A corner forever England
This story originally ran in the Philadelphia Inquirer, June 21, 2015.
I'd like to say I got the faint scar on my left eyebrow defending a girl or helping a friend in need.
That sort of thing appealed to me then. I was 20 and read too much Hemingway.
Actually, I was hit in the head by a swiftly opened bathroom door. The minor injury dribbled blood on the grimy, maroon carpet of what became my favorite pub in England, the Huntsman.
For a group of Americans abroad nearly two decades ago, this dim, dirty pub in the shade of Bath's magnificent medieval abbey was a second home. Amid smells of cigarette smoke and fried fish, with the Beatles or ABBA on the jukebox, our crew parked at a small table talking everything from the Clinton administration to rugby. It was our parlor, our Britain, our piece of pub culture.
My violently interrupted trip to the men's room always had an outsize importance to me. The flagstones in the Huntsman's basement once were part of a Roman road. The pub's facade was unchanged since the 1700s. I liked to believe I was a part of that history, if just through bloodstains indistinguishable in the patterns of a threadbare rug.
In May, I returned to Bath for the first time in 17 years. I walked on Pulteney Bridge over the River Avon into memories thick as the low, gray rain clouds. The abbey, the cream-colored stone Georgian shops, the Huntsman itself, all still there.
Any sense of familiarity ended inside the double doors. The brewery Fuller, Smith and Turner bought the place in 2012, and turned our shadowy old pub a pleasing pastel. My God, there was a wine list on a chalkboard! As for the blood-stained carpet, they took that, too. So much for my place in history.
At least the Huntsman still exists. English pubs are closing at a rate of 29 a week, according to the Campaign for Real Ale, a consumer-advocacy group. The number of pubs decreased by almost 20,000 from 1982 to 2013, when the British Beer and Pub Association reported about 48,000 of them. Many were transformed into restaurants or gastropubs, as the Huntsman was. Economic pressures and a changing culture are conspiring, advocates say, to dim a national institution.
The Huntsman was bought by the brewery Fuller’s in 2012. English pubs are closing at a rate of 29 a week, according to a consumer-advocacy group.
The change is not all bad. Pubs could be nasty, rundown joints. Gastropubs and wine bars are welcome alternatives, says my friend (and Londoner) Chris Campbell, a graphic artist for the Financial Times.
But there is something special about a great English pub.
They grew out of the Roman tabernae founded in Britain 2,000 years ago. In small towns, some are attached to old inns or coaching houses. A few pubs I visited still had guest rooms, including one that housed guests in a converted horse stable.
The best pubs, to me, are distinguished by the murmur. There's no music or television. Patrons' voices become the sound track. Not much food is served at a traditional pub, so there's no clink of dishware or waiters taking orders. You hear a witty aside, a surge of laughter, a remark to the bartender - "Another pint, please, in the fullness of time" - but it's unlikely you'll ever have to yell to your mate the question common in American bars: "What?"
Turn the noise down, and good things happen. You drink slower. You really listen to your friend, or get to know a stranger. At its best, a pub lives up to its full name: public house.
The Old Green Tree on Green Street in Bath is such a place.
In a small, wood-paneled back room with lithographs, foreign currency, and simple benches lining the walls, I sipped a Hewish Mild, one of nine beers on tap and a refreshing change from the hops-heavy brew popular in the U.S.
Owner Tim Bethune, a cheery bloke in a wool sweater, came out from behind the bar to introduce himself. He considers his pub founded in 1710 just as integral to Bath's past as the Roman baths themselves.
The Old Green Trees last renovation was in the 1920s.
For the ordinary person, Bethune said, the pub "would have actually meant a lot more to them than the assembly room or the Roman baths."
The Old Green Trees last renovation was in the 1920s, he said. The biggest change since its founding was the enclosure of an outdoor garden where the tree that was the pub's namesake once grew.
I was there to meet James Honey, president of Bath's chapter of the Campaign for Real Ale. The Old Green Tree is a "free house," Honey said, with no contractual obligations to carry beer from a particular brewer. Bethune can negotiate to buy casks of beer for 20 to 30 less. "Tied houses," on the other hand, must sell beer at rates controlled by brewers. That mini-monopoly can boost prices to nearly 5 a pint, or about $7.50. This is deadly for pubs, Honey said, when people can buy four bottles at a grocery story for the same price.
Pubs also suffer from an explosion of development. London's skyline prickles with cranes erecting glass and steel needles that tower over chimneyed rooftops. Pubs, with their thin profit margins, are worth more remade into houses or razed.
A pub can't be closed to make way for another kind of development unless the owners can prove it wasn't viable as a pub, Honey said. But that's often not an obstacle. Companies buy a pub, raise the price of beer, and establish bizarre closing times. When the pub inevitably closes, the owner uses that as proof the site couldn't support the business, Honey said.
Britain's culture itself is changing. When I lived there in 1998, village pubs were packed by midday with men in shirts and ties. Many smoked. Smoking is banned in pubs now, and the culture of day drinking is almost extinct. The country quaffed almost 7 million fewer barrels of beer in 2014 than in 2000, the British Beer and Pub Association reported.
