THE NEW INN AND ITS POSSIBILITIES
Whatever developments may be in store in the future will depend almost
entirely as to how far the licensing authorities and the various bodies
formed for the purpose of furthering the cause of temperance, to say
nothing of trade protection societies, can sink their differences and come
to some sort of understanding as to the best type of inn for public
convenience. Some temperance reformers have dreamt of a land without
public-houses, and even to-day it is not at all uncommon to hear a
lecturer in his enthusiasm for the cause of total abstinence express the
wish that every drop of intoxicating liquor in the country could be run
into the sewers to-morrow, and every public-house at the same time have
its shutters put up. Of course such a dream is impossible of fulfilment,
and by far the bulk of English people are heartily glad it is so. On the
other hand, there is a small body of opinion which thinks that
public-house licences should be dispensed with altogether, that anybody
should be permitted to sell intoxicating spirits if he thinks fit, and
that the removal of restriction would tend towards temperance. This also
is a condition of things which is not in the range of practical politics.
What, however, does seem a hopeful possibility is that a middle course
should become more generally accepted in the direction of improvement of
public-houses and their conduct, not for the sake of “the trade” on the
one hand, nor for the temperance societies on the other, but for the
benefit of the public. On the whole, the number of people, even in the
temperance ranks, who look upon the public-house as of the devil, to be
destroyed wherever possible, is very small, and it is also fair to say
that among publicans the attitude of mind which regards the possession of
a licence as merely permission to sell as much intoxicating liquor as
possible is becoming rarer every day. The trade has been forced, not
without some grumbling, to recognize tea as a form of liquid refreshment
which may legitimately be called for by the traveller; and although there
are still, in out of the way country districts, wayside inns where the
kettle never seems to boil, and, according to the veracious landlord, no
fire is ever kept up in the afternoon, it is usually easy to obtain tea on
demand in most licensed houses. What has led to this no doubt is the
discovery that tea may be provided at a profit.
Of late years traffic on the turnpike road has become thicker and thicker.
But the travellers of to-day are not those of a hundred or even fifty
years ago, any more than they are the pilgrims of the thirteenth century.
No use offering them strong ale for breakfast or rum punch at every halt.
As well might one hawk the metal charms which found such ready sale seven
hundred years ago on the great roads to holy shrines. The modern pilgrim
comes on motor-car and bicycle and the relic of his trip is the nimble
picture postcard. Of course, one must not forget that the country inn is
not entirely kept up as a convenience to travellers. It must minister
besides to the permanent residents of the neighbourhood. The regular
customer must be studied, and he has the comforts of home near by. He does
not appear to want them in the bar of the _Blue Lion_ or _George the
Fourth_. Sufficient for him if he find civility and an opportunity of
discussing a tankard of ale and a pipe in company with his friends. But
for all that, travellers continue to increase and the faster they go the
quicker they come.
A motorist or cyclist thinks nothing of an extra mile or two in search of
good cheer. This is a point which may well be commended to landlords of
inns which are not in the direct line of traffic. The number of people,
too, who take a positive pleasure in going out of their way to search for
unfrequented hostelries is on the increase. Motor-cars have to a great
extent driven cyclists on to the by-roads, and in planning a tour the
rider of the humbler machine will take any amount of trouble to avoid main
roads in his anxiety to avoid dust and obtain peace and quietness. This
tends to increase the popularity of half-forgotten inns in remoter
districts. Where a generation ago the advent of a traveller from a
distance was an event to be remembered, nowadays the ubiquitous motorist
and cyclist may turn up any moment. It is to the interest, therefore, of
rural innkeepers to study him.
Another fact to be remembered, is the increase in the number of lady
travellers on the roads, and ladies quite rightly will not stand any sort
of makeshift accommodation. Where a man will thankfully accept his pot of
beer and bread and cheese in an evil smelling bar parlour, a woman will
prefer to sit under a tree outside and do without refreshment until it can
be obtained in reasonable cleanliness and comfort. Women, as a rule,
travel under the protection of men, and depend upon their escort for the
discovery of nice places in which to take meals. Men, therefore, have to
find them, and many a little inn which might profit by frequent parties of
both sexes is passed by in favour of a more pretentious establishment
further on, not because the accommodation is not extensive and elaborate
at the smaller place, but because of lack of cleanliness, plain reasonable
fare, and some attention to the amenities of life.
