St. Paul Leopard 145 42 Royal Oak 99 40 Cross Keys 111 40 Shuttles 83 15 Bull 84 9 Boatswain Call 79 5 Cat & Fiddle 83 72 Bushell 70 9 Jolly Maltsters 56 16 St. George Kings Head 103 11 St. James Kings Head 154 24 Colegate Fortune of War 61 4 Black Chequers 99 31 St. Edmund Yarn Factory 226 25 Centre and West St. Peter Mancroft Half Moon 181 71 Heigham Denmark Arms 317 118 Black Prince 177 27 Dolphin 264 53 Waterloo Tavern 143 132 Mancroft 247 178 Free Trade 105 24 Orchard 234 30 Kings Arms 104 83 Belle Vue 194 49 Club House Tavern 102 77 Duke of Connaught 179 26 Theatre Stores 90 66 Gardeners Arms 138 51 Popes Head 63 40 Distillery 99 53 Coachmakers Arms 58 25 St.