Exploring Bognor’s pub heritage
Books After Brighton Pubs and
Chichester Pubs, Bognorbased David Muggleton turns his attention to his home town for his latest publication.
Bognor Regis Pubs has been released by Amberley Publishing. It should be followed at Christmas or early in the New Year by Worthing Pubs.
And no, it certainly doesn’t mean a pint at every venue, David is quick to point out. The research is of altogether a more serious kind.
David’s point is that pubs tell us so much about the society they serve, a real insight into social levels and social standings.
“I don’t begin by looking at the pubs,” explains David, who is a senior lecturer in the sociology of sport at the Chichester Institute of Sport at the University of Chichester.
“I begin by going to the library. I compile a spreadsheet of every single pub that I can find a record of. I will start looking at the oldest directory, and I will create a spreadsheet of every single entry I can find relating to a pub or beer retailer.”
If you are lucky, you can also draw on the licensing records: “Fortunately the ones for Bognor are fairly intact. I check them and then fill in the gaps where I can. It will even tell you what day the licence was revoked if it was closed, and then I look in the British newspaper archive. I put in keywords and I try to find scraps of information, and then I look at the more rarefied records and try to fill in any more gaps that I can.” And the aim?
“I want to get people to look at Bognor, not just at the history of the pubs, but the licensed premises. It is not just a potted history of the pubs.
“I want a wider narrative about licensing in particular. I want to introduce people to the history of licensing in their own town.
“I have lived in Bognor for 20 years and I have found out things about the town that I live in that I didn’t know before. And also I enjoy it!”
The point is that pubs and licensing are an opening into a town’s social history: “What I found was that the western part of Bognor was the fishing community.
“Most of the pubs in that area were the haunts of the fishermen. If you went into town, into the more salubrious establishments, it was different again.
“Your choice of pub was a reflection of your status – and also reflected the status of not just the customer, but also the licensee.”
Depending on the location, it might be reasonable to assume that the licensee was a freemason, for instance: “There was a big distinction between some pubs in the area and some others. What I find so interesting is that your pub gives you this status distinction.
“In the 1950s somebody running a pub could even be the mayor of your town. I have not found an example in Bognor, but I did in Chichester and I have already found an example in Worthing.”
Sadly, many, many pubs have disappeared in recent years, and there is no doubt of the decline, but Bognor perhaps fares rather better than some places.
“What I have found that is different to say Chichester or Brighton is that we have lost a lot of traditional pubs but that a lot of ex-guest houses have become what you might now call pubs.”
There have been losses, but there have been a handful of gains that you might not get elsewhere with the re-use of former guest houses and hotels, David says.
The book is published at £14.99; ISBN: 978-1-44568109-2.