William West’s Tavern Anecdotes
It is my pleasure to publish this selection of the Origins of Signs by William West (1770-1854) from his Tavern Anecdotes of 1825 to be found in the Bishopsgate Library. “The absurdities which Tavern Signs present are often curious enough, but may in general be traced to that inveterate propensity which the vulgar of all countries have to make havoc with everything in the shape of a proper name,” West wrote contemptuously in his introduction.
THE MOON RAKERS
A house, by this sign. stands near Suffolk St, Southwark, and is well known to the inhabitants of that district. The natives of most counties are honoured by some ludicrous appellation by their neighbours and moon raker has long been synonymous with a Wiltshireman.
A party of Wiltshire smugglers having deposited their casks of contraband spirits in a pond, were in the act of raking them out on a moonlit night, when some excisemen cam near. Upon the latter demanding what they were about, one of the smugglers, with affected naivety, replied, “Whoy, don’t you zee that cheese there?” The idea that these pretended simpletons had actually mistaken the reflection of the moon for a cheese so diverted the excisemen that they laughed heartily and went away, and by this manoeuvre, they say, the smugglers’ kegs remained in safety.
BULL & MOUTH
This sign exhibits an instance of the corruption and perversion of language. Everybody knows that a bull has a mouth, but everyone does not know that is such a place as Boulogne, where there is a harbour, which necessarily must have an entrance, commonly called a mouth.
Originally the town was known as Boulogne Mouth, in allusion to the town and harbour of Boulogne, but the gne being generally pronounced by the Londoners on, it gradually became an and it only required the small addition of d to make and of it. The first part being before this made a bull of it, was ultimately converted to Bull & Mouth – the unmeaning title which it now bears. Situated in St Martin Le Grand, this is a house of much business, from whence several of the mails and various other coaches, to all parts of the kingdom, do take their departure.
HOLE IN THE WALL
There are various houses known by this name. That in Chancery Lane, nearly opposite to the gate leading in to Lincoln’s Inn Old Sq, is kept by Jack Randall, who has obtained the title of Nonpareil, having fought above a dozen pitched battles and proving the victor in every encounter. He weighs about ten stone six pounds and his height is about five feet six inches, but now he has retired from the ring, having nettled some blunt. There is also a noted ‘Hole in the Wall’ in Fleet St where compositors have long held their orgies.
THE DEVIL TAVERN
The Devil Tavern in Fleet St near Temple Bar was well known to the facetious Ben Jonson and the celebrated Lord Rochester also takes note of this notorious scene of revelry.
THE JOLLY SAILOR
This sign, like that of the Mariner’s Compass, Ship, Boat and Barge etc has been adopted in seaport towns, evidently in compliment to the seafaring man, as others have adopted the names of some favourite or fortunate admiral, commodore, captain etc.
ROBIN HOOD
Everyone is familiar with the history of Robin Hood. About half a century ago, there existed a debating society in London called ‘The Robin Hood Society’ which gave its name to house in Windmill St where it met.
FORTUNE OF WAR
This title is of considerable antiquity and probably originated with some veteran warrior, who had obtained prize money sufficient to enable him to retire and become publican. In Giltspur St, there is a house retaining that name, it is at the corner of Cock Lane, of Ghost notoriety.
THE WORLD TURNED UPSIDE DOWN
A sign, so named, is observable on the road to Greenwich. It is a representation of the globe with a man walking on the lower part, alluding to the state of inebriation, in which a person is sometimes said to suppose himself walking on the crown of his head.
THE LONDON ‘PRENTICE
A house so styled is situated in Old St near to Shoreditch church. This may have an allusion to the rising of the city apprentices or perhaps, more probably, taken from Hogarth’s representation of the Industrious & Idle Apprentices.
THE HORNS
There are many taverns so named but the most noted are the Horns Tavern in the vicinity of St Paul’s and the Horns at Kennington. Most of the public houses in Highgate have a large pair of horns fixed on the end of a long staff, by which it has been an ancient custom for persons to swear that they will never eat brown bread when they can get white and never kiss a maid when they can kiss the mistress, after which thy must kiss the horns and pay one shilling, to be spent in the house.
THE TANNER OF JOPPA
In Long Lane, Southwark, there is a house so named, probably having its origin in the times when Scripture names were adopted for men and things. In Acts CX V. 32, we read that the Apostle Peter dwelt for some time at the house of Simon, a tanner.
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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At The Stables Under The Westway
Whenever I have made the trip to Oxford, I have always been surprised to glance down as the bus ascends onto the monstrous concrete Westway, suspended high above the city, and see a stable far below where horses are being exercised. It is a curious anachronism to discover this peaceful spectacle in the midst of the urban chaos and heartening to be reminded of the persistence of these old ways, before you race off up the A40. So when the West London Stables invited me to pay them a visit, Contributing Photographer Patricia Niven & I ventured over to learn more.
When the Westway was built in 1968, it isolated an intermediary space between Notting Hill and Shepherds Bush where scrapyards, travellers’ encampments and stables occupied land that nobody else used. Over the years, this has become an unlikely time capsule in which elements that defined the place historically have survived in spite of the more recent developments which encircle them today.
Sarah Tuvey took over running of the stables as a community riding school in 1994. She explained to me that they were originally built as a concessionary gesture for travellers, totters and costermongers from Portobello, at the time the Westway was constructed over land they had used for keeping their horses – but by the early nineties there were only three or four horses left, after their owners had retired or switched to motorised transport.
Yet Sarah also revealed this place was once the site of a racecourse known as the Kensington Hippodrome, built in 1837 by John Whyte. These former ancient grasslands were used traditionally for the working horses that served the city – pulling cabs, dray carts and milk floats – and it was this culture of horsemanship which gave rise the celebrated White City Horse Shows. Prior to the development of the west side of Notting Hill, the decline of the Racecourse led to its use by travellers, and the creation of potteries and piggeries, and a reputation for vagabondage and criminality which lingers to this day. Significantly, it was the West London Stables that supplied the old nag to the BBC for ‘Steptoe & Son.’
You feel you walk off the map when you leave the made-up road and enter the shadow land beneath the gargantuan interchange, where unseen traffic booms overhead like distant thunder. It is a dirty realm of excitement and of possibility, lacking the same degree of social control which prevails in the clean streets. Graffiti abounds and water drips in the dramatic shade cast by the monolithic structures above, and there is a theatricality in the presence of horses in the arena, parading as if within a circus