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20th Century Pub pubs

Courage’s 1960s modernist pub building frenzy

Courage built a lot of new pubs in the period of economic rejuvenation after World War II, as documented in a volume held at Bristol’s central library.

A few weeks ago a special exhibition was laid on at the library on the subject of beer and pubs. Items from the reference collection were put on display in an ornate wood-panelled room and visitors were invited to shuffle round and have a nose about.

We visited and were drawn at once to a hefty hardback volume collecting together editions of The Golden Cockerel, the house magazine of Courage, Barclay & Simonds, formed in 1960 when Courage acquired Simonds of Reading.

These particular issues of the magazine were from 1962 to 1964 and seemed to include a remarkable number of pub openings.

A post war pub with brick or stone walls and a high tiled roof.
The Treble Chance, Southmead, Bristol, in 2023.

The Treble Chance, Southmead, Bristol

The issue for winter 1962 contained news of the opening of The Treble Chance on the Southmead estate.

It was opened by G.H. Boucher, former director of Bristol United Breweries, and father of A.R. Boucher, the chairman of CBS’s West Country division.

“Mr G.H. Boucher remarked that, although he had been to a number of new houses and attended many openings, he had never come across a more attractive new public house than this one. He complimented the architects who had designed the house and Messrs. C.H. Pearce & Sons Limited who had built it, and was very confident that, in the Treble Chance, Courages had a winner.”

There’s something quite quaint in the traditions attached to the opening of new pubs, even very modern ones, on very modern estates. ‘Ale conners’ tasted the beer, an ale-garland was hoisted, the inn sign was unveiled, and a toast was proposed.

For the record, the architects were CBS’s own in-house team under the direction of N.E. Morley, DSC, FRIBA, and the publicans at the time of opening were Patricia Whiteford and her husband Maurice.

The Treble Chance is notable because it’s one of only a handful of post-war pubs that survives in Bristol. We drank there in March 2023 and, though it was quite friendly, it had certainly lost any trace of mid-century modernism.

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20th Century Pub bristol pubs

The slow death of a Bristol estate pub

We never knew, or never noticed, The Mayors Arms, one of Bristol’s few surviving post war buildings. And now it’s set for demolition.

Actually, we did notice it – just not before 2009 when it was converted into a restaurant.

In its most recent guise as Sousta, a “Mediterranean restaurant and bar”, it intrigued us because it never seemed to have any customers. Ever.

Its location, at the bottom end of a large council estate, on the river embankment, offers little passing trade. There are no other shops or hospitality outlets nearby.

In fact, the only business that could really work here is a neighbourhood pub in a working class area where people drink plenty of beer.

And that’s what Redcliffe was in February 1964 when this version of the pub opened. Here’s how it was described in a report in the Evening Post:

A three-storey building of striking appearance, this modern Bass-Worthington house has a spacious lounge and bar and an off-sales shop on the ground floor. In the summer a paved terrace off the forecourt will assume a Continental atmosphere with flowers and shrubs, and tables fitted with sun umbrellas… The Avon Lounge, following the trend of modern public-house design, is an attractive room, tastefully decorated, luxuriously carpeted and discreetly lit. The main part of the room has concealed trough lighting at ceiling level. In addition, spotlights pick out the bar counter and service area, opposite which is a 32 foot long photo-mural showing something of the activity at Bristol docks. The Redcliffe Bar is also decorated and furnished in modern style and affords a high standard of appearance and comfort. Concealed lighting, similar to that installed in the lounge, adds much to the general atmosphere.

This new building replaced an older pub of the same name on the same site which was demolished in 1963 as part of the post-war redevelopment of the entire area.

If you happen to be interested in that, Ray wrote about it in more detail for the zine Brutal Bristol edited by Tom Benjamin. We’ve also put that article up on Patreon for subscribers to read.

In short, though, this was a flagship development for Bristol Council after World War II as they sought to (a) rebuild a badly blitzed city and (b) move the population from crumbling Victorian terraces into modern homes and tower blocks.

A Victorian corner pub built into a row of terraced houses.
SOURCE: The Simonds Family website.

The old Mayors Arms did, it has to be said, look rather more appealing than the new one. If it had survived the post-war reconstruction phase it would no doubt be sitting there now looking quaint and rather appealing.

There’s a nice human story attached to the 1963 demolition, however.

