Last orders: the golden age of British pubs

England remains a society where your social class can determine everything from your job to the sport you play.

This is why pubs are valuable. The ‘local’ is perhaps the only public space where class goes out of the window: everyone is equal with two pints in their hand and a packet of pork scratchings between their teeth.

And nowhere has a richer pub history than London. A history you can enjoy again thanks to Vintage Britain: The London Pub by Pete Brown – a photo book that contains a wealth of black and white images of the British capital’s boozers in the 19th and 20th centuries.

The earliest pictures feature long-demolished ancient taverns like the Oxford Arms and Ye Old Dick Whittington and show an almost mediaeval London. Then there are images of the famous pubs that have been plying their trade for hundreds of years and still play a part in the capital’s social life.

There’s Belgravia’s Grenadier, long associated with the British military and famous for its zinc bar and impossible-to-find location in a warren of streets behind Hyde Park Corner.

Going east, you’ll find a grainy image of The Prospect Of Whitby in Wapping, when it was a pub frequented by dockers and sailors, as opposed to today, when it’s a pleasant gastropub frequented by Sunday afternoon strollers. There’s still a hangman’s noose outside it, however.

Some of the most outstanding images come from the middle of the 20th century when London welcomed people from all over the British Empire, and newcomers and locals learned to rub along in the pubs of Soho, Notting Hill and Bethnal Green.

“Pubs are so important we take them for granted until they’re gone”

“Everyone is here,” says author Pete Brown about this period. “Pearly Kings and Queens revelling in the spontaneous subculture they have created; sailors home on leave; courting couples stealing kisses over tables full of empty glasses; sharp-suited men from the Caribbean introducing their music and dance moves to their new neighbours; old ladies holding court, staring down the myth that pubs were male-only spaces. Mick Jagger and Keith Richards prop up the bar like two blokes at the end of a hard day at the office.”

While the book concerns itself with the past, it was written as the world came out of lockdown. Something that gave the images extra piquancy.

“Pubs are like air or water,” says Brown. “They’re so important we take them for granted until they’re gone. At this moment, we’re still getting used to them being back again, and the everyday freedom to walk up to the bar and order a pint is as rewarding as that first sip. In this context, the photographs here show how extraordinary our ordinary life is.”

He continues:
“Everyone in the world understood that pubs were the heartbeat of British life. No one cared that nail bars and barbers were also reopening at the same time. The pub was back. And that meant life was finally returning to normal. There was hope.”

And looking at these photographs shows why that hope was justified.

Vintage Britain: The London Pub by Pete Brown is published by Hoxton Mini Press