One chain thriving by offering cheap beer is Wetherspoons, which operates 920 pubs. One near the Tower of London had decent beer but the authenticity of an Applebee's.
Another company with a deep reach into the countrys pubs is the brewery Greene King, which runs 1,900 pubs, restaurants and hotels, according to their web site. They run Duxford's John Barleycorn Inn, which has operated more or less continuously since 1660. Pewter cups and pictures of World War II flying aces an old air base is nearby adorn the Barleycorn. Like many tied houses, though, the high cost of beer necessitates a wide menu, said assistant manager Adam Baker. Unlike at American bars, food, not alcohol, is often a pubs profit engine. Among the menu items were venison steaks, hardly typical pub fare.
A plash of color in the window of the London pub The Southwark
It's the choice, Baker, 25, said. If you want to have the burger, you can, but if you want to have a venison steak, you get to have the venison steak.
The Eagle in Cambridge, another Greene King pub, has been part of the university town since 1667. Francis Crick announced the discovery of DNA there. Its history is most alive on its ceiling covered in writing.
Royal Air Force pilots during the Battle of Britain had a tradition of holding up a candle and burning on the ceiling their names or their squadrons numbers. One in six RAF pilots died in the Battle of Britain in 1940. Facing mortality, they held a flame high and left a mark that lasted. Names such as "Ticky," "Max," and "Pressure Boys" remain today, sooty black against ochre.
Among the crowd on a Monday night was a guy in a black leather jacket. His date, lips popping red, long blonde hair pulled into victory rolls, would have fit in when the Eagle was a flyboy hangout.
"It's a breath of fresh air, this is," Stephen Smith, 48, said of the Eagle.
Pub closings are costing the country more than just drinking spots, Smith said.
I don't think anyone in England in their 20s has got a clue about their heritage, he said.
His date, Sabrina Braun, a 23-year-old from Cologne, Germany, said she dressed in pinup-girl fashions to show appreciation for the past but not to relive it. Pubs shouldn't feel obligated to remain unchanged, she said.
The Eagles shelves and bar were decked with flying gear, though some of it, such as a pilots helmet, was clearly from an era long after World War II. Braun noted the ceiling was probably the only truly authentic thing about the place.
"Everything else here is artificial," she said. "It's playing with history and that's a good thing."
No question of authenticity at the Bell Inn, in Aldworth, Berkshire, about 50 miles west of London. The two-story
pub is built on the frame of a Norman lords manor constructed about 1340 of oak, mud, and wattle.
Heather Macaulay traces her lineage to the early 1800s, and a Scottish tea merchant named McQuhae. He lost his way near Aldworth and threw his walking staff into the air, determined to head in whatever direction it landed. It pointed him to the Bell, which by then had replaced the mud walls with brick. He met the owners' daughter, they fell in love, married, and he inherited the pub, said , is the fifth generation of her family to own the Bell. I asked what had changed in more than 200 years.
"It is as it was," she said. "Nothing changed."
Macaulay, 86, looked as put together as Easter Sunday in a red cardigan and striped top, though it was nearly 11 p.m. She'd been at work for about 12 hours.
The exposed timbers are so low in the Bell one has a reminder to duck written on it in chalk, and the five ebony-handled beer taps are old as a Model T. No cash register, just a drawer like something from Dickens, with different-sized slots for pounds and pence.
In her lifetime, Aldworth changed from a poor farming village to a wealthy bedroom community for London commuters. Macaulay turns down all offers to sell the pub.
One real estate agent insisted his client had a lot of money.
She replied, "He doesn't have quite enough."
The Bell Inn’s owner, Heather Macaulay, recounting stories from the pub’s past.
Elsewhere in England, co-ops are organizing to get the government to label pubs as assets of community value, which gives community groups an opportunity to buy the places. The Ivy House in London, a 1930s-era pub that was slated for demolition, was the first to receive that designation in 2013. The Ivy Houses owners seek to return the pub to its traditional role as a community center of sorts. It hosts music and spoken-word performances, comedy, yoga, art classes, and activities for children, said Tessa Blunden, a lawyer deeply involved in the co-op.
Honey said pubs will survive. He loved the traditional spots but sees room for modern, innovating businesses that try to update the pub for the 21st century.
"I think it will be fine," he said. "They may be better quality, some of them, and they'll still be serving ale."
Before leaving England, I met my friend Annalisa D'Innella, a London writer, at the Warwick, a gastropub near Victoria Station in London that touts seasonally fresh ingredients. After a week of pub fare, I eschewed fish and chips for salmon served with clams and mushrooms.
The last time I saw D'Innella, 10 years ago, she was newly engaged and I worked at a much smaller paper. She's a mum now and writes screenplays. Im happily doing stories like this. We sat in a corner, a pair of gin and tonics between us, and despite the decade that had passed since the last time we'd seen each other, conversation flowed easy.
Like nothing at all had changed.