50 Fun Facts About Pubs

Tim Martin named his pub chain Wetherspoon, founded in 1979, after one of his what in New Zealand?

Schoolteachers: Wetherspoon was a teacher of Martin's in New Zealand known for being unable to control his class, much like the first pub, while the 'J D' comes from J. D. Hogg of The Dukes of Hazzard.

Once a pub's doors are locked for a lock-in, what are the drinkers still inside said to have become?

A private party: the British lock-in began as a reaction to 1915 wartime licensing changes that cut opening hours, and regulars put money behind the bar before closing so no drink is technically sold afterwards.

From 1916 to 1919, Britain's state-run pubs forbade customers from doing what?

Buying rounds of drinks was banned from 1916 to 1919 under the State Management Scheme, which nationalised the pubs and breweries around the Gretna munitions factories.

What did Francis Crick announce to lunchtime drinkers at the Eagle in Cambridge on 28 February 1953?

The structure of DNA: Crick told the pub he and James Watson had 'discovered the secret of life', an anecdote Watson retold in The Double Helix and now marked by a blue plaque beside the door.

William Booth's 1865 sermon outside Whitechapel's Blind Beggar pub led to the founding of what?

The Salvation Army began as the East London Christian Mission, which Booth set up after that open-air sermon; the pub itself is named after a ballad, The Blind Beggar of Bethnal Green.

What did the crown stamp on a British pint glass certify, before an EU mark replaced it in 2007?

That it held a full measure: the crown showed an agency of the Crown had certified the glass, the CE mark took over in 2007, and in September 2021 the crown's return to UK pint glasses was announced.

Which firm popularised the pub quiz in 1970s Britain, growing weekly events from 30 teams to 10,000?

Burns and Porter ran weekly quizzes from the 1970s whose entrants swelled from 30 teams to 10,000, though the first printed mention of a pub quiz dates back to 1959.

The Rovers Return, in the fictional Lancashire town of Weatherfield, is the pub of which ITV soap?

Coronation Street's Rovers opened in 1902, the coronation year of Edward VII, and was originally split into three separate bars, with drinks half a penny cheaper in one of them.

Which BBC soap's pub, the Queen Victoria, stands on Albert Square in the borough of Walford?

EastEnders' Albert Square is named after Prince Albert, husband of the pub's namesake Queen Victoria, and the Queen Vic set was once burnt down in a storyline, and in reality, so it could be rebuilt.

Richard II's 1393 law making landlords hang out a sign helped which officials find alehouses?

Ale tasters, the borough inspectors who judged the quality of each brew, could then spot alehouses easily, and with much of the medieval population illiterate, pictures beat words on the boards.

Britain's first pubs, the tabernae that gave English 'tavern', appeared along the roads of which people?

The Romans built the road network that the first tabernae followed, although ale itself was a native British drink before the legions arrived in the first century.

Which common pub name may come from John of Gaunt's personal badge or from the royal arms of Scotland?

The Red Lion is among the most common names both in heraldry and on pub signs, its possible origins being a local landowner's arms, John of Gaunt's badge or the Scottish royal arms joined to England's in 1603.

Which animal, Richard II's livery badge, became a popular name for inns and taverns during his reign?

A white hart, the heraldic name for a mature stag, was Richard II's livery badge; it proved so popular during his reign that many later inns and taverns adopted the name too.

Which Athlone pub was certified in 2004 by Guinness World Records as the oldest in Ireland?

Sean's Bar is reputed to have been established in AD 900, and renovations in the 1970s found a back wall partly built of wattle and wicker.

Which pub, originally The Priests Inn, calls itself Britain's oldest, dating its history to between 905 and 953?

The Bingley Arms in Bardsey says it served as a safe house for persecuted Catholic priests and, from around 1000, as a courthouse whose offenders went to the pillory across the road.

What lies behind Ye Olde Trip to Jerusalem in Nottingham, believed to be the castle's old brewhouse?

Sandstone caves carved into Castle Rock may date from the castle's founding in 1067, while the pub's claimed start of 1189 has no documentary evidence behind it.

Which Wapping pub claims the site of London's oldest riverside tavern, dating from around 1520?