When regulars at the old pub heard the news they immediately raised a petition to have the brewery put the publicans, Mr and Mrs Jones, in charge of the new one.

But, as the Evening Post reported, “Bass, however, had already decided Mr and Mrs Jones were the right people for the job.”

Checking in 1975, thanks to Fred Pearce’s Bristol pub guide, we get a little more detail:

Two long modern bars with spacious lounges set out dining room fashion. Piano and darts but neither are used much. Takes coach parties and locals from the nearby flats. Coffee is served in the morning. Full range of food at lunchtime. Full Bass beer range (no real beer though), a bit expensive. ‘Music while you work’ muzak horribly obtrusive.

The story of this particular estate pub isn’t much different to that of many others.

The newspaper archives have “under new management” announcements and proud talk of refurbishment.

They also have this story from the Bristol Evening Post in July 1986:

A man needed hospital treatment for cuts and a back injury after being attacked by a group of ten to 15 youths at the Mayor’s Arms, in Redcliffe, Bristol. One of the ringleaders was described as being white, in his middle twenties, slim, wearing a white T-shirt with the motif “I’m an alcoholic.”

Because it wasn’t especially remarkable, just another unfashionable estate pub, the trail runs cold until this entry at Pubs Galore from 2009:

Closed, emptied of fixtures & fittings and the builders are in knocking down walls etc. A roughly drawn notice outside says it’s to become an Indian Restaurant.

Now, it’s set to become “student cluster flats”, and that’s that.

When you see an estate pub, do take a second to have a look, and maybe take a photograph, because the chances are it’ll be gone before the decade is out.

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20th Century Pub bristol pubs

20th Century pubs in 21st Century Bristol

We recently gave a talk to the 20th Century Society about 20th century pubs in Bristol. This blog post is taken from the material that we used.

We hardly mention any Bristol pubs in 20th Century Pub, although this wasn’t for lack of trying. In many ways, what happened in Bristol is typical of the general story of pubs in the 20th Century, including the fact that not many survive and those that do have lost most of their period features.

Not many pubs were built at all at the start of the century, full stop. After a large increase in the number of beer houses in the mid-nineteenth century there was something of a backlash against pubs. Magistrates, encouraged by the temperance movement, began to make it harder to get licences, and if you wanted to build a pub in a newly expanded area of the city there was often an expectation that you should give up a licence or three in the city centre.

The excellent Historic England publication The Nineteenth and Twentieth Century Public House in Bristol by Rebecca Preston and Fiona Fisher, from 2015, provides a helpful summary of how things played out here:

Bristol magistrates received 42 applications to create new licences in the period 1886 to 1896 but none was granted… The pattern of licence reduction continued in Bristol after 1900. At the beginning of the twentieth century the city had 471 alehouses, 567 ‘on’ beerhouses and 240 ‘off’ beerhouses. Two refreshment houses held wine licences and 87 grocers were licensed, a total net decrease of 18 licences on the previous year.74 In 1911, the city had 421 alehouses, 443 ‘on’ beerhouses, 231 ‘off’ beerhouses and one refreshment house with a wine licence. Seventy-four grocers were licensed and 26 chemists. There was a net decrease of 21 licences in that year.75 In the ten years from 1904 to 1914 there was a total reduction of 184 licences of all types across the city.

A Victorian-Edwardian pub.
The Cambridge Arms, Redland, by Edward Gabriel, 1900.

However, Bristol does have a couple of what we call ‘smart’ proto-improved pubs – that is, built in the Edwardian period to serve new areas and new clienteles. The Cambridge Arms (Redland) and The Langton Court (St Annes/Brislington) are both examples of something which is neither a Victorian gin palace nor a back street boozer. They’re solid, respectable and modern. Both evoke images of ‘the old inn’ while also fitting in with the Victorian and Edwardian suburban homes that surround them.

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20th Century Pub pubs

One of the 4,000: The Deerstalker, Bestwood

In the post-war period, up until the 1960s, around 4,000 brand new pubs were built. Among them was The Deerstalker on Nottingham’s Bestwood Park Estate.

The name is a clue to the brewery which built it – Mitchells & Butlers, whose trademark was the ‘Deers Leap’.

The leaping deer trademark.

We came across the pictures below in the January-February 1957 edition of the M&B in-house magazine, also called The Deerstalker:

“The Deerstalker is one of a number of new houses that the company are opening on new housing estates all over the Midlands. It may not be the largest or most magnificent of our houses, but, as you will see from our illustrations, its snappy contemporary decor will provide a cheery local for those inhabitants of the Bestwood Park Estate who are sufficiently enlightened to appreciate the fact that they will be better off with an M&B.”

