Pub crawl: the cultural, social and built heritage of the London pub

There is nothing quite so intoxicating as British pub culture. In a country of stunted stoicism, the swirling carpets of Britain’s pubs are a sponge for spilt lager and secrets; the stiff upper lip only softened by that one last round before closing. When I am at my most rose-tinted tipsy, memories of wasted nights of open-mouthed laughing over sticky tables, chairs screeching across floors, beer splashed across billiard tables, seem to make Britain feel welcoming when it is at its most hostile. The pub door is open; windows steamed with the breath of familiar voices, a friend waiting to make space on the sofa. The interior of the pub breaks down the partitions between social and solitary: Ian Nairn described the pub as a place ‘to shake off loneliness without being in anyone’s company’. The most unfamiliar towns will still have an oak-panelled booth to take refuge in.

Nairn’s refuge in the pub was a tragic one. His love affair with it ended in 1983 when he died of cirrhosis of the liver and chronic alcoholism. A microcosm of British culture, the pub is equal parts abject and beguiling. Architects and theorists alike have sought to find what it is, other than punters, that props up the bars of Britain’s pubs. The AR’s obsession is long running: beneath its former offices at Queen Anne’s Gate, it had its own pub, The Bride of Denmark. Then proprietor (of the AR and The Bride), Hubert de Cronin Hastings, filled its basement with architectural gossip and an assemblage of artefacts gathered from the bombed-out remains of London’s pubs, in the fear that after the Second World War, the pub would disappear. It became a place where ‘you could have heard all the best architectural arguments and scurrilous gossip, seen all the most interesting people and witnessed countless extraordinary occasions’ (AR May 1996).

The AR's own pub, The Bride of Denmark

All pubs are constructed of stories. Public House: A Cultural and Social History of the London Pub, published by Open City last month, brings together these stories and the meanings they have brought to people and communities. The book retells tales of famous pubs and documents stories of the lesser known. It combines a gambol through short histories of more than 120 of the capital’s watering holes, with more vital narratives that speak of the urgency with which we should protect the humble London pub. These take the form of 15 accompanying essays, which take us through the vast and various meanings that pubs hold for so many. Essays such as Bob Stanley’s tell us of the essential role that the pub function room has in fostering new and independent music and the numerous musicians we would not have without them. Lily Waite’s personal essay about the role pubs play as ‘a playground for gender exploration and expression’ tracks the importance of the pub as a queer space, those which are now under threat, and the function the pub has had both in understanding gender variance, and trans liberation. The stories and essays are arranged chronologically, not by opening date, but by the date of a significant story in the life of the pub. The tales take you on a pub crawl across boroughs and rivers, through city streets and suburban lanes, to all ends of London, meandering through topics like a ‘good pub conversation’. This rambling nature of the book adds to a feeling of it being something that can be picked up and put down again; a rollick through the myths and legends of the London pub and the culture that builds it. However, this disjointed nature can leave the reader wondering why each pub was chosen, and with so many of these London institutions to choose from, why others were omitted.

Edited by David Knight and Cristina Monteiro of architecture and planning practice DK-CM, the book celebrates the architecture and the function of the pub: ‘the practices, codes, behaviours, memories, customs and stories that are today very easily swept away’. In the pub, Knight and Monteiro find lessons that extend to their practice as designers and educators: lessons which they began to explore 10 years ago at Kingston University School of Art when students and tutors looked to London pubs to document them. Their students were able to understand the generous, welcoming space of the pub, in a city that is becoming ever more unsympathetic, as the forces of development roll through its streets, and force pub closures in their way. Knight and Monteiro found teachings for their own practice: ‘the importance of places that allow for divergent thinking and for breaking out of siloed echo chambers; how spaces can thrive through a collective sense of ownership; how to make buildings that age well and allow for adaptation; the value of places which combine a sense of publicness with a sense of homeliness’. Fittingly, the book is published by Open City, a charity committed to an open and equal London.

Though the pub may seem an important cultural mainstay on the streets of London, a bastion of identity between the culture wars, individual establishments are losing their grip on the city. Mayor of London Sadiq Khan opens Public House with a call to readers to support London’s pubs and ensure their survival, for ‘life in London will be all the richer if we can preserve our precious pubs for generations to come’. Each time a pub closes, the city ispoorer for it. But the city is already becoming poorer every day. These establishments are supported by low-paid service jobs and as the forces of capitalist development take a wrecking ball to London’s communities, how can this be sustained? Rising rents, inflation and rampant growth have the capital’s service industry, and with it, its pubs, in a headlock, whose grip punters alone cannot loosen. Later in the book, Jonathan Moses explores how pubs can be distanced from the markets that rule them. In 2013, a community in Tottenham launched a fundraising campaign to buy The Antwerp Arms, as development in the area threatened its closure. Two years later, the pub was bought by the Antwerp Arms Association. Already a symbol of community and conviviality, the pub was better able to serve its neighbours. Moses writes of the community pub: ‘This is a space which is readily adaptable – not to economic maximisation, but to differences of need: a cosy bar for a quiet weekday chat one day, a makeshift canteen the next.’

Despite their importance to the fabric of the city, pubs have long represented social divisions as much as cohesion. Screens and dividers were often used to separate customers by class and social standing. In a conversation between tutors from the Kingston University School of Art in the book, Knight describes how this ‘elaborate game of balance between being together and being separate’ plays out architecturally. The conversation skips and leaps through architectural theory, the spatiality of layers of rooms and bars, and how the body is situated within this. They discuss the specific planning regulations that rule the future of many establishments: an anecdote of Knight’s explains the importance of the upstairs function room to a community, and the difficulties in explaining this in London boroughs already squeezed for space to house and care for its residents. Among the architectural and urban narratives are spun stories of the tutors’ own locals and memorable boozers. Timothy Smith recalls a pub that he worked in with three separate bars, for different regulars: ‘The Public Bar had vinyl floor, televisions and dartboards. The Victoria Bar had thick carpet and a cosy fire. And the Essex Bar had fruit machines and kids.’ Monteiro reminisced on the refurbishment of The Fitzroy Tavern and the loss of its scruffy edges: ‘There should be a rule that you can do anything to a pub so long as you don’t gloss varnish it or have white lights above a particular lux level!’

‘Rising rents, inflation and rampant growth has the capital’s service industry, and with it, its pubs, in a head lock, whose grip punters alone cannot loosen’

Beyond the most sentimental tales of pubs that provide a warm nook to shelter in against the cold edge of the city, the pub as a space for community togetherness and action is essential. In a city where public space is being eroded, privatised and enclosed, the pub remains a space for discussions and arguments that are far from trivial. Laura C. Forster writes: ‘Pub politics wasn’t just idle talk – the public house was a place to enact radical visions for the future: it was civic life in microcosm.’ Public House brings together all that is fundamental to the British pastime of a visit to the pub and the people, place and movements that have shaped it. Inebriating us on individual and shared histories, the accounts of community, craft, architecture, queer history, sport, music and politics make clear the vital role pubs have played in the formation of London and the force with which we should protect them.