Forward to the past

I recently saw an interesting report that young drinkers have started to rediscover the delights of traditional pubs. I have to say I see very little evidence of this happening from my own experience, but if it’s being reported there must be some truth in it, and it’s happening in London, which always plays to different rules from the rest of the country when it comes to pubs. And it’s not just pubs in old buildings, it’s what are often disparagingly referred to as “old man pubs”.

You know the place: crown glass windows, button-back banquettes, patterned carpets curling at the edges. A flyer boasting about the Premier League football coverage. Five pints on tap, three of them ales. No food, save for scampi fries, pork scratchings and something indeterminate pickled.

And this is presented as a reaction to the “industrial chic” brewery tap look:

McIntosh cites it as a reaction to the “millennial” aesthetic that took over bars and pubs in the 2010s. “[Those] stripped-back bars with exposed brickwork and industrial lighting. Very moodily lit but ultimately quite boring,” he says. “Where these pubs are a bit more maximal, they’re more interesting — you’re transported back to another time.”

One of the key motivations behind the rise of CAMRA was a rejection of the modernising, rationalising spirit of the 1960s in favour of a much greater emphasis on tradition and individuality. This was mirrored in other trends of the 1970s such as Small is Beautiful, The Good Life and the rising interest in railway and canal preservation.

It was certainly the case when I was a “young drinker” that many of us would make a conscious effort to seek out the less prominent pubs that were unspoilt, quirky and characterful. These pubs often had better and cheaper beer too. For example, we would travel out from university in Birmingham to the Black Country, where unknown beers from breweries such as Batham’s, Holdens and Simpkiss could be found. But it wasn’t just the beer, it was the pubs and their atmosphere too. I blogged about this back in 2009:

It was a journey of discovery – we would find grotty pubs, snooty pubs, dull but welcoming pubs, interesting but unwelcoming pubs, and plenty of pubs of genuine character that we would return to again and again. We knew we had to be respectful to the locals and regulars, so we moderated our behaviour accordingly. One pub in particular, hidden away up a rural cul-de-sac, with two tiny rooms, a quarry-tiled floor and beer straight from the cask, really sticks in the memory. It isn’t like that now, of course.

Back in those days, many people would specifically go to visit particular “character pubs” on the grounds that they were quaint and unspoilt. It was a key part of their appeal. In 1989, Nick and Charlie Hurt wrote a book called In Search of the Perfect Pub, in which they said of the extremely unspoilt Barley Mow at Church Ireton in Derbyshire that it:

“is often packed with young people from the nearby cities of Derby and Nottingham, where most of the pubs are now amusement arcades. They learn how to play dominoes, love the beer and the atmosphere, and revel in the quiet simplicity to be found here.”

I suspect this was significantly reduced by 1989 compared with ten years previously, and now it won’t happen at all.

The general climate began to change in the 1980s, with the growth of the “yuppie” culture and the brief rise of the “fun pub”. And this trend has continued in subsequent years, with the modern craft beer movement being characterised by modernity, innovation and iconoclasm. Tradition is very much left behind.

The kind of pub we are considering may variously be described as “old man pubs”, “traditional pubs”, “proper pubs” or whatever, and these categories, while overlapping, may be defined slightly differently. But, by and large, you know one when you see one. However, even if you want to go to an “old man pub”, they can be increasingly hard to find.

The past forty or so years have seen a steady attrition in their numbers. There has been a dramatic reduction in inner-urban areas, with the smaller pubs that have received less investment often being the first to go. This has spread to the fringes of town and city centres. In more rural areas, again many have closed, and those that remain have often been converted to a food-dominated formula where anyone who just wants a drink and a chat is made to feel out of place.

The simple fact of being located in a old building retaining much of its original layout and fittings does not necessarily mean that a pub qualifies. An “old man pub” can serve straightforward food, but if most of its customers are there to eat expensive, elaborate meals then it fails the test. The same is true if it has turned itself into a self-conscious beer exhibition with ten cask lines and six craft kegs. And, even if most of its customers are old men, no modern micropub is truly an “old man pub”. *

Another thorny issue is that of TV sport. Sport on pay-TV has revolutionised the pub scene over the past thirty years, and there are now relatively few wet-led pubs that don’t have it. To insist that no “old man pub” can have TV sport is greatly restricting the category. It’s more a question of how the sport is managed – whether it’s in every room, and whether the volume is turned off except for big events. It should still be possible to chew the fat over a few drinks. Holt’s brewery rather fall down on this, as they own many pubs that are very traditional in their general appearance and layout, but have an enormous screen in every room.

Of course there is one pub operator where the vast majority of their pubs fall into this category, when they are actually open, namely Samuel Smith’s. But their rigid policy of no mobile devices may deter younger customers, although I understand that it isn’t as strictly enforced in London as it is in the North.

As I said in the introduction, I have seen very little evidence personally of younger drinkers seeking out traditional pubs again. Some people on Twitter did suggest, though, that it was starting to happen in Liverpool and Manchester. The Peveril of the Peak in Manchester was given as an example, of a pub of highly traditional physical appearance that attracts customers of all ages. But I don’t think they’ve spread to the Hare & Hounds yet.

Many social trends turn full circle in the end, although it isn’t a given. There does seem to be a growing feeling that making everything automatic and digital has gone too far. I remember a few years back in the break between Christmas and New Year being heartened by the sight of a group of what I assumed were university students meeting up and enjoying a few drinks and a chat in a traditional multi-roomed pub in an urban fringe location. That’s the kind of thing that pubs should be about. But that particular pub has now become entirely dominated by dining, so that social meeting would not be possible any more.

* For the avoidance of doubt, I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with other categories of pubs. But they’re not “old man pubs”.