As I'm doing all the pubs in Southampton I'm finding that a number of the places listed in various guides are bars rather than pubs, and some places are neither. PubStops has the Grand Cafe listed for example, and Camra's WhatPub lists a coffee bar and tea shop because they have a bottle or two of beer.
There has long been some discussion and uncertainty about the difference between a pub and a bar, and while most people may feel they "know it when they see it", ask them to define the difference, and you get a variety of explanations such as in Bar v Pub, where they feel a pub is defined by serving large meals and desserts, while a bar just does light snacks and pizza. Hmmm - clearly not a British website!
A bar is a place where alcohol is served. The bar may be in a hotel, night club, concert hall, airport, or pub. So it isn't really pub v bar; the question is really, is this bar in a pub, or some other venue? The term bar may come to suggest the entire venue if there is no other identifier, but that still doesn't make it an either/or situation. If it's just a bar, it just means its not a hotel or pub - it's a standalone bar.
So what is a pub? Well, at its simplest it is a place that serves beer to be drunk on the premises. We know that beer has been brewed and sold since the dawn of civilization - indeed, there is growing scholarly agreement that settling down to grow barley to make beer was the reason that civilizations developed. The only civilization for which evidence is missing is the Indian civilization. We also know that beer was made on farms for the workers, in castles and estate houses for the occupants, in monasteries, etc, and any surplus sold off. It was also made and sold by individuals - as with the Ango-Saxon alewives who would put a broom outside their house to show when they had beer to sell. But what we don't know for sure is when the first dwellings especially for the consumption of beer were created. In my April 2004 article for RateBeer (now reprinted here on my blog) I mentioned that "the Celtic warriors of Ancient Britain would have knocked back their heather flavoured ales sitting on benches like a German bierkeller", and that the Romans brought over the roadside tavern; so we tend to speculate that it is around this time that the first beer drinking establishments were set down. The Celts are likely to have had community halls for drinking; it is also speculated that sacred sites would have been places where beer was consumed. We know that beer has been brewed and consumed in Britain since around 4,000 BC, at the same time as the standing circles were made. The brewing at Skara Brae is an interesting discovery, and has resulted in much discussion, such as in A History of Beer and Brewing, and in my Feb 2006 article on Scottish beer for RateBeer.
While we can't accurately date the earliest pubs in Britain, we do know something of their later development. This article gives a useful broad summary with mention of inns and beerhouses. Over time they became more and more legislated with laws regarding opening hours, strength, price and amount of beer, and admission of children. Sometimes the laws are strict, sometimes they are liberal. It all depends on the time and the intention. For example, when gin houses were causing much ruin and distress the Beerhouse Act 1830 liberalised the brewing and selling of beer, to make it more competitive with gin and more appealing to the masses. Some of the great gin houses then switched over to being beerhouses. So some of today's pubs actually started out selling spirits rather than beer.
And where are we today? Well we have an array of premises that sell beer for consumption on the premises. Generally if the establishment has been selling beer for over 50 years it will be a pub or hotel (and most older hotel bar lounges are fairly indistinguishable from pubs). Most pubs are stand alone buildings- that is they are not part of another building as bars are. You drink in a bar at a football stadium not in a pub. The pub will be outside the stadium. The exceptions to this are brewery taps. A brewery tap is that part of a brewery where beer is sold directly to the public. For a small brewery whose only or main outlet is the brewery tap, the whole structure would be termed a brewpub. It may even be called a brewpub if the brewing is not done at the premises, but is done only for sale in that one pub and rarely at any other. Some modern pubs are built into buildings, such as airports, railway stations, or shopping centres. Why are they not bars? Well, they are designed to look and feel like pubs, with the same sort of furniture, decoration and layout as you'd find in any regular pub. They want that ambiance, and that association with the history and tradition of the British pub. They may not have the provenance, but they have the feel. Wetherspoons are a good example of this sort of pub. They tend to take over buildings that were not previously pubs - banks, cinemas, churches, theatres, etc. They convert them sensitively - keeping an awareness of the original building with its distinctive features, but also stamping a pub feel on the structure - easily identified and recognised. The Wetherspoon style has evolved over time. They used to use more natural wood, had shelves full of books (bought by the yard from Hay on Wye), and had no TV screens or games machines. These days the books have gone, the games machines have come in, and the wood is now stained, and all too often looks chipped and tatty. Natural wood ages beautifully. Pine stained to look like mahogany soon looks cheap and nasty. Ah well.
In contrast with the modern pubs aiming to look like traditional pubs there are craft beer bars and micro pubs which might aim to look distinctly modern. Brewdog bars can be shockingly industrial with exposed brick and steel. There is no intent to link with the past. The aim is to look at now or into the future. Anywhere but the past. In Brewdog pubs they do away with cask ale as something old fashioned. The beer is served from kegs. Clean, modern, unforgiving, and expensive. Is a Brewdog bar a pub? Well, it does most of what an establishment licensed to serve beer to be drunk on the premises has done for thousands of years. Except the beer is not live. At the same time there are pubs which are clearly traditional pubs. They were purpose built as pubs perhaps more than 200 years ago. And they may only serve kegged beer. So what is the difference between the Ice House in Shirley Warren and the Brewdog bar in the Bedford Place area? Can one be called a pub and the other not? One is pub looking and used by the immigrant hating folks of "Southampton's roughest area", while the other looks like a night club bar and is used by hipsters and beer society members of the local universities
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Pubs tend to look homely, comfortable, traditional; bars tend to look modern, sleek, clean, trendy. An establishment in an airport is unlikely to be a pub, but it may aim to look like a pub. So it is sort of a bar that looks like a pub. While a traditional pub may have been stripped clean, and refurbished in beech wood and grey paint, with no pictures or knick-knacks, so it is sort of a pub that looks like a bar.
Anyway, leaving aside the debate about when a pub is not a pub, I am working toward a criteria of what constitutes the sort of pub/bar that I want to include in my blog.
Here are some of my thoughts so far:
Essential
1. It has to sell beer for consumption on the premises (that is a must - so coffee bars and wine bars which do not sell beer are not included)
2. There has to be no admission fee to the drinking area (so this would exclude bars in various venues)
3. You don't need to buy food in order to consume the beer (so this excludes all restaurants)
Preferential
1. The beer is from the cask (I won't at the moment exclude any premises that have been serving beer for over 50 years, but which at the moment only serve from the keg, but I will consider rejecting modern places that only serve bottles)
2. Beer is a main focus (I like food in a pub, but I feel uncomfortable going into some gasto-pubs where they place a newspaper in the corner for non-diners to stand on while they drink their beer)
Links
* Chronology
* Various licensing acts
* Public houses
* Beerhouses
* Beerhouses
* Martin Cornell - What is the difference between a bar and a pub?
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