The Prospect of Whitby got its present name after an early 19th-century fire, when the rebuilt tavern was renamed after a Tyne collier that used to berth alongside it with sea coal from Newcastle.

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese on Fleet Street was for 40 years associated with Polly, a foul-mouthed what?

An African grey parrot, Polly was famous for expletive-laden outbursts and for mimicking the pop of champagne corks, at a pub rebuilt soon after the Great Fire of 1666 and frequented by Dickens.

Which writer described his ideal pub, the imaginary Moon Under Water, in a 1946 newspaper essay?

Orwell listed ten requirements for his perfect London pub, starting with uncompromisingly Victorian architecture and fittings, in what proved his last piece for the Evening Standard.

Tolkien and C. S. Lewis belonged to which Oxford writers' group that met at the Eagle and Child pub?

The Inklings met at the Eagle and Child, nicknamed the Bird and Baby, a St Giles' pub that closed its doors in March 2020, early in the COVID-19 pandemic.

Which Southwark pub is London's only surviving galleried coaching inn, a haunt of Charles Dickens?

The George Inn appears in Dickens's Little Dorrit and Our Mutual Friend, its Middle Bar was once the Coffee Room he frequented, and galleried inns like it may have staged Elizabethan plays.

From which Southwark inn, established in 1307, do Chaucer's pilgrims set out in The Canterbury Tales?

The Tabard catered for pilgrims heading to Thomas Becket's shrine at Canterbury Cathedral, and Chaucer made it the meeting point for his own pilgrims in the 1380s.

Which highwayman reputedly frequented Hampstead's Spaniards Inn, where his father had been landlord?

Dick Turpin's supposed haunt was also visited by Byron and Keats, and the pub claims Keats wrote Ode to a Nightingale in its gardens and that Bram Stoker borrowed one of its ghost stories for Dracula.

What earned the Lamb and Flag in Covent Garden its old nickname, the Bucket of Blood?

Bare-knuckle prize fights in the upstairs room gave the pub its nickname in a then-violent corner of Covent Garden, and a plaque recalls the 1679 attack on the poet John Dryden in a nearby alley.

Which body bought Belfast's gas-lit Crown Liquor Saloon in 1978, urged on by Sir John Betjeman?

The National Trust restored the Victorian interior three years later for £400,000, keeping its ten booths with their gun-metal match-strikers and a bell system for summoning staff.

Which Black Country pub was gutted by fire in August 2023, then demolished against council orders?

The Crooked House leaned about 15 degrees after 19th-century mining left one end 4 feet lower than the other, earning it the billing 'Britain's wonkiest pub' before the 2023 fire.

Which English city's pubs were nationalised in 1916 because of the munitions works at nearby Gretna?

Carlisle's 'State Management Scheme' ran the city's pubs and breweries until Edward Heath's government privatised it in 1971, selling the assets at auction mostly to established brewers.

Which 1914 wartime law had beer watered down and pub hours cut to a lunchtime and an evening session?

Defence of the Realm Act restrictions set pub hours at 12 noon to 3pm and 6:30pm to 9:30pm, and the same law banned flying kites, lighting bonfires and buying binoculars.

Which nation's pubs were shut on Sundays by an 1881 Act, a rule its last dry district kept until 1996?

Wales got the Sunday Closing Act in 1881, the first law since annexation that applied only to Wales, and local referendums from 1961 gradually let districts go 'wet' on Sundays.

In which year were English pubs first allowed to stay open all afternoon since the First World War?

1988's Licensing Act let pubs serve from 11am to 11pm without a break from 22 August that year, the first all-day opening in almost 75 years, though Sundays still shut at 3pm.

The 1989 Beer Orders capped how many pubs any big brewer could own and tie to its beer?

2,000 was the limit, and big brewers also had to let tenants stock a guest beer from another supplier, a shake-up that spawned pub companies such as Punch Taverns.

What is a pub called when a brewery owns it and obliges the landlord to stock that brewery's beer?

A tied house was usually owned by the brewery and rented to a landlord who ran it as his own business but had to buy the brewery's beer, while an untied pub was called a 'free house'.

Which small, secluded room of a traditional pub had frosted glass above head height and pricier beer?

The snug gave its customers privacy, as nobody could look in to see who was drinking, and a mock-up of one was a feature of the Granada Studios Tour.

In the Manchester area, what was the public bar of a pub traditionally known as?

The vault was the working-class, men-only end of the pub, with social rules so strict that some pubs only let women into their public bars in the 1980s.

Why does the 'nonic' pint glass bulge outwards a couple of inches below the rim?

So stacked glasses don't stick is only part of it: the bulge also improves grip and protects the rim from chipping, which is where the name comes from, 'no nick'.

Most traditional ale reaches pubs in a firkin, which holds how many imperial gallons?

9 gallons is 72 pints, though the drinkable volume is lower, and two firkins make a kilderkin, two kilderkins a barrel and three kilderkins a hogshead.

A pub's beer engine, worked by the tall handpump on the bar, draws ale up from where?

A cask in the cellar feeds the handpump, which raises the ale by hand with no gas pressure, and the pump clip on the handle names the beer, often with its brewery and strength.

Which consumer group publishes the Good Beer Guide, an annual directory of about 4,500 pubs?

The Campaign for Real Ale was founded in 1971 by four men opposed to the mass production and homogenisation of British beer, and its guide also lists the real ale brewers.

Which Faversham brewer, with an official founding date of 1698, claims to be Britain's oldest?

Shepherd Neame shares the claim with Shropshire's Three Tuns Brewery, and town records show commercial brewing on its Court Street site since the 1570s.

The Butchers Arms in Herne, opened by Martyn Hillier in 2005, is cited as the original modern what?

Micropub was a term Hillier revived for his one-room conversion of an off-licence, and the 2003 Licensing Act, effective from 2005, made such tiny independent pubs easier to open.

Bat and trap, a pub game where a ball is flicked up from a see-saw lever, survives in which county?

Kent keeps the game alive in leagues around Canterbury, Sevenoaks and the Medway, and a batter is out if the ball passes the posts higher than 7 feet.

Which pub card game did the antiquary John Aubrey credit to the 17th-century poet Sir John Suckling?

Cribbage, said to derive from the older game 'noddy', had its first rules printed in England in the 1660s and is still scored with pegs in pub back rooms.

Bar billiards reached Britain in the 1930s after David Gill saw 'billard russe' played in which country?

Belgium is where Gill saw the game, which despite its Russian name evolved from a derivative of bagatelle played by French royalty, and it survives in leagues from Sussex to Yorkshire.

Which pub is described as 'the heart of the community' in the Yorkshire Dales soap Emmerdale?

The Woolpack has been run by Amos Brearly, Alan Turner, Diane Sugden and the Dingles over the years, in a village called Beckindale until the show renamed it in 1994.

What is the name of the only pub in Ambridge, the village at the heart of BBC radio's The Archers?

The Bull is modelled on the Old Bull in Inkberrow, and Chris Moyles once appeared in it in 2004 as a customer suspected of being a Pub of the Year judge.

In Shaun of the Dead, what hanging over the bar of Shaun's local turns out to really work?

A rifle, the Winchester above the bar of the pub called the Winchester, proves functional while Shaun battles the zombified landlord, and Ed stays behind with it to buy the others time.

In An American Werewolf in London, which moorland pub's locals warn the two hikers to beware the moon?

The Slaughtered Lamb's exterior was really a cottage in Crickadarn, with interiors shot at the Black Swan in Surrey, nowhere near the North York Moors where the story is set.

In Treasure Island, old seaman Billy Bones lodges at which inn near Bristol, where the story begins?

The Admiral Benbow is where Billy Bones guards a mysterious chart and drives off Black Dog in a cutlass fight before collapsing, setting Jim Hawkins on the road to the treasure.

In the Oxfordshire pub game Aunt Sally, what do players hurl sticks at from ten yards away?

A ball called the dolly sits on a short plinth atop a metal spike, and the trick is to knock it off without hitting the spike; the original target was a model old woman's head with a clay pipe.

Which Sussex pub game involves tossing brass coins at a lead-topped table with a central opening?

Toad in the hole players throw four brass 'toads' from dartboard distance, and the original league, in East Sussex, runs three divisions of roughly 21 pub teams.