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20th Century Pub pubs

Does The Vulcan Hotel belong in a museum?

The Vulcan is a Cardiff pub that’s been relocated to a museum. Is this a good way to preserve pubs or just another way of destroying them?

The Vulcan reopened for business at St Fagans National Museum of History about a month ago, after several years of “Coming soon!” updates.

We visited on a busy Saturday expecting a sterile exhibit, based on the photos we’ve seen online. The very act of rebuilding and restoration means the building looks too neat and bright, like something from Poundbury.

In its original location it was covered in soot, urban grot, and layer upon layer of paint. It was surrounded by railings, billboards, street furniture and litter. At St Fagans, it’s all fresh bare brick and fresh country air.

We’re not the only ones with concerns. When Martin Taylor wrote about this project a while ago he said:

The Vulcan was to Cardiff what the Laurieston is to Glasgow (or the Charlie Chaplin was to the Elephant & Castle if I’m honest), that “was” telling you that the pub closed a decade ago and is still being rebuilt brick-by-brick at St Fagans, where pashminas from Cowbridge will ask what wines it sells.

On top of all that, the website suggested booking a table if you wanted to see The Vulcan and, as we approached, it looked overcrowded and oversubscribed.

Imagine our surprise, then, when we walked straight in, got two pints, found a seat, and forgot we weren’t in a ‘real’ pub for an hour or so.

Well, no, that’s not quite true. We were always aware that it wasn’t quite a proper pub. But rather than sterility, its location and status seemed to add to the fun.

A set of wooden doors and screens with a pale varnish. Through them is a corridor with a black jacket hanging on a peg.
The pale wood partitions between the public bar, jug and bottle and, beyond, the corridor to the smoke room.

We’d got the impression that this was going to be something like an ornate Victorian gin palace, perhaps because the exterior is richly decorated with shiny green tiles. But the public bar is actually defined by plain, light-coloured wood, and mostly plain walls decorated with the odd vintage advertisement. There is literally sawdust on the floor, to the delight of every toddler that passed through.

The smoke room at the back feels cosier, with lower light, dark green paint, and dark wood furniture. It’s really not much different from a room in a typical 21st century pub in, say, Sheffield, or Dudley.

It was constantly busy and not only with gawpers. Lots of booze was being bought and drunk and everyone was mildly merry, including us, in a realm where a mild caffeine buzz and a sugar buzz from scones is about as far as it usually goes.

We didn’t see any pashminas but there were plenty of football kits, trackie bottoms, trainers, and tattoos. There were lots of strong local accents, too. Delightfully normal. After all, St Fagans isn’t a particularly snooty museum – entry is free and you can use it like a park, if you like, and hang out all day with a picnic.

From our seat near the door we watched one person after another walk in and beam with delight, say “Wow!”, or both. And it has to be said that dads and granddads in particular seemed to be in their element.

Bar staff in white shirts and blouses manning the cask ale pumps. One is wearing a flat cap. Both men are wearing old-fashioned buttons braces.
Hard working staff at The Vulcan.

There were four bar staff on duty in vaguely historic costume and we wondered whether they were pub people with a bit of museum training, or the other way round.

They were remarkably cheerful and willing to engage in chat, and the conversation around the crowded bar went something like this:

“How long have you been open, then?”

“Four weeks today.”

“Busy?

“Very.”

“I used to drink in this pub when it was in town. I’ve come out special.”

“Aw, that’s lovely. You’re not the first old faithful we’ve had in today.”

“I see you’ve got an electric till – that’s not very authentic, is it, ha ha!”

“Well, we can’t be expected to tot it up in our heads, can we? But we’ve hidden it under the counter.”

“How long have you been open, then?”

“Four weeks today.”

“Pink nail polish – that’s not very authentic, ha ha!”

“It’s not, is it? What can I get you?”

“Do you do a normal lager?”

“We do. Pint?”

“My granny used to drink in The Vulcan years ago.”

“Aw, that’s lovely.”

“Health and safety notices – they’re not very authentic, are they, ha ha!”

“We’ve had to make a few compromises, unfortunately.”

“I wanted to show my son where I used to drink when he was little.”

“Aw, that’s lovely.”

“Where did this pub used to be, then?”

“Adam Street.”

“What’s the strongest thing you’ve got?”

“Well, some of the spirits are 43%, but you probably want the pale ale.”

“Is the ale real, or fizz?”

“This is real ale on the pumps.”

“Lager – that’s not very authentic, ha ha!”

“Well, we do hide it under the counter.”

Looking at the barman in the flatcap Ray growled under his breath: “I bet this will attract Peaky Blinders wankers.”

“To a museum? Nah,” said Jess.

Then, a few minutes later we overheard one of the staff said: “You can hire it out for private events. We’ve got a Peaky Blinders theme thing happening soon…”

The other thing that’s great about the new location is the additional context it brings. Right across the road is the Oakdale Workmen’s Institute, built in 1916 and relocated to St Fagan’s in 1995.

It was intended as an antidote to places like The Vulcan, with libraries, reading rooms, and space for edifying concerts.

If you want to understand the evolution of the pub in the early part of the 20th century, you can do worse than hop between the two.

Will the staff at The Vulcan still be cheerful after a long, hectic summer season, we wonder? And will the pub still be as busy once those curious to see an old haunt in a new location have done so? We’ll have to go back in a year or so to find out.

Seeing how much booze this museum exhibit was selling, and how happy it made people, made us wonder whether more pubs could consider the heritage angle.