Quite a small thing will turn a lady traveller against a wayside inn.
Those horrible, narrow swing doors, which are only too common, are quite
enough to make a woman decide against the inn which is so unfortunate as
to have them barring the only entrance. No man ever pushed through such
doors with dignity, and a woman feels instinctively that to struggle with
them involves almost a loss of self-respect. A woman likes to _enter_ a
house. She does not like to slip in furtively, and she feels, perhaps
unconsciously, that there is a hint of the surreptitious in these doors in
the way they open just wide enough on pressure and close again immediately
as if to hide a misdemeanour. No woman, either, will stand and drink even
the mildest of non-alcoholic liquors if she can possibly help it. She
prefers to sit down. The ordinary bar, therefore, has no attractions for
her. Even in a railway refreshment room, where hurry excuses most things,
a woman will only stand under compulsion. It is not that she really wants
to sit down through weariness, for she may have been sitting for hours in
a railway carriage. But she has an instinct for propriety and conduct. If
tea shops, which are so largely patronized by women, had a high bar like
public-houses, with as little sitting accommodation, as is often to be
found in licensed establishments, they could not possibly keep open. Why
it should be customary to stand up to drink a glass of beer and sit down
to take a cup of tea is a mystery.
Let us admit and welcome the efforts of the old Georgian coaching inns to
keep abreast of the times. Let us cheerfully accept the attempts of mine
host to put life into an old musty coffee-room and bar parlour.
Conservatism is not without value at the inn with a history, and the
landlord for his own sake must step warily. Let no iconoclast interfere
too violently with the worm-eaten glories of old oak and mahogany or seek
to disparage the solid virtues of the great round of beef, or the
appetising ingredients of the game pie. Tradition in such things is well
worth preserving.
But it is the licensed house which never had much of a history, which has
nothing interesting to preserve, whose justification for existence is
solely on account of its use to the community as a house of call, that so
often requires alteration. The new inn, moreover, the building itself,
erected here in the twentieth century for the accommodation of modern
people, must be as suitable for its purpose as the old coaching-house was
for the stiff, befuddled travellers who, a hundred years ago, alighted
from the “Royal Mail” or “Eclipse” for a much-needed night’s repose on
their journey to London. It is plain that people use the roads to-day
quite as much for pleasure as business. The railway takes the business man
from one end of England to the other, faster, cheaper, and more
comfortably than even the motor-car has yet achieved on the turnpike.
Relaxation from work means for many thousands a journey by road, and it is
in making suitable preparation for those who take their pleasure in this
way that the new inn should devote at least half of its energies. The time
may not be ripe in England for the adoption of the café system of the
Continent. Perhaps the climate is somewhat against it. But some
improvements, which a study of the French and German methods would
suggest, might easily be taken in hand. The argument of the old
teetotaller, not always expressed, perhaps, but certainly present, was
that the more uncomfortable and disreputable the public-house the less
temptation there would be to go into it. One can understand the point of
view as with an effort one can realise the horror of the Puritans for
anything in the form of an image in a Church. But people do not want
nowadays to use the inn as a place in which to get drunk; a drunken man,
to say nothing of a drunken woman, is a universal object of pity and
scorn. What is demanded is a wholesome, clean and pleasant place in which
to have something to eat and drink without being told by anyone, publican
or teetotaller, what form the refreshment shall take.
Herein is one of the reasons for the movement in favour of reformed
public-houses. The People’s Refreshment House Association, Ltd., which has
now over seventy public-houses under its management in different parts of
the country has shown how licensed premises may be improved and made to
pay at the same time. Proof of this is to be found in the balance-sheet of
the Association which has shown a regular annual payment of its maximum
dividend of five per cent. since 1899, with over £1,000 placed to reserve.
Of course, the Association is frankly a temperance body, but it would be
just as well if those people who shy at the idea of public-houses becoming
controlled by bigotry would consult the dictionary and discover for
themselves the real meaning of the word temperance. Having done so, they
will, perhaps, realise that in pursuit of moderation there is no reason
whatever why the interests of “the trade,” the reformer, and the public
should not be identical, for all these prefer the temperate man to the
drunkard. The fact that about 80 per cent. of the licensed houses of
England are tied to brewers should not stand in the way of improvement;
indeed, in some cases, particularly in the provision and upkeep of
suitable premises, brewers have done more than could possibly be
undertaken by private owners or the public-house Trusts of which, by the
way, there is one now in nearly every county. Without going into the many
vexed questions, most of which are matters for the trade alone,
surrounding the tied house, it may not unreasonably be hoped that the
brewer will see more and more in the future how his duty to the public and
his interests alike demand a broader and more enlightened policy than the
crude idea of monopoly of sale.
[Illustration: The “White Horse” Inn, Stetchworth, Newmarket]
Improvements, however, cannot be entered upon with much hope of success
without the sympathy of the licensing justices, and it is as much to be
desired that they should recognize that the public interest lies in the
direction of the reformed public-house as that the brewer should realise
that licensed premises are not solely to be run as drinking shops. The
restrictions in very many parts of England which have been put in the way
of improvements and extensions are absurd. Wherever specially free
facilities have been granted for the sale of intoxicating liquor--as at
the White City in 1908--nothing has resulted which in any way caused the
authorities to regret having trusted the public not to make beasts of
themselves. The Bill introduced by Lord Lamington in the House of Lords
crystallised the views of reformers, who desire to make the public-house
more attractive. It provided that licensing justices should not interfere
with the provision of accommodation for the supply of tea, coffee, cocoa,
or food; with the substitution of chairs and tables for bars; with the
provision of games, newspapers, music, or gardens, or any other means of
reasonable recreation. It also asked that the Licensing Bench should allow
the improvements of premises in the direction of making them more open and
airy than at present and more healthy generally. There are numerous cases
in which the action of justices in refusing to grant facilities for
improvement has been almost incomprehensible, and amply justified the
implied rebuke contained in the Bill. In London the continental café--or
rather an English adaptation of the idea--has been established with
success, and though the metropolis is commonly judged by other standards
than those of the countryside, the way in which the café has been received
seems to indicate not only the desire for freer and more enlightened
management, but also the possession by the public of sufficient moral
fibre to make use of the increased facilities temperately and in reason.
New inns have been erected in recent years--not many of them it is
true--with the object of supplying the wants of to-day in a liberal and
broad-minded way. Occasionally the assistance of architects of
acknowledged position has been enlisted in making the buildings themselves
more attractive and less vulgar than has been only too common, and if the
effect of environment upon morality and behaviour counts for anything
these new inns should be an improvement in every way upon the bulk of
those built at any rate during the Victorian period. The inn at Sandon, on
Lord Harrowby’s estate, may be mentioned as a case in point. The _Fox and
Pelican_ at Haslemere, the architects of which were Messrs. Read and
Macdonald, is another, which has, by the way, a sign painted by Mr. Walter
Crane. There is the _Skittles Inn_ at Letchworth, designed by Messrs. R.
Barry Parker, and Raymond Unwin. In this last instance the conditions
under which the building was erected were much easier than those which
commonly obtain in older settled districts, where many interests have to
be considered. At Garden City the question regarding the sale of alcoholic
liquors is one on which there is considerable divergence of view. About
the necessity for providing a well-designed and conducted house for the
general refreshment of travellers and as a centre for social intercourse
there would appear, however, to have been no doubt whatever. The
_Skittles_ is referred to here simply as a nicely-planned building of very
attractive appearance which seems to embody most of the improvements one
would wish to see in the design of modern inns. The architects have
contrived cleverly to combine the idea of the continental café and the
English country inn. The rooms are large and airy, there is plenty of
seating accommodation, and a billiard-room is one of the attractions.
There is an entire absence of ornamental decoration, a form of
embellishment which still continues to appear in nine out of every ten
newly equipped public-houses, in the country as well as in towns. Of
course, it is perfectly plain that with a new house of refreshment which
is not to hold a licence, anything may be done. Directly an architect is
commissioned to design a fully-licensed inn his difficulties commence. He
is hedged about by all sorts of restrictions. It is inconceivable,
however, that the cause of true temperance can be injured by the provision
of a good, convenient building for a licensed victualler’s trade, instead
of the vulgar atrocity which is so common.
It is not at all certain that the classification of compartments such as
saloon bar, private bar, public bar, tap-room, bar parlour, and so on, is
not out of harmony with modern requirements. No doubt this division has
its conveniences, in the same way that the three classes of compartments,
which some railway companies still keep up is found on the whole of
benefit. But, to take the café again as an illustration, there appears to
be no necessity there for such rigid distinctions, and many of the greater
railway companies have found no ill results from the total elimination of
at least second class. Some of the new tube railways have only one class,
and if one form of public convenience is found to answer without class
distinction, why not another?
Some of the new inns which have architectural character have been
disfigured by flaring advertisements. The licensed trade should know
whether publicity of this kind given to particular brands of ale and
spirits, on the whole contributes to the good of the house on which the
announcements are displayed; but there can be little doubt that one result
is to vulgarize the building. In cases where the landlord of the property
sets his face against advertising of this kind, the inn seems by contrast
to proclaim its respectability and on that account must attract some
custom, at all events. A very good building, as yet not spoilt by
advertisements, is the _Bell_, on the high road between the _Wake Arms_
and Epping, and another is the _White Horse_, Stetchworth, Newmarket,
which Mr. C. F. A. Voysey designed for Lord Ellesmere. The _Wheatsheaf_,
Loughton, is a new inn designed by Mr. Horace White, which is as yet free
from objectionable signboards, and is a very good type of building for the
smaller country public. There are also various good inns designed by Mr.
P. Morley Horder, in Gloucestershire, and _The George and Dragon_,
Castleton, erected some sixteen years ago, is a licensed house of
excellent design, by Mr. W. Edgar Wood.
For a model wayside inn of the smaller class, where the internal treatment
shows good taste with the utmost simplicity commend us to the _White
Hart_ at West Wickham. It replaces a very ancient wooden house which had
proved past repair, and is probably unique amongst modern inns in that it
is designed for the convenient drawing of all the malt liquors direct from
the wood. Another more ambitious house by the same architects (Messrs.
Berney & Son) at Elmers End, with an elaborate half-timbered front,
recalling Black Forest architecture, has anticipated the requirements of
the Children’s Act. The well-proportioned tea room is approached by a
colonnade at the side of the building and isolated from the bars.
Among brewers who have had the foresight to erect inns of better
accommodation and more pleasing design than most of those put up during
the latter part of last century are Messrs. Godsell & Co., of Stroud, an
example of whose houses we illustrate in the _Greyhound Inn_; and the
Stroud Brewery Co., whose _Prince Albert_ at Rodborough, Gloucestershire,
and the _Clothiers’ Arms_, are excellent specimens of the modern country
inn. These three were from the designs of Mr. P. Morley Horder. Good taste
is by no means lacking in some of the many houses owned by Messrs. Nalder
& Collyer, Ltd., in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This firm have also restored
the old-fashioned type of signboards.
Other inns of recent date and of distinctive design are the _Red Lion_,
King’s Heath, Worcestershire, by Messrs. Bateman & Bateman; the _Wentworth
Arms_, Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, by Mr. C. F. A. Voysey; the _George_,
Hayes, Kent, by Mr. Ernest Newton; the _Duck-in-the-Pond_, Harrow Weald,
by Mr. R. A. Briggs; the _Maynard Arms_, Bagworth, Leicester, by Messrs.
Everard & Pick; the remodelled _White Hart_ at Sonning-on-Thames, by Mr.
W. Campbell Jones; the _Dog and Doublet_, Sandon; the _Hundred House_,
Purslow, Shropshire (a modern reconstruction); the _Green Man_, Tunstall,
Suffolk; the _Old White House_ and the _Elm Tree_ at Oxford, by Mr. Henry
T. Hare; and various temperance inns, amongst which are the _Ossington
Coffee House_, Newark, by Messrs. Ernest George & Yeates; the _Bridge
Inn_, Port Sunlight, by Messrs. Grayson & Ould (now fully licensed); and
the Bournville Estate public-house, by Mr. W. Alexander Harvey. In London
two finely designed interiors are the _Coal Hole_, in the Strand, by Mr.
W. Colcutt, and the _Copt Hall_, in Copthall Avenue, by Mr. P. Morley
Horder.