Gone Medieval - Medieval Pubs

Episode Date: October 18, 2022

For centuries, the pub has played a central role in our lives and communities. Throughout Britain, there are many pubs saying that they are the oldest - some of them even claim to have Medieval origins.In this episode of Gone Medieval, Dr. Cat Jarman welcomes back award-winning buildings archaeologist Dr. James Wright to explore how long we have actually had pubs and which of them can truly claim to be the oldest.The Senior Producer on this episode was Elena Guthrie. It was edited and produced by Rob Weinberg. For more Gone Medieval content, subscribe to our Medieval Monday newsletter here >If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today! To download, go to Android or Apple store. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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with a brand-new release every week exploring everything from the ancient world, to World War II. Just visit historyhit.com forward slash subscribe. Hello and welcome to Gone Medieval. I'm Dr. Kat Jarman. The pub. Nothing can be more British than that. And this very crucial part of British society and culture has existed for centuries. Now, around the country, there are plenty of pubs that claim to be the oldest of them all, with many of them claiming medieval origins. But how long have we really been, really had pubs for and which of them can truly be said to be the oldest. In this episode,

we're going to try to find out answer to just that question. So my guest today is the award-winning buildings archaeologist Dr James Wright. Welcome to the podcast, James. Hi Kat, thanks very much for having me. It's a real pleasure to be here. Now, if James sounds familiar to you, that's probably because you have heard him on the podcast before. He's been on to talk about medieval myth-busting with Matt in a previous episode. The reason why he's here today, apart from his expertise, it's actually quite a fun one, because James recently wrote an article on exactly this topic, Britain's oldest pubs. I read that and I was very happy to see that one of my very local pubs was in fact the winner of that. So that made me very happy. So I like the use of the word

winner as if it's a competition. And I do think that feeds into the sort of. subject matter because I do think that there is a lot of good nature debate about which is the oldest. And I think this really does help to explain why it's such a popular subject because everybody wants their local to be the winner, as you put it. And there are lots of claims out there and it becomes a sort of a regional issue as well. So the people in the southwest want their local to be the oldest and the people in the East Midlands want their local. And that's sort of where these conversations grow up, but also there's slight tensions as well about local rivalries too. It's almost like you want your local football club to be the best. You want your local pub to

be the best and the oldest. Absolutely. And we saw this because obviously I used this as a great excuse to go there and posted it on my Twitter account with some photos, so yes, the oldest pub. But that just brought out a sort of deluge of comments from people saying, no, no, no, it's actually a different one and James you very heroically stepped in and did lots of myth busting so I thought yeah great topic for an episode here yeah I can't help myself with myth busting really I try and do it as an agreeable and friendly way as possible because I don't like talking down or punching down but if I do feel that there's something that I do actually know a bit about I do feel that I'm on abound to sort of say well actually no it's not quite like that can we nuance this a little bit

can we look at the evidence for this and just try and sort of do a bit of outreach dissemination, bit of education as well. But as I say, in a respectful way without punching down, I suppose because you were referring to my article, I did sort of feel that I had a responsibility to sort of step in and say, no, it's not such and such a pub. We know this for these reasons, but have you looked at the evidence for this other pub, that kind of thing? So I hope it came across rather than an old white man mansplaining.

I hope it didn't come across like that. I really hope you could come across like that. It was great. Because what I like about what you do is as a buildings archaeologist, you actually go into detail what the buildings themselves are telling us. Because of course, some of it's that history. Sometimes we have some historical records, a documentation. But other times, it's actually looking for the traces in the buildings themselves.

Obviously, sometimes we might have actual dating evidence from radiocarbon dating or dendocrinology. But other times, it's kind of how they've been cobbled together over the years, isn't it? That's kind of what you do. One of the things that never ceases to amaze me is just how few of our historic building stock, whether listed or unlisted, have been researched in any meaningful way at all. Even the listed buildings, the vast majority of them, have only ever been looked at for maybe 10 minutes from the roadside by an inspector from what was then English heritage, for maybe 10 minutes and then they've filled in a pro forma, taking a quick photograph, move on to the next one. And that is it for the vast majority of our... listed buildings. And as a result, there's lots of errors that creep in because a building on the exterior, roadside frontage, those structures will tell you a certain thing, but quite often,

the exteriors are much younger than what's going on internally. So you've kind of got these myths within myths growing up about a lot of these buildings, because although they might not be saying, well, this is a really old pub, they might be saying it's an 18th century house. In reality, it might be a 16th century house when you get inside. So so few of our buildings have been looked at in detail. And also it's worth remembering that the vast majority of people are not buildings archaeologists. Very few people are as nerdy as I am. And we can't expect there to be a really big level of knowledge for most people on buildings.

It's just one of those things where a small number of people will know a thing or two about, in this case, vernacular architecture. But we can't expect that all stories that are told by all. people about our building stock are necessarily true. Absolutely. And so when you get that issue tangled up with this desire for being a winner as it were again, then it gets quite complicated quickly. But let's get onto the pubs now. Let's start there. So the one thing we need to start with here, I think, is some definitions, actually, because we actually talk about different things. So if we're looking for the oldest pub, what do we actually mean by that? And how do we define that sort of

pub. One of the problems that we've got to face is that what most people think about when they consider the British boozer is that that structure that's in their head is very much a construct of the 18th and the 19th centuries. So just having a bar which you walk up to and order your drinks and the landlord or the bar keep will pour your drink off a hand pump, whether it be keg or cask, that's a really recent invention. Step back into the earlier 18th and the 17th century and beyond, and that's not there. The idea of pubs as places which provide sustenance, whether that be food, drink, or also accommodation as well, that is an older environment.

But the buildings which we would be looking at in the medieval or the early modern period wouldn't look too, similar from an ordinary domestic house. Now some of them, they are much more developed and they're more like hotels, but a lot of these buildings are structures which have possibly even been built originally as a domestic house and then converted into a pub and then some have stopped being pubs at another period. To give you an example of this, the old white heart in Newark in Nottinghamshire, which is not too far from where I live, was originally built or elements of it, were originally built in the very very early 14th century by the early 15th century just over a century later it's been converted into a pub but it stopped being a pub in

about 1870 when it became used as a shop so you've got that problem of how do you structurally identify what a pub looks like when a lot of these buildings bear a lot in common with houses so that there are great problems with assessing So we do have to use a combination of both archaeological evidence, and that includes, of course, scientific dating, but also archival evidence to tell us what was actually going on in those structures. Yeah, so that's an important point because actually what you were looking for, certainly when you were writing this article, was an establishment that had functioned as a pub for the entire length of its existence, wasn't it? So it's not just that it happened to be in a

really old building, but actually that it can trace itself back as a sort of pub, not necessarily by that name, but going back to the medieval period, what you know however long. Is that what you were doing? Yeah. And because there are so many claimants that say we have been in operation for X number of years, and they usually give a puzzlingly accurate date, which will be down to an individual year. And I'll give you an example of that. Let's take the Bingley Arms, which is at Bardsey in West Yorkshire. They give a very specific date there, printed on the side

of the wall, that that pub has been in operation since 953 AD. That's a really specific date. And I think people are willing to believe that because of how specific it is. Somebody somewhere must have done the research. As long

as it wasn't them, it doesn't matter because that sounds like hard work. Somebody's going to look to it, so we're open to believing this. Why would the landlord lie? because of course a load of rubbish never get spouted in pubs, doesn't it? Just to take the Bingley Arms if we actually drill down into it. And I'm not singling the Bingley out because there's lots of other buildings, which I'm sure we'll discuss in a moment.

But the Bingley Arms, when you actually look at the buildings' archaeology of it, is a mid-18th to early 19th century rural structure, which if you go to West Yorkshire, there are lots of them that look like this building. It's got big, thick stone walls. It's got a very low-pitched roof because it's got a stone-flagged cladding to it. And it is very similar to the farmhouses throughout the West Yorkshire region. It looks like lots of other known dated buildings.

There's nothing about it which speaks of the 10th century AD. But also the real key here is that as an early medievalist, I'm sure you know this cat, but there aren't any pre-11th century domestic buildings still standing in this country. There just aren't any of them at all. They don't exist. So if a pub is claiming to be before the 11th century, we already know that there's a question mark over it. Because the only buildings of that period that we do have that are still standing with a roof on are churches. And we don't have that many of those either. Most of the architecture back then was timber framed and it doesn't survive. That is such a staggering fact, isn't it? That's something that surprised us a lot of people because we think that we do have so many early medieval remains. But really, in terms of buildings, as you say, very rightly, it's just those religious places.

So does that mean then that there are no pubs as well? I mean, this is where people get a bit confused, I think. So if there were no buildings, does that mean that there are no pubs from before that date as well? Or what does that mean? Well, we can't necessarily say that because we know from archival sources that there are something that we would understand and there's a public house where you can go and get a drink and some sustenance. They do exist. There are various edicts.

There are various laws which regard ale tasting and the quality of ale. So of Anglo-Scanadian period, they're very interested in the quality of the booze. They can't have anybody selling rubbish ale at all. It's not to be countenance whatsoever. I think that's an important thing that we should still bear in mind to this day, actually. I'm the son of a landlord. My dad ran a pup for 16 years, so I'm extremely sensitive to this. I'm also a member of the campaign for Real Ale as well, so, you know, what you might call an enthusiastic boozer.

I've got a lot of boozing in my history. We've got a situation, I suppose, where there were pubs. But again, like I was saying in the later period, it's very difficult to spot them archaeologically, because here they genuinely were domestic houses. These were not purpose-built structures at all. It would be the case where the people who are brewing, and it tends in the early medieval period to be women, that are brewers. Male brewing tends to take off at a later period in time, and particularly in the post-medieval period. But at this period in time, you would have a surplus amount of brew for your family, and then what's left over, you might put out what's called a green branch,

an ale branch, on the side of your house to say, brew's up, you can come and get some. I suppose we might look at this as being a bit like a microbrewery with a brewery tap, with a place where you can go and get some beer, almost like an off licence in many respects. I'm sure that they were also sitting down around the table and having a jar as well. I live in Nottingham. We've got somewhere that would be akin to this in the form of the Neon Raptor brewery, which is down on Snenton Market, and on certain days at certain times, you can sit in the brewery and have a pint.

So it's kind of like that, only it's lower scale. It's more of a cottage industry. We can't actually identify the local. of any of these buildings because they don't look anything other than a domestic house. And so they don't have lots of fancy brewing equipment that we can actually say, ah, yes, this is a brew pub. This is where they're putting out the green branch and people are coming. So they do exist. We know about them from the archival record, but we know less about them from the archaeological record. But when you do get all of these properties which are saying, well, we're a

pub from the Anglo-Scanadian period, we have to say, I'm afraid you're not. because we don't have any of those surviving. Excellent. That's a really great answer. Hi there. I'm Don Wildman, the host of the brand new podcast, American History Hit. Join me twice a week as I explore the past to help us understand the United States today. You'll hear how codebreakers uncovered secret Japanese plans for the Battle of Midway. Visit Chief Poetan as he prepares for war with the British. See Walt Disney accuse his former colleagues of being communists

and uncover the hidden history that lies beneath Central Park. From pre-colonial America to independence, slavery to civil rights, the gold rush to the space race. I'll be speaking to leading experts to delve into America's past. New episodes dropping every Monday and Thursday. So join me on American History Hit, a podcast by History Hit. Then it starts to change, doesn't it, when we get into the medieval period more properly? So what is it that changes and when do they really?

up here. What changes is that monasteries really up their game. There's always been a situation where monasteries would allow guests into the precinct walls and they would have what's called a guest house and there they would provide ale and food and a place to sleep. And this is really linked to the idea of pilgrimage so that you want people to come to your monastery because they will spend money. They will offer donations, maybe a bit of land, they'll bring income into the monastery because you've got your shrine to the holy toe bone of St, Tbilis, or whatever it is. So you want people to come to your monastery, so you allow an infrastructure for that. And that certainly is the case in the earlier period up to the 12th, 13th century. But somewhere around that period, somewhere in the earlier 13th century,

monasteries start to realize that not only can they capitalize on pilgrims coming to the site, but they can also start to charge those pilgrims for accommodation as well. And not just pilgrims, but also any other travellers, whether they be artisans, whether they be the household of a wealthy lord. People who are travelling from one settlement to another settlement require somewhere to stay, somewhere to get some food, somewhere to have a drink. And so the monasteries start building these purpose-built structures, which I suppose we would think of as more like,

like being a hotel with a bar. So somewhere, which you might go for a weekend away and enjoy the repast in the bar or the restaurant of a night. But that is very much the genesis of the Great British Booze at these monastic hotels. They're called hospiciums. So really, the religious institutions do thank for the punts, which is a bit surprising, I think, in many ways.

Yeah, but this is a time where people are drinking by routine. If you're a monk, most of the monastic orders have a big. brew house and they will allow you to drink anything from between about eight and 16 pints of beer a day as part of your caloric intake. It's a shocking amount of booze to our minds. But this is where a lot of calories are being brought into the human body. So there is a lot of drinking going on. There's the old myth that this is because they couldn't trust the water, they didn't drink the water because it wasn't safe to drink. People knew, well, they might not have known about microbiology, but they did understand when water was foul.

Water was drunk. There's lots of tracts about the attractiveness of good water. They're sinking wells. They're drinking from springs and the like. A lot of the drinking that's going on is because they want calories, but also they did like getting the buzz off the booze as well. It's very much of a sort of a post-medieval temperance, which leads to people scowling at drinkers and having an opinion about how wrong drinking is. In the medieval period, they're quite happy. They quite like getting that rush off booze. So, It's something which is popular because people like doing it. Nothing has changed, does it really? Over the centuries, which is fantastic. One thing is a slight aside here, that comes up quite often in this as well, is the idea of pub licences and some claim to have sort of these really early licenses to be run as a pub. Can you say something about when that comes in, this idea that there's sort of actual bureaucratic control over who can do this?

I suppose going into a pub these days, We're so used to seeing the name above the door, license to sell intoxicating liquors. My dad had one of those back in the day. We're so used to the idea of them being licensed. And although in those earlier periods, they were looking at the quality of the brew, and there would be the ale taster who would go round,

and he might say you're not allowed to brew anymore because your beer is not very good. They're not issuing formal licence. And the first time we see this in a meaningful sense is by an act of Parliament in 15. 1551, which is legislated for the following year. So there aren't actually any paper document which can say this pub has been in occupation since this particular year until the middle of the 16th century. So again, a lot of those pubs which say that they have a licence dating to some ridiculously remote

period in time, they actually don't because before 1551 they don't exist. And you say as an aside, there's another aside that we can refer to here as well, because a number of pubs will claim, of course, to be in the Guinness Book of Records, that they maintain a category and that such and such a pub has been identified as the oldest pub in the world. One of these, in particular, is the fighting Cox in St. Albans, which hit the news earlier this year when it closed. and there was lots of news articles which said Britain's oldest pub has closed for the first time in 1,200 plus years because the Cox claims to have been opened in 793 AD. Of course we already know now that we don't have pub surviving from that period in time, so that's not true, but the Cox also claims to be in the Guinness Book of Records.

But what I discovered during the research for this article is that Guinness don't actually maintain a category for the oldest book. pub. So that claim is also a false one as well. So we're in trouble with some of these claims where they're looking at licences or they're looking at being in the Guinness Book of Records. And the other book that, of course, is important here as well to a number of pubs is that they're in the Doomsday Book and that the pub has been mentioned in that. And unfortunately, I'm here to take the fun out of the situation again because there are no pubs mentioned in the Doomsday book. I know this because I'm not. I've read somebody else say it, another pub historian.

And then I was like, okay, well, they've said it. I trust them, but I'm going to go and have a check myself on there are no pubs in the Doomsday Book whatsoever. So a lot of the proofs that are mentioned by some of these claimants to be Britain's oldest pub, they don't stack up because we don't have records in the Doomsday Book, Guinness Book of Records don't hold a category, and licenses don't exist until the middle of the 16th century. So a lot of these claims are on shaky ground.

Yeah, absolutely. And I think that's quite nice because I think people can go out and look at them themselves and go, ah, I happen to know. And actually, interestingly, I just wanted to look through some of the ones you wrote about. And one of them, I think all our listeners can immediately say it's going to be wrong, which was the old ferry boat in in St. Ives, Cambridgeshire, which says it sold drinks from 560 AD. Yeah, that's quite the claim, isn't it? Yeah. The Romans barely shut the door on Britain and the pubs are already open. Yeah, I mean, it's... Yeah, building still stands. In reality, the ferry boat is a 17th century building. It's quite well understood that one is. So, you know, the buildings archaeology speaks there. We don't really have hardly any written records from the year 560. Again, it's a very specific date, isn't it?

You have to wonder what document that might even be. But that's a very, very old one. And demonstrably, it's a 17th century building. Yeah. Okay. So let's have a little go through some of these claims then, because we've done a lot of not this, not that, the other. So let's look at some of the sort of contenders because actually when we get into the

medieval period proper, we do have quite a few that have sort of relatively reasonable claim, I suppose. So just looking through the ones that you've written about, one of them that seems quite convincing is one, again, close to you in Nottingham. I feel like you must have done a lot of research trips for this, but another aside that. So Nottingham's the old trip to Jerusalem. How about that one? That claims to go back to the medieval period, doesn't that? Hands up here. I've got personal collection to that place because when I was an undergraduate student back in the mid-90s, I worked in there for about six months or so. That was my student job. So it's a building that I know very well. It's one of my favourite Nottingham pubs. It's a very atmospheric timber frame building,

which has sandstone caves at its rear. It's very popular. It's where people bring tourists to have a look round at what an old English pubs. looks like. It dates apparently to 1189 on the side of the wall it says England's oldest inn so you know that's a big mighty claim. We have to use buildings archaeology and also archival records here. It's entirely 17th century or later. Ah! The claim is usually made ah well it was the brewhouse to Nottingham Castle which is directly above it. There was a brewhouse somewhere in the region of the old trip to Jerusalem, but it wasn't that particular building. It wasn't even the caves because the entirety of brewhouse yard was cut back, the rock was cut back in the 17th century and then buildings were constructed in front of that.

And that's why we know that the 17th century is when the trip to Jerusalem is first erected as a timber frame building and its caves beyond. so it can't date to a period prior to the 17th century because the shape of Bruehouse Yard was so different back then. So unfortunately that doesn't stack up. The building itself, whatever it was constructed for, we know it was a pub by the second half of the 18th century. It was originally called the Pilgrim. And then by the end of the 18th century, it is being called a trip to Jerusalem. Quite when the claim that it's England's oldest inn is from. I'm not quite certain on that.

but it's not been a pub for that long, unfortunately. It's a great boozer. I recommend having a pint there, but it's certainly not England's oldest. It's not even the oldest pub in Nottingham. That would be a place called The Bell, which has timber framing, which dates to the middle years of the 15th century,

tree ring dated, and we actually have an archival reference to the Bell as being open as a pub in the middle years of the 17th century. So the trip, unfortunately, not even the oldest pub in the town of Nottingham. Let's have one or two others. Which other contenders are there from this sort of period? I suppose if we're looking at the 12th century, which we were with the trip to Jerusalem, if we look at the Skirid Mountain Inn, if dive over the border into Wales, they also claim to have been open since 1110, so preceding the trip slightly.

But here, a lot of work has been done, particularly by Cadoo, who are the curators, of archaeology and history over in Wales. And they've done quite a bit of work on this building, and it's entirely 17th century or later as well. So actually a lot of these buildings that we're looking at here, whether it be the ferry boat, whether it be the trip, whether it be the Skirid Mountain Inn, they're all early modern.

They're all timber framed or stone buildings of that later periods, rather than even being medieval. So I think it's one of those issues where if a building looks like it's quite ancient, for the vast majority of people, it's easy to believe that it could be 12th century in date, when in reality it's five centuries later. Most people cannot actually spot the difference between a 12th century building and a 17th century building. I'm not expecting them to do so. That's why we have nerds like myself to go and look at such structures.

But the 17th century does seem to be quite a common date for a lot of these properties. Okay, so we could go through all of these all day, I think, probably. many of them. But let's actually get to the real contenders now because I know there are two that you've singled out as really being in that line to get the sort of top price of being the oldest pub. And the first one of those is one with slightly the wrong name, namely the new inn. Tell me about that one. It's quite a common name for pubs actually the new inn. And what I really like about pubs call the new in is that they're rarely new buildings. quite often really ancient.

The New Inn at Gloucester is one that I've known for quite a while. In fact, I stayed there last summer, and it's quite a popular one with reenactors who are involved in Glouceston. You can quite often walk into the gallery courtyard of the New Inn and find people in the 17th century dress there, so it's quite an atmospheric place. What I'm usually looking at for evidence for really old pubs is I want to see continuous usage of a building across,

time, so from when it goes up, I want to see that it's been a pub the whole time. And then in order to sort of date the thing, we want to have some really good archival evidence for its foundation, but also we want to be able to prove that archaeologically as well. And the new inn in Gloucester has all three elements. It has been open since its inception. And we know that it was founded back in the middle years of the 15th. century. So elements of it have been dated to 1432 by dendrochronology and also we know quite a bit about it because it was founded by one of the monks at Gloucester Abbey. So it's another one of these properties that has connections to monasticism. Now it's a commercial foundation and it's

founded by a fellow called John Twining and he's a monk at Gloucester and we know about the foundation because the records of Gloucester Abbey, now cathedral, survive. So we've got great archival evidence. It was owned by the Abbey, even after the dissolution of the monasteries, when it becomes a cathedral. It's retained by the Dean and Chapter. And then latterly, they actually sell the building off in 1858, and then it becomes a true commercial enterprise.

But it's still open, crucially. You can still get a pint there. So that's going back to 1432 when it's being constructed in the 15th century there. So that's a nice early date. I mean, it's not as old as 56080 or 793 or 1189, but it's still a remarkably ancient structure. And also I think it's remarkable that the business has been consistent, that people have been drinking in this purpose-built boozer for so very long. That's a real thrill for a lot of people.

Absolutely, and I love that, but it's got all these different types of evidence. You've got the archaeology, you've got the building, the records, you've got everything, haven't you there? Which is absolutely fantastic. But we can do ever so slightly better, can we? Because we can go a little bit further back in time, and this is exactly what brings me to the pub that I went to, which is just on the road for me, I'm very happy to say. And that particular pub is called the Georgian, and it is in a place called Norton St. Philip in summer So tell me all about the Georgian.

So the Georgian, I must start by preface in, may not be the oldest in this country. But what I can say is in my research, I couldn't find anything older that's had continuous usage. There will probably be somebody who listens to this podcast and pops up and say, oh, well, actually, I recorded this building and I looked at this. And actually, it's three years older. So, you know, the Georgian may get pipped to the post. But this is the oldest one that I've been able to. identify and it does crop up in lots of other people's research as being a really old example

of a British pub. So the George Inn has its roots in the later 14th century and it's another one of these with a connection to monasticism and this is really the key to actually have the archival record which says well we know when this was founded. Now we don't know this specific year in the same way that we do with the new inn at Gloucester. But what we do on the understand is that Hinton Priory, which is down in the South West, moved its charter house fair to the village of Norton St Philip in the middle years of the 14th century. And clearly this annual fair was so popular that they realised that they could probably make a few quid because of the amount of people that were flocking in to the fair and required accommodation. So they built themselves one of these

essentially hotels, a guest house in the village for people attending the fair. And stylistically, we can look at part of the George at Norton's and Philip, and we can see that it dates from its mouldings and from its window tracery, great stone frontage that it has at ground level. We can say that it dates to the latter part of the 14th century. We don't have the year of foundation of it, unfortunately. So the ground floor, much of the ground floor is all built of stone. Now above that is two stories of timber framing.

And that's actually dates to a slightly later period in time. So stratigraphically it's very easy to see that the two are of different phases, that the stone building goes in first and then we've got the upper stories are of a second phase. They sort of block some of the features and you can see that actually, this is a structure of a slightly later period in time. And the dendrochronology there is 1430 to 1432. So again, really quite specific and interestingly, almost exactly contemporary with the new inn at Gloucester. But because we've got the stone element with the tracerid windows, we can actually push that dating back a bit. Can't give you a specific year,

but it's somewhere in the latter end of the 14th century that that building goes on. So it just pips the new inn to the post because of the stylistic evidence. But it goes into a cater for people who are coming to this Hinton Priory Charterhouse Fair at Norton, St. Philip. Fantastic. So you can actually go there and you can go through this lovely doorway. It's a sort of arched doorway you could go into it. And that is the original medieval parts, is it? The doorway is slightly later. That's part of the 15th century remodeling of the building.

But the windows that you look out of, most of those. windows, you are sat with your pint looking out of a window that people have been gazing out of since the later 14th century. But yeah, I think what's one of the things that's so brilliant about the Georgian as well is continuous having a very fascinating history. We don't have time to go into that right now, but it's got this involvement in the civil war. We've got rebellions happening. There's actual hangings taking place there as well, so a slightly gruesome history. But then it continues to be a brilliant pub and today and it's got brilliant food and a really nice atmosphere. So I promise I'm not on commission or anything like that, but it's absolutely worth going to.

So James, that's absolutely fantastic. So I think we got there. So as you say, it may not be the oldest one, but that definitely works for me, I think. One of the things that I'd sort of say is that this argument crops up so often, both in pubs themselves, as in the argument about, oh, we're the oldest in such and such a town, or we're the oldest in the country, whether it be those arguments, they crops up so often, both in pubs themselves, but also a lot on the internet, there's lots of books published about this sort of thing. There's a bit of me that wonders, though, whether we even need to be having these arguments.

Is there really an importance? Is there a significance in being the oldest pub? Which I think is an identification, which is so difficult to point to, that I'm a lot of I just think that we need to be really looking at these buildings. We need to be looking at the qualities of the beer, the food, the service, the atmosphere of the place, and also ensuring that these places stay open. We're seeing pub closures all across the country at the moment, and it's being really, really exaggerated by the cost of living crisis, the energy crisis, and many of these businesses are just shutting up shop.

So I really do think that whether you drink or not, these are amazing places that really do act as the hub and the heart of communities. And when they're gone, they rarely reopen. So support your pubs if you can because they can be amazing multifunctional spaces. My local in Nottingham, it's used by theatre groups, it's used by chess clubs, folk groups meet there. It's not just a place for drinking. there's also this community asset for it as well. And this is the really importance of the Great British Boomsa. Absolutely. Well, brilliant place to top.

And actually, you're carrying on a tradition that's been going on for almost a millennium, really. So it's important for that reason as well. But absolutely, do go and visit these places. And now you've also armed with some tools to judge some of the claims for yourself. We've been listening carefully. James, thank you so much for coming along and sharing all your experience. with our listeners here today. Thanks for having me.

It's been a brilliant second recording for History Hit. I've really enjoyed myself. Excellent. So thank you all so much for listening to today's episode. I'm Dr. Kett Jarman, and this has been an episode of Gone Medieval from History Hit. Now, don't forget that if you need more medieval information in your life, in between episodes, you can always sign up to our weekly newsletter,

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