News

News feeds |

Photo Studio

Awash with beer

With its strong historical associations with the brewing trade Newark once sported an impressive array of public houses served by locally produced beers from the likes of James Holes Castle Brewery Warwicks and Richardsons on Northgate or William Davy's Devon Brewery on Barnbygate.

In the 1870s Newark boasted about 90 pubs giving a ratio of about one to every 130 inhabitants.

Today that ratio has dropped to something like 1:850 and with the reduction in the number of drinking establishments (to 29) there has come a reduction in choice.

In the 19th Century for instance the would-be tippler in Newark not only had the choice of traditionally licensed public houses and hotels but also an additional tier of establishments in the form of the now long forgotten beerhouses.

Strange as it may seem today beerhouses were actually created by an Act of Parliament which in part was aimed at reducing the amount of public drunkenness.

Public drunkenness it was said was in large measure due to a reduction in the duty on gin and the consequent rise in the number of (often unlicensed) gin palaces.

These brash loud establishments so memorably described by Charles Dickens in his Sketches by Boz (published 1835-6) were popularly held to be unbridled dens of immorality and crime and the source of much ill-health and alcoholism among the working classes.

It was a provision within the 1830 Beer Act therefore which brought into being an entirely new tier of drinking establishment - the beerhouse - which being licensed only for six days a week (i.e. not Sundays) for the sale only of beer and cider (not wine and spirits) was considered by some concerned parties as being of assistance towards helping entice the populace away from its excessive consumption of gin.

Beer it should be remembered was at this time very much an everyday drink - even children drank so called small beer - and it was seen by those agitators among the evangelicals and temperance movements as very much a secondary evil.

Any conviction that the introduction of beerhouses might actually lead to a reduction in alcohol consumption however would appear to have been somewhat ill-founded.

During the first year after the 1830 Act came into force more than 24 0 beerhouses opened their doors across the country with by 1835 the figure rising to around 40 0 Legislation was such that almost any householder on payment of two guineas could apply to the local magistrates for a licence to sell beer on his premises - a situation which led according to W. Howitt in his book The Rural Life of England (published 1840) to early beerhouses acquiring the same kind of reputation as the gin palaces before them: "kept by people without capital often without character" as Howitt put it. In Newark by 1832 - just two years after the Beer Act came into force - the town had acquired no fewer than 23 beerhouses (as compared with 53 fully licensed pubs) only nine short of the eventual highest total of 32 in 1872.

Virtually every town centre street possessed at least two beerhouses while even outlying residential streets were not immune: Portland Street had as many as three Pelham and Guildhall Street had two apiece and even King Street and Chatham Street acquired one each.

Topical names for the new beerhouses abounded as landlords often dispensed with traditional pub names in an effort to reflect the mood of the times.

Thus in Newark one beerhouse on Eldon Street was named The Crystal Place (capturing the public interest in Prince Albert's Great Exhibition in London in 1851) while beerhouses on Albion Street and Parliament Street advertised their political allegiances in the years after 1830 by naming themselves The Blue Sergeant and Wilde's Arms - both references to Sergeant Thomas Wilde one time Liberal candidate and subsequently an MP for Newark between 1835 and 1840.

Although beerhouses became a distinct and well loved facet of town life the aim of many of their keepers was to upgrade their establishments to the status of a fully licensed public house able to sell not only beer but wines and spirits as well. Many of today's town pubs began life as beerhouses among which may be mentioned the Vine Hotel on Barnbygate which originated as a beerhouse called The Carpenter's Arms. It obtained its full licence in 1879 changing its name to the Vine sometime around 1889.

The Maltshovel on Northgate meanwhile shares a similar origin although it opted not to alter its name on becoming a fully licensed public house in 1947.

As more and more full licences were awarded the number of beerhouses began to fall until by early 1953 there were just two left - the Newcastle Arms on Appletongate and the Robin Hood and Little John at No. 1 Lincoln Street.

The Newcastle Arms - still trading in Appletongate today - was formerly known as The Leather Bottle recalling the time when glass was generally too expensive to be used for making beer bottles.

It is recorded as operating in the town as far back as 1841 and by 1866 had taken its present name of the Newcastle Arms.

In February 1953 the borough licensing sessions granted an application from its keeper Charles Alfred Johnson to turn it into a full public house.

This left only one true beerhouse still trading in the town - the Robin Hood and Little John on Lincoln Street. The earliest reference to this beerhouse which can be found is in a local trade directory for 1864 when its keeper is listed as William Eccleston.

It continued as a beerhouse until February 1962 when the borough licensing records reveal that landlord Charles Richard Groom applied for and was granted a full licence for the sale of wines beers and spirits.

Beerhouses had been a feature of town life in Newark for more than 130 years but with the conversion of the Robin Hood and Little John to a fully licensed public house all that came to an end.

The Robin Hood and Little John continued as a pub until December 1974 when it was sold with the licence not being renewed.

The name however lives on with the building now being run as the Robin Hood and Little John Hotel where the owners are to be congratulated on preserving a name which connects so directly with this interesting chapter in Newark's social heritage.

<Back/a>