The Deerstalker, January-February 1957, pp.10-11
A large, plain pub in brick.
The exterior of The Deerstalker

This pub was a long time in gestation, a licence being first applied for in 1950. That application was withdrawn when it became clear that post-war building restrictions would make construction impossible for some years to come. (Nottingham Evening Post, 31 March 1950; Nottingham Journal, 1 April 1950.) It seems to have been opened in around 1956.

Let’s have a look at that “snappy decor”.

A bar and tables.
We guess you’d call this the public bar?
A different bar with more comfortable chairs.
And this is, we suppose, the saloon.
A view of the same bar with typically 1950s wallpaper.
Same again, from a different angle.

Apart from the general sense of pristine mid-century modernity, there are a few things that catch the eye.

Taken from Formica: a modern plastic, 1938.

The clocks with their brushed metal faces. Those, we guess, formica-topped tables. And that absolutely fantastic wallpaper in the saloon. Here’s a sample, perspective corrected and tinted a vaguely appropriate colour for the period.

It looks as if was designed specifically with pubs and bars in mind, perhaps even commissioned by M&B for their own houses.

What happened next? Sigh. We’ve told this sad story so many times now. In 1957, a modern pub, clean and fresh, tastefully decorated in the latest style; by the early 1980s, as recounted by former landlady Caron Wiles at closedpubs.co.uk:

“My husband Adrian and myself were the landlord and landlady at this pub in the early 80’s. There was entertainment 7 nights per week and we reduced it to 6 nights. Singers, comedians and discos all performed there. It was very busy and we made some good friends. We had a very loyal staff who remained with us throughout our tenure. There were also some very frightening occasions when the customers rioted and smashed tables & chairs and all the optics and bottles on the back of the bar, all the staff had to squeeze into the tiny office for safety until the police arrived to calm things down.”

It was renamed The Sportsman in 1993 and ceased trading as a pub at some point. It is now a convenience store but still recognisable.

SOURCE: Google Maps/Street View.
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20th Century Pub pubs

Hilltop, “a new venture in public houses”, 1959

All pictures and text from Guinness Time, Autumn 1959.

“Guinness have, in the past four years, been privileged to take part in a project which has now resulted in the opening of a new public house which, both in its physical layout and in the method of its planning, exhibits several new features.”

Modern pub windows.
The exterior of Hilltop.

“The new pub is called Hilltop , and is in the South End neighbourhood of Hatfield New Town. It is owned and operated by Messrs. McMullens of Hertford, and it came into being after a most unusual piece of co-operation.”

A crowd around the ale garland.
“Once the ale was pronounced good the Ale Garland was hoisted.”

“It began when we found that the Hatfield Development Corporation had no public funds available to provide the meeting place it had planned for the new population of this rapidly growing neighbourhood. The central site which had been reserved for this community centre would remain empty and the only social building would be a small public house which could not be expected to meet all the needs of the locality. We thought this situation offered a wonderful opportunity for an experiment.”

1950s pubgoers.
“The busy scene in the Saloon Bar after the official opening.”

“We approached the Corporation and asked them if they would consider permitting a brewer to provide the amenities they had planned to include in their community centre. They agreed. We asked Messrs. McMullens if they would consider expanding the plans of the public house they were to build in the neighbourhood to provide these amenities, and they readily agreed.”

A bland looking modern cafe.
The cafe.

A group of families and children.
“The children, too, had free drinks (and buns) on opening night.”

Hilltop offers the usual facilities of a pub, three bars and an off-licence where alcoholic refreshment is available during licensing hours. It also has an unlicensed cafe where soft drinks and light meals are served. Then there is a large hall for use as a theatre or for dancing or dinners, and three committee rooms. All these rooms may be attached either to the licensed or unlicensed part of the building… by locking the necessary doors. In additional the Hertfordshire Health Authorities have two rooms allotted to them in which they run a local Health Clinic.”

Cool looking young men with guitars and cowboy hats.
“A local skiffle group entertains customers on opening night.”

Notes: Hilltop was designed by Lionel Brett, opened on 11 August 1959, and is still trading as a pub under McMullen’s, albeit renamed The Harrier. Here’s how it looks today: