Oh What A Time... - #157 Pubs (Part 2)

Episode Date: January 20, 2026

This is Part 2! For Part 1, check the feed!This week we’re popping into history’s local - it’s a whole episode dedicated to pubs! We’ve got a brief history of the British pub, this history of the pub landlord and how some pubs were designed to pull in punters from the tourist trail!And this week we’re discussing trousers, sex education at school, airports and much more; so if you’ve got something to contribute, you know what to do: [e-mail] if you want more from the show (including the audio from our first ever live show at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho), you should sign up for our Patreon! On there you’ll now find:•The full archive of bonus episodes•Brand new bonus episodes each month•OWAT subscriber group chats•Loads of extra perks for supporters of the show•PLUS ad-free episodes earlier than everyone elseJoin us at 👉 patreon.com/ohwhatatimeAnd as a special thank you for joining, use the code CUSTARD for 25% off your first month.You can also follow us on: X (formerly Twitter) at @ohwhatatimepodAnd Instagram at @ohwhatatimepodAaannnd if you like it, why not drop us a review in your podcast app of choice?Thank you to Dan Evans for the artwork (idrawforfood.co.uk).Chris, Elis and Tom x Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Oh, What a Time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free. Plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show tickets and access to the O Watertime Group chat. Plus, if you become an O Watertime All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis, will riff on your name to postulate where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash O Watertime.

Hello and welcome to part two of pubs. Let's get on with the show. I am now going to be telling you lovely boys a bit about the history of landlords and inspectors and also how pubs turn from a cottage industry into something far bigger. It's genuinely fascinating. Some of this stuff I had no idea about

and I'm so glad I now have kind of found out about this stuff. When you picture your sort of typical medieval landlord, what are you seeing? What are you picking? When you imagine the person selling you booze in medieval times, what are you imagining? Massive belly. Okay, yeah. Big warts. Yeah.

Huge hands. A shirt with the sleeves rolled up. Those warts sort of lightly touching the top of your gimmets as well. You see the phone moves. Oh, yeah, yeah. That's ruined that now. Like a big apron that's covered in like beer slops. Okay, what about you, Chris?

It's monks, isn't it? Isn't it all monks at this age? No. Actually, historically in Britain, landlords were more often than not women. Oh, okay. So it's not these burly, big bellied men. That's not really who it was. In fact, this is something that Shakespeare reflected in his plays.

In The Taming of the Shrew, for example, he refers to Marion Hackett, the fat ale wife of Wincott, while others in Shakespeare's time poke fun at fat landlady who had a great bent for spiced cakes. These women were associated with gluttony, indulgence, and forms of sin, all stereotypes from a different age. But the point is women played a central role in the development of the brewing industry in medieval times. So there's legal documents which are written in Latin, of course, and they show that women involved in the manufacture of ale were described as braciatrix, while in common slang, such women were referred to as Breweres.

In the court roles of Colchester, for example, we can read about a certain Clarice Le Brewerre. That's a great name, that, isn't it? Yeah. Who lived and worked as long ago as 1312. That's more than 700 years ago. Wow. And in fact, this is an interesting point.

It's from these occupations that we get common surnames like Brewer, Brewster. Ah. As well as those who derive from aspects of the industry, which are harder to spot. For instance, Brenner. which is a distiller, Goodall, which refers to good ale. Oh, okay. And service, which is a Scottish nickname for a pub landlord. But there were ale men, but they were at the time relatively uncommon.

In 1509, a list of more than 150 brewers and publicans in Aberdeen, for instance, revealed that all of them were women. And it was the alewife who predominated almost everywhere in Britain. Indeed, the word is documented from at least the fourth century, but was obviously much older in common usage and meant a woman who bruise or sells ale, a female owner or landlady or public house or tavern. And there was a logic to this, okay.

Why do you think it was that women were predominantly in these positions rather than men? Why do you think most landlords were landlady? Well, they'd have been serving men largely. Yes, that's true. But there's a key reason. It's really interesting. I did not know about this. I don't know.

I can't even guess. Well, it's because, well, Chris, you touched upon it earlier. It was a cottage industry, okay, to begin with, which was more typical of kitchen activities like baking. So you could do it in the house. Exactly, than of large-scale commercial endeavours. So like most food and drink preparation, the manufacture fell to the women of the household.

Wow. Okay. So to avoid waste and to make ends meet, basically they sold off excess booze whenever they could. And because beer was safer to drink than water and consume daily, just in the way that people drink tea or coffee today, it was a safe bet for additional income. I love the idea that you make so much booze,

you've just got to sell off the excess. Yeah. That's your life. When you realise that it was safer to drink beer than drink water. Yeah. Try selling that to a kid today. They just find it hilarious. Yes.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The idea that you're in year two when you're doing your phonics or whatever to try and learn to read and having a glass of star of Pramon because you're thirsty. Being told off a slur, But it's literally one that.

Do you think people sort of just got used to a low level of drunk at all times? Well, that's what small beer was, wasn't it? Small beer was weak beer that you'd give to kids. Exactly. Now, what about those pesky inspectors, I mentioned? Well, the connection with the kitchen was enshrined in regulation, which governed the making and sale of ale and alcohol in the medieval period, meaning landlords were answerable to a local court called the Assigni.

of bread and ale. These courts were established in the middle of the 13th century, in 1266, in fact, and they governed size, weight quality. And here's a fun fact. They were the first direct government intervention

into food and drink in the English history. There was literally the first time the government ever got involved in food and drink in England was through this, through homemade booze.

It was the first time. Wow. I'm glad they had regulation. Well, yeah, absolutely. They regulated it because they needed to check the quality of beer. They employed – we've talked about jobs we wouldn't want from history. What do you think about this one? The courts employed inspectors known as ale founders or ale coners or ale tasters, as they were often described. And their task was to ensure that ale was not adulterated or watered down. It was served according to established portions, and it was sold at the proper price. So their job was to go around the country, visiting these places and getting pissed.

seeing if the ale was good and it was worth selling. Thoughts on that as a job? That was a big thing when I was a teenager. Or they watered down the beer in here? Yeah. Maybe I'm just drinking in different places. No one ever tells me that anymore. No, that's really died out.

You used to get it working men's clubs. People would always say it in those. When I were ever in those visiting Northern family, it'd be like, oh, this is where they water down the beer. Yeah, yeah. But what I never understood is practically, how do you do that? If it's coming from a big cask, there's quite a lot of engineering required to get the water in it too.

wine I can understand. Well, unless they're pouring water into the cask at the beginning. And when you're charging £1.18 a pint, is it worth it? Also, when you're 18 or 19, you want places that are watering down the beer. Well, you should. Because you're going to find yourself in a sorry state. If my memories of drinking when I was 18 or 19, ideally it would be 90% water. You are such a dad, Tom.

God's sake, come on, man. Watering down the Smyr and off ice would have been my main. concerned when I was 18 actually. So these ale tasted, they travel around, they tasted the ale, they saw if it was fit for consumption, and there were risks, it's worth saying. So this might sound like a good job, but there were risks. If the tasters failed to do their duty, they were fined, and landlords themselves were fined if they failed to conform to regulations, or if they were rebellious towards officials. And these ale tasters were almost always men. But for me, none of this is the most interesting part. The most interesting aspect is what set the pub and brewing industry

on the road to the huge multinational business it is today. And it was due to a combination of a few things. One, new technology and ingredients. Next was institutions such as a specialised brewing guild. And then finally, the advent of industrial scale brewing in the 18th century. From then on, brewing was no longer a cottage industry using traditional domestic methods, but one that required capital and a workforce. The guild's organisations such as London's worshipful company of brewers, there's a title, charted 1438, Edinburgh's Society of Brewers, which is 1596. Glasgow's incorporation of maltmen. That's a fantastic, I love that, being part of the incorporation of maltmen.

That's 1605. Beer, shreddies. Horlicks. Yeah, they do all of it. They developed in the 15th and 16th centuries, and over time squeezed women out of the industry by affording prestige to their male membership, although it's worth saying this process transformation was a slow one.

For instance, Aberdeen's male brewers did not establish a majority over their female counterparts until the mid-17th century. However, what tipped the scale in favour of large-scale industry and therefore men with money, the brewer capitalists, was the arrival of one thing?

I want to guess what this key change was and why it changed the beer industry completely. What do you think it was? It's something completely changes the nature of brewing beer. I tell you what, usually you ask questions like this, and I can guess. This is the second time in this episode, I have no idea. Elle, I'll give you a clue. It's an ingredient.

Yeast. Not yeast, no. Hops. Ding, ding, ding. That's right. It's hops. Okay. So medieval ale, in Britain at least, use ingredients typically found in

kitchen. So he talks about this. It's cottage industry. So herbs, multi-grains, ale, yeast, oats and so forth, which meant that the booze, and this is not something you need in your life, I'd say. It meant the booze made only had a really short shelf life of a few days. So it had to be consumed immediately, basically, ideally in the local area. I think having beer in your house, which has a time limit of a few days is not probably a good thing to have an active thing. I have to finish this love. I'm sorry, I do need to crack into it. Yeah, it'll go to waste. Hops, however, which came to Britain from Belgium and the Netherlands in the 16th century, increased the shelf life, made it possible, and this is a crucial thing, to transport barrels over wide areas,

and also made it possible to brew beer on a large scale, a scale which privileged capital and commercialisation. So really, it's this key ingredient that changed everything. It meant that beer could last. It meant that beer didn't have to just be. sold in the local area because it would go off after two days. It also meant you could transport it and it meant you can make it in much greater quantities. So this one ingredient

is what's led to this billion, billion, billion, billion dollar industry today. It made amazing, isn't it? That little chain. Wow. It just changed everything. At first, hops were imported from the low countries to Britain. Eventually the crop was grown domestically, particularly in Kent,

adding to supply and fueling a revolution in production and taste. Although, interestingly, some cities and towns ban the cultivation of hops to preserve local traditions. I quite like that. Norwich did it in 1471, Shrewsbury in 1519, Lester around the same time, basically to try and to preserve this locally brewed tradition and these small inns. Because when you go for a drink in Belgium, a lot of the beer is quite historic. It's been made since the 14 or 1500s.

And I can say from my stag dew that you are both at, It's too strong. Yeah, yeah. Preach. Yeah, I went to watch Wales play Belgium in Brussels in July. It was horrendous. Belgium really is a nightmare for the English sensibility because you're so used to pints.

It's almost offensive when they give you a half pint. Yeah, yeah. And then you realise it's because it's 50% proof. So you drink it twice as fast to make a pint. You have another one. A couple of hours later. Yeah, yeah. You've fallen in the gutter and you've broken all your teeth.

and is a nightmare. The faces of our group of friends when we were sat waiting for the Eurostar on the way back. Utter horror panic. I remember the sweat. The Belgian beer sweat I had the next day. It's thick. It's like marmite.

They gave us one. They often give you like four mini ones in a row on a little wooden plank. I had that a couple of time. Each one is about the strength of seven points. How they get anything done is, I've ever told you about the time I went in the previous time I've been to Bruges

I went to the Beer Museum in Bruges which we should have done on your stag really but in the Belgian Beer Museum it's essentially like propaganda about the health benefits of beer you're reading it like this is astonishing like how are they getting away with this

but one of the things that struck me was that in Belgium in Bruges particularly the monasteries would brew the beer and they actually lay pipes into the pubs in the towns. So the monastery brings the beer. This is like centuries old.

They pipe directly from the breweries into the pubs by these pipes. Belgian church organs, all their pipes are completely full of beer. Credible gurgling sound when they play a quarter of sea. I'm going to say it, I will never drink Belgian beer again. I do not have the tolerance or capacity to deal with it. It's just not for me. It's too much. Yeah, yeah.

I can't. I can't. Half a pint of Guinness. Packer at Crisps. Home, that's me. Yeah. Home by nine. Just leave me alone. Perfect. Okay, right. Now, pubs, obviously, historic places, an enormous part of the tourist trade.

A lot of pubs become tourist attractions. And I'm going to talk about a pub in Yorkshire that I've actually been to, okay? So the story goes that in 1830, a farm worker called Thomas Greenwood was out walking on Shackleton Moor at Peckettwell near Hebden Bridge in Yorkshire where my wife works every summer

because she's got an acting job that films up there and it was 1830s as I said and he spotted something sticking out of a bog so he went to investigate that's such a great sort of 1830 sentence that isn't it is a sort of thing that would happen yeah yeah it doesn't happen anymore I've never met anyone who spotted something

sticking out of a bog no no I don't hang around in bogs I don't hang around in marshland or in swamps all the rage so he spotted something He went to investigate and he was shocked to find human remains. Oh, okay, so it's a preserved body. That was my first guess when you said he spoilted and he sticking out. I wasn't expecting that. Oh, weren't you?

Okay, so he took the corpse to the village and it was put on display at the local pub of the Robin Hood Inn, where I had a drink in June and July, in the hope that someone would be able to provide an identity. I think that we've got modern policing, right, and that was a bad way of doing it. So they prop the body up in the pub in case someone came in for a drink and then wait a second, that's my husband.

Yeah. Oh, Andy. We'll see, how long has he been dead for? It reminds me I've not seen for ages, right? So Andy's died. He's been propped up in his local pub. He's been found in a bog. Now, eventually someone did recognise the individual

and I explained that this was Thomas Townsend who'd been murdered almost 30 years before. Wow. How did they know well? They said that Townsend had a club foot and a missing kneecap and that this was the giveaway. So apparently they had the kneecap

on the mantelpiece at home, the identifiers were Townsend's mother and sister. So they've gone into the Robin Hood. I'm now imagining, by the way, Elle, a Cinderella-style situation where they're bringing the kneecap in and seeing if it fits. It's the bodily equivalent to the glass shit, the glass slipper of what they call it. It's him. Yeah. So they've gone in, right.

And they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's the club foot I recognise them 30 years ago. Oh yeah, that's the gap where the kneecap should be. Now, unfortunately, identifying Townsend had taken so long that this macabre site in the pub had become part of the pub's attraction. Okay, it was bringing in tourists. Oh, no. And others were curious about the story and the body, of course. Some of them even took away souvenirs, including Townsend's teeth.

Wow. How often do you think drunk stagdos are doing a weekend at Bernie type situation? Yeah, all of that stuff. Now, I was in the pub. I went there a couple of times. I went there with some of the other actors, Nigel Boyle, who was in line of duty. And I was having a drink with Nigel.

I was, you know, you're at the bar. And they've got like Stella and Fosters and like a local ale and then a madri. And you think, where was he then? Was he by the gambler? What's happening right now? Now, the story's firmly part of the pub's mythology. It still appeals to tourists, right? just like me and Nigel, but did it really happen? That's the question. Now, what we do know

is that the Robin Hood Inn was regularly used in the 19th century as a venue for inquests and other similar hearings. So one, held in 1835, detailed the death of a tea deal, must have been a tea dealer who was found dead in the woods near Peckett well. Another time, this one was from 1868, it involved a deaf and dumb weaver who died locally at the age of 81. He got drunk at the pub. he was taken home to sleep it off but then he had an accident he fell backwards down the stairs leading to his bedroom

and he died of his injuries now we know that the publican in post in 1830 Thomas Whiteley's that's the third Tom in about four paragraphs popular name in 1830s Yorkshire great name

he had a bit of a wobbly reputation okay so he was had a reputation for getting in trouble on a few occasions for selling adulterated alcohol on the premises notably gin and finally we know that in January 1823 a wounded and bruised body

the child was found out on the hills the rumour circulated that the child had been murdered by the head of the local workhouse and the inquest and the post-mortem was held at Peckett well and that the jury concluded it was an accidental death so somewhere in these stories lies the truth

but tourists and folklorists and there was that much time on their hands or enough time to delve of the foot-noted version of the past, preferred a much simpler distillation, which was that, and that is when reality got lost in the way. So pubs have been inventing traditions and tales since the 19th century.

Oh, that's so interesting. Because it would increase travel opportunities and weekend getaways, and it would increase trade at what could have been out-of-the-way places. Because having been to the Robin Hood, it's a couple of miles away from Hebden Bridge, it is out of the way.

Yeah. So there's not an enormous amount of footfall, like if it was in a big town, So you want to try and encourage people to your rural pub. Of course you're going to have a dead body sat at the bar. Yeah, it's a great idea, yeah. It's a natural thing to do. I don't know why it hasn't caught on more.

On a similar note, I just watched a documentary Simon Reeves about pilgrimages. Oh, yeah. And essentially churches worked the same way where they would get a relic, a so-called relic from an old saint and be like, this is the shinbone of St. Tom or whatever. You'd go in there, go, oh, yeah, there's the shinbone. And then five meters down the road, you might have the blood. of Christ, which they had in Brood, which obviously looks like a little sausage in a glass jar.

This is Jesus' digital watch. So then you've got the White Hart in in Edinburgh's grass market. That's got all sorts of stories to offer visitors. There's one about Robert Bernstein there in 1791 during his final visit to the Scottish capital. Also, a lot of these stories are quite gruesome. So there's the rumour, and it is a rumour, that the serial killers, William Burke and William Hare who kill 16 people in 10 months over the course of 1828. to fill demand for cadavers at the city's medical school

who were regulars at the pub. So not only did they drink there, but they also used the place to pick up some of their victims. And, you know, this kind of gruesome mythology, it is attractive to some tourists or some kinds of tourists. Well, look at the blind beggar in Bethelgreen, was it the craze? Is that way it was?

Yeah. Everybody cray, yeah. And there's similar mythology surrounding the Ten Bells Pub in Spittal Fields in London and the East End. Yeah, been there. Where they think that several of Jack the Ripper's victims apparently drunk, Annie Chapman, and his final victim Mary Jane Kelly.

Now, in 1976, this is not sure about this, the landlord of the Ten Bells renamed the place the Jack the Ripper to cash in on the tourist market, but he changed it back in, it was changed back in 1988. Some things are so toned deaf, you think, come on, mate, what are you doing? Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's remarkable. The Jack the Ripper trade makes me feel very uncomfortable.

The Jack the Ripper industry. Yeah. When you consider what it was, for some reason, it seems to be, as a crime, it seems to be regarded in a different way to almost all other crimes of its type. Well, it's all got wrapped up in sort of Sherlock Holmesian type idea of London, smoky streets. It's become almost like a story rather than actually just a horrific. set of crimes. And there's Jack the Ripper tolls

and things. And you want to go up to people and say, do you know what happened? I used to live off brick lane in Shortage and there would be Jack that something, I don't know, one of the murders must have been near where our house was, or a flat rather, and we would come out regularly in the morning and hear like, you'd hear a guy in a top hat and a cape explaining the gruesome murder that happened

just around this, and you're like, I don't want to hear this. It's so strange. You're like, me, I'm just trying to go to press. But then you say, strange, but by extension, look how popular true crime is as a genre. It's still kind of part of the same world, isn't it? What's interesting about the Jack the Ripper thing? Of course, he was never caught.

So mostly true crime things, people have an interest because you're interested in how the person was tracked down and came to justice. Yeah. I mean, if we really wanted to make money out of podcasting, this would be called Oh, What a Crime. And it would be a spin-off. There's the spin-off. There you are. Love it. And, you know, travelled writers, they would do their best to feel popular awareness of apparently ancient stories, or they would try and convey a kind of local rusticism, especially in rural areas.

So they would write about pubs. And the use of tourist mythology, it wasn't only about gruesome tales or the presentation of rural areas as rustic, you know, by travel writers, but also about conveying greater age and rootedness than a past. In other words, especially in areas which grew up or even developed in the, you know, Industrial Revolution that had so little obvious history of their own because when I think of a lot of villages in South Wales, which I now think of as really historic, they often didn't exist until the 1850s. They were there because coal was discovered in the area. So you would bring in a lot of people to work in those places in those coal mines and suddenly villages are springing up everywhere. So you are trying to create your own culture and your own

narrative and history. So professional and scientific analysis, which often debunks the stories, and shows buildings to be more molten than they appear or else are claimed to be, they've got less interest for tourists, haven't they? Yeah. You know, and Aquarians and folklorists than the tall tales masquerading as the truth. So it's...

Every pub wants to be a Victorian pub. Yes. And occasionally, I will discover that pub was built in 1904. I'm like, oh, what a shame. And you'll put your pint down and you'll leave immediately. Spit at the barman and leave. Sorry, I'll drink my bed. Beaver Town neck oil somewhere else.

I'll slide my peanut cladda back along the bar. My lunchtime peanut calada. I'll drink my traditional Beaver Town neck oil elsewhere, actually. Now, in other words, we're reminded once more the power of myth and legend and the appeal of certain types of stories of popular imagination. So before the advent of civic and municipal buildings, local courthouses and council offices, pubs and hotels were often used for inquests and public meetings and so on

you know so that is why of course people think well there must be ghosts here because there were bodies you know there was evidence all sorts of stuff in these pub that is why this pub is haunted but common truth you know hardly makes a tourist appeal there's no good putting facts on a blue park

people don't really want that as much but yeah our history you know you want to your pub to say yeah our pub is basically the same as every other pub in the area. It was built in the 1880s and people have been drinking here for about 140 years and that's that. You know, a gruesome tale, a celebrity visit,

famous regular, well, all sorts of things are perfect for drawing in customers, you know, especially when pubs are struggling. Hence, the plaque put up by the British Comedy Society on the Angel in Highgate in London in 2012 to commemorate the frequent attendance at the pub by Graham Chapman of my own.

Monty Python. And the plaque says he drank here often and copiously. Love it. But you know, you can prove that Graham Chapman used to drink in that pub. Yeah. So it's, maybe that's the direction we're going in. I could say, from growing up

in Bath, if you're running a pub and you want to pack it out, you don't need a dead body at the bar or really even a celebrity story. You just need to have word put out that you serve 16 year olds. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because the pub that I went to in Bath when I was just when I was 18 or 17 or whatever it happened to be

it was just all full of kids who look at young as I did and should have no reason to be served. 16-year-olds and karaoke. Yeah, exactly. A pool table. Oh, yeah. And they cast a blind eye to your ID. It is the perfect pub.

And it will pack out, I promise you. This might become a new feature, but what is something that happened in your lifetime that feels like it should have happened much longer ago. Because the nearest pub to my house where I grew up was called The Unicorn. And on Sunday, to bring in the punters on a Sunday, they would have a meat raffle. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is in the 90s.

They still exist. That feels like victorious. Yeah. You seem like your person it would still go to those, Chris, though, to me. I'm sort of surprised that's not still part of your life. After five weeks and not winning the meat, I thought, some of this. Is it the same meat? Yeah.

Yeah, if no one wins. Same. Do you know what, that's a great idea. It is, yeah. That's a great idea for a feature. Something that happened in your lifetime that feels like it should have happened way before. That's a very, very good question.

Basically, Tom's whole childhoods. It qualifies for this. Well, that's it for pubs. Thank you so much for listening. If you want to become a subscriber to the show, you should be able to, at the time of recording, access the live show we recorded last week at the Underbelly Boulevard in Soho.

That is on our Patreon, as well as two bonus episodes every month. So if you want to sign up, you can just go to ohwattatime.com or patron.com forward slash oh what a time. But thank you so much for listening. Send us all your correspondence to hello at ohwatertime.com. And we'll see you next week. Bye-bye. Bye.

Oh, what a time is now on Patreon. You can get main feed episodes before everyone else. Add free plus access to our full archive of bonus content, two bonus episodes every month, early access to live show. tickets and access to the Oh, What a Time group chat. Plus, if you become an O Water Time All-Timer, myself, Tom and Ellis will riff on your name to postulate

where else in history you might have popped up. For all your options, you can go to patreon.com forward slash oh-water time.