Our love affair with the traditional alehouses, Teesdale Mercury

WE hear almost every week that a few more public houses are closing their doors. It used to be said that a village wasn’t complete without its pub, church, school and store. 

These days villages count themselves lucky if they have just one of these four basic essentials. They all have a very long history but I wonder if people realise just how far back in time is our love affair with alcohol – or more specifically with beer. 

Technically though it wasn’t beer in the beginning, it was ale. Ale is made from barley and beer has hops in it as well and hops only came on the scene about 1400. Barley has been around a lot longer than that.

It could be that barley was cultivated as a separate cereal crop right back in the Iron Age. And many places that were given their names by the Anglo-Saxon settlers in our area included the word barley. Some of these names are still there in settlement names such as Barwick, Berwick and Barforth. Later documents from the Middle Ages show just how much ale was part of everyday life. People drank ale with their meals, when they were celebrating and at funerals. Most villages had at least one alehouse and villagers met there to drink and gossip. 

Interestingly, brewing the ale was usually the responsibility of women – often widows. Do you think that it was women who first cultivated the barley while their men-folk were away hunting or later away herding their animals? Inevitably, as time went on, the whole question of brewing and supplying ale began to be hedged round with rules and regulations. Measures of ale were standardised at the time of Magna Carta in 1215 and the price of ale was fixed from 1267.

One of the commonest reasons for women to find themselves in court was because they had sold too much or too little ale – had charged under or over the regulation price – hadn’t used the correct measures or had simply failed to acquire a licence. 

Drinking ale was always part of village funerals. Especially before the Reformation people left money to pay for beer to be drunk after the service. This ensured that lots of villagers would attend the funeral and hopefully would pray for the soul of the dead person. Some people even went as far as to provide for ale to be supplied on the first anniversary of their burial – as long as people attended church first.

Ale-houses were really just ordinary village houses that were licensed tor the sale of ale. They were very different establishments from the inns and hostelries that were also part of our nation’s life for much of our history. In the years following the Norman Conquest travellers stayed at monasteries that were obliged by their rule to give hospitality to all comers – whether friend or foe. Sometimes the monasteries were given grants to set up ‘hospitals’ – places where hospitality was given – on major routeways. This was the origin of ‘Spittle on Stainmore’ set up by the nuns of Marrick Priory to assist people crossing the country using the Stainmore Pass.

It was the monasteries that also provided chapels built on bridges. These also provided ‘bed and board’ to anyone crossing the rivers. 

By the time of the Reformation many inns were established that weren’t provided by the monasteries. 

And as coach travel became more common in the 17th and 18th centuries more and more inns were set up to support the travellers. These coaching inns weren’t simply drinking places. They provided stables for the coachmen’s horses and livery where extra horses could be kept. The mail coaches of the 18th and 19th centuries travelled much faster than the stage-coaches and consequently horses became tired and were changed for others en route. Many of these coaching inns still survive and can be seen along the main routeways. Along the A66 for instance there are old inns starting with the Scotch Corner and including The Fox, The Unicorn at Bowes and the Inn at Greta Bridge.

Coaching inns must have been vibrant and noisy places. They served the same purpose that a motel and a garage do today but were much more important. The inns were the places people went to for news from far away. They were the meeting places of the time. In the inns all sorts of people mixed together and they enabled people of our area to connect with the outside world.

In our market towns, there were similar establishments to the coaching inns. These ale-houses grew up to serve people coming into the town on market days and for the annual fairs. Like the coaching inns these were not entirely drinking establishments – although a great deal of drinking went on at some. There are lots of these old inns in Barnard Castle. Some of these still display the special licences they were given for market days when opening times were much extended.

These public drinking places – ‘public house’ is quite a modern term – were places where town met country. Deals were settled there, friendships were made and broken and the world was put to rights – just like pubs today really. However inns and hotels and pubs of our own time are shadows of their former selves. In the past they were an essential part of our community. Why aren’t they as popular today? Have we all retreated into our own houses and shut the door? That’s sad if it’s true.