We know we’re weird – we know – but we’d certainly be interested in drinking in historic pubs that have been made over to feel historic. Rather, that is, than painted bloody grey.

Categories
20th Century Pub pubs

Evidence of Brickwoods vs. United in Portsmouth

In Portsmouth, the Victorian and Edwardian pubs built by two competing breweries offer an interesting way of understanding and navigating the city.

We were tipped off to this by an architectural guide by Alan Balfour published in 1970.

In his three-page introduction, Mr Balfour dedicates a good chunk of text to pubs:

Later 19th century pubs, such as The Northcote Hotel and The Eastfield Hotel, are almost over-pretentious in contrast to their surroundings. This pretentiousness goes deeper than the street elevations – it confirms the separate identities of the two major brewers in the area at the end of the 19th century, Brickwoods and Portsmouth United Ales… The brewers’ house styles emerged towards the end of the century, United pubs being clad in a deep green tile on the ground floor, with arched openings, and light green glazed bricks above… Brickwoods developed an extravagant ‘Tudorbethan’ style, with endless variations in the pseudo-timber framing and decoration.

The letters P, B and U intertwined, in cream and green ceramics
An Edwardian logo for Portsmouth United Breweries from the former Egremont Arms.
A wrought-iron sign with elaborate curls and decoration.
A Brickwood & Co Ltd sign on the former White Swan, now a branch of Brewhouse & Kitchen.

On our first wander through town, we spotted examples of both. Some were trading, others were derelict, and still others had become nurseries or shops.

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Beer history featuredposts pubs

The sensible Miss Orme and the life of the barmaid, 1892

In 1892, Eliza Orme undertook a painstaking investigation into the working lives of barmaids, producing a report which takes us back to the pubs of the past with incredible vividness.

Eliza Orme was an interesting woman. She was the first woman in England to get a degree in law, in 1888, as Dr Leslie Howsam, who has studied Orme’s life, explains here:

[She] was 39 years old and already unofficially ‘practicing’ law out of an office in London’s Chancery Lane where she and a colleague prepared the paperwork for property transactions, patent registrations, wills, settlements, and mortgages. ‘I “devilled” for about a dozen conveyancing counsel who kept me busily employed on drafts they wanted done in a hurry, and for twenty-five years I found it both an interesting and profitable employment’, Orme recalled in a 1901 interview. This support-level work was the only legal employment open to women, who were not permitted either to be called to the bar or join the Law Society. It was only a small part, however, of Eliza Orme’s reputation as a public figure.

An early feminist, Miss Orme was a firm believer in allowing women to work in whichever industries they chose and was a member of the Society for the Promotion of the Employment of Women.

Through this, she ended up as Senior Lady Assistant Commissioner to the Royal Commission on Labour, overseeing a small team of Lady Assistant Commissioners.

Portrait photo.
Eliza Orme c.1900.

After the Commission decided at a meeting in March 1892 to undertake research into the working lives of women, Orme dispatched her team around the country, from Bristol to the Western Isles, to investigate various industries such as textile mills, chocolate factories and stocking making.

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london pubs

Incidental Lager, Pubs and Breweries in Photos of Edwardian London

Someone — we don’t know who — spent the week of 22-28 August 1908 visiting the capital of the British Empire and brought home as a souvenir a photo book called 350 Views of London.

They wrote the dates of their holiday on the inside cover in pencil. The book then spent at least some of the past century somewhere damp — an attic or shed — so that its cover buckled and the staples holding it together rusted away. That’s why we were able to by this relic for a couple of quid from the junk box in a secondhand bookshop in Bristol.

Among those 350 photos, some full-page, others fairly tiny, there are a handful that particularly grabbed our attention, for obvious reasons.

The Spaten Beer Restaurant, Piccadilly, c.1908.

This is one of the clearest, most detailed views we’ve seen of the Spaten Beer Restaurant at Piccadilly — a pioneering London lager outlet that we obsessed over during the writing of Gambrinus Waltz. We still desperately want to see a view of the interior but this is nice to have.

The King Lud, Ludgate Circus

The King Lud, Ludgate Circus

The book contains two views of one particular pub, The King Lud at Ludgate Circus. This is interesting to us because Jess drank in it fairly regularly in its final years when it was branded as part of the Hogshead chain. It is now a Leon restaurant, but recognisably the same building.

Omnibuses outside the Royal Exchange.

The beer connection in this shot of the Royal Exchange is a little less obvious: look at those two omnibuses in the centre — they’re advertising Tennent’s Lager, as distributed in London by Findlater & Co of London Bridge. This is a reminder that Germany and Austria-Hungary weren’t the only countries importing lager to London in the years before World War I.

Tottenham Court road from the south.

We haven’t seen this shot of Tottenham Court Road before, or any other from quite this angle. That’s Meux’s Horse Shoe brewery and the attached brewery tap to the right — the site of the famous beer flood. The sign above the brewery door advertises MEUX’S ORIGINAL LONDON STOUT. We’d like to know more about the Horse Shoe Hotel’s ‘American Bar’.

The Saracen's Head, Snow Hill.

The Saracen’s Head was on Snow Hill in the City of London. We can’t quite pin down the precise location, even after looking at contemporary maps, aerial photos and the comprehensive Pubs History website. An educated guess is that it was destroyed during the Blitz — if you know otherwise, or can tell us exactly where it was, do comment below.