Like a pint of history, please!
Nigel Callaghan reveals what he’s discovered while researching the lively history of Welsh pubs in Ceredigion
Did you hear the one about the Victorian pub landlord who got into a fight with a man who used his own wooden leg as a weapon? I only heard this tale when I was researching the history of the pubs of Ceredigion (formerly Cardiganshire) in west Wales. It’s one of dozens of stories discovered by members of Ceredigion Local History Forum as part of the A Pint of History Please project. This project, supported by Archives and Records Council Wales (ARCW) and funded by the Heritage Lottery Fund as part of a wider project, aims to discover the histories of the pubs that have existed in Ceredigion, and publish the information online. And not just the pubs – the inns, hotels, drinking dens and railway refreshment rooms as well – and, to add balance, the temperance hotels which prohibited alcohol, plus cocoa and coffee taverns. The culture of the chapel and temperance was strong in this area.
Heart of the community
Cynics have suggested that the whole project is just an excuse for a massive pub-crawl. Totally untrue, of course, although I admit that a few pubs have been entered during the last few years. The project started as a result of wanting to find out more about the historic role of the pub in the community, in particular in rural areas. Today, a pub is somewhere for both food and drink. However, 50 years ago there often wasn’t much food on offer beyond a stale pork pie and a pickled egg. But go back even further – a hundred years or so – and pubs were the centre of village life. Where were public activities held? There were few ‘village halls’ as we think of them today: in fact, in Ceredigion most of the village halls were built as memorials after the First World War. Churches and chapels were hardly suitable venues, so the ‘public house’ was the logical location for many public events. Auctions were held there, the petty sessions courts met there, inquests (often complete with the deceased) were held in them, tenants paid their rent in the pub (and usually had a slap-up feast afterwards, paid for by the landlord). And interestingly, many of these activities subsequently happened in some of the larger temperance hotels.
Trying to build a picture of the history of a pub is like piecing together a large jigsaw. We’re interested in finding out when it opened (and closed), who lived there, where it was, as well as what went on there and who used it. We have examined a wide variety of sources, online and in archives, old and modern, to try and discover the history of each of the establishments – nearly 1,000 so far. Although there were never more than about 450 drinking establishments open at any one time, the chief constable and many of the more respectable residents weren’t happy with that number – some market towns had one pub for every 100 inhabitants! Often it’s a bit of a Sherlock Holmes problem – finding a house on a modern map called Black Lion Cottage suggests that at some point there was an actual Black Lion Inn, so it’s time to work back through the census returns. Thankfully, many of these can now be searched online, but this can be a mixed blessing. The transcriptions used for the searches are sometimes unreliable, particularly for names of Welsh places and people, and frequently no hits are found when you know they are there. It’s important to remember that absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. Sometimes the only answer is to view census images one by one.
On the pub trail
Large online digitised collections like the censuses have transformed local and family history research. We’ve made extensive use of the Welsh Newspapers Online website from the National Library of Wales, which includes most Welsh newspapers from 1804 to 1919. A similar collection of 19th century English newspapers is also available on subscription, but you may be able to access it via your local library or county archive service. Newspapers are a mine of information about people, places and events – particularly landlords in court for selling outside legal hours and their customers being drunk and disorderly. Licence transfers and renewals are often listed as well. But beware – skill is needed when searching (and a certain
Trying to build a picture of the history of a pub, is like piecing together a large jigsaw
level of imagination). The OCR software used by all these systems is less than perfect when dealing with small, old newspaper print. Searching for the name of the pub and village will only find some of the references, but once those have revealed some information, then additional searches using that information – perhaps the name of the landlord – may reveal more. The location may also be reported differently – the name of a village instead of the name of the parish. In addition, spellings of names may have changed, so you need to search for the variations – Aberaeron (modern spelling) and Aberayron (older spelling). Pub names varied – the Eagle was also the Spread Eagle – and pubs could change their name completely. Occasionally court reports can lead you on a wild goose chase – I found a single reference to a Llanmor Arms – but the 19th century reporter had misheard and it was actually the Llanvaughan Arms. It can be a slow job, but very rewarding.
We’ve made considerable use of court records, where they survive. These are usually in County Record Offices or The National Archives. Applicants for ‘ full’ licences had to renew them annually, but many establishments were technically ‘ beer-houses’, who used a simpler system and didn’t have to go to the magistrates each year, so are harder to track down. Contemporary reports also suggested that there was a lot of unlicensed drinking in ‘shebeens’, but we only spot them when the owner is hauled up before the beak. And of course a lot of things that happened in pubs often ended up in the courts, particularly breaches of licence conditions (drinking after hours) and the effects of too much alcohol. As well as the official records (sometimes missing) there are regular reports in the local papers, which often give a more complete picture than simple official records. Through the reporters, we hear the words of the people in court, defendants and witnesses, and learn about the reasons for their actions, as well as details of who the landlord was, who some of the customers were, and perhaps hints about the location of a building.
Maps have played a big part in the work. A Pint of History Please actually started as a local project connected to a Wales-wide project: Cynefin: Tithe Maps of Wales, which has resulted in the repair and digitisation of around 1,200 tithe maps from all over Wales. Tithe maps produced as a result of the 1836 Tithe Commutation Act date from the 1840s (nearly 50 years before the first 6-inch OS maps) and often show inns. The 6-inch and 25-inch OS maps which start in the late 1880s (in thisarea) are invaluable, although they often just show ‘PH’ rather thanthe name and many smaller premises aren’t shown. So further detective work is needed. As an example, one court report relating to the “Wooden House Inn” near Aberystwyth (actually a two-room shack selling beer) had the police constable mention “I was on duty near the bridge when I saw…” which meant working out which bridge he meant – luckily there was only one candidate. The clincher was evidence that the building was washed away in the Great Floods of 1870 and 1880! The latest satellite imagery and modern maps also play a big part. Sometimes we’ll be fortunate and get an actual address for a pub or hotel (pubs in Welsh villages even today frequently don’t have street names or house numbers, just a
Contemporary reports also suggested that there was a lot of unlicensed drinking in ‘shebeens’
name) – advertisements in newspapers can be a very useful source for that. We then use the Ceredigion County Council website which has a wonderful interactive mapping system which lets you search for individual addresses and shows house numbers. I’m sure most councils offer a similar service.
“All human life”
One of the biggest problems with the project has been getting side-tracked. Old newspapers are fascinating, and looking up one article will frequently lead you off in a completely different direction, and the article next to it on the page may shed new light on another project that you’re working on. It helps to be very methodical and make lots of notes of what you were doing when your attention wandered off. The old News
of the World claimed: “all human life is there”. That’s very true when going through old newspapers; we find people being born in pubs, and others dying – and it’s the spectacular deaths by suicide, murder or tragic accidents that make it into the papers. There are tales of happy events – wedding parties – and of inquests and marital strife. There are stories that we find amusing (like our wooden-legged combatant) and others that can still surprise and shock today, possibly more so than at the time. Six weeks’ hard labour for a barmaid for stealing a scarf?
The memories of people alive today can take us back a very long way. I found a report of an elderly woman who had frozen to death a few hundred yards from the house I now occupy after leaving the pub on a cold January night in 1905. I mentioned it to a neighbour who said: “Oh yes, that was Gracie Tins.” But my neighbour wasn’t born until 40-odd years after Gracie’s death, so her story was still in the local memory after all that time and was still being passed down to the youngsters. Now I’m telling the stories to today’s children. Oral history has similar potential in every town and village in the country; I can only urge everyone interested in their local history to start talking to the older people in their community and record their memories of pubs, shops and people before it’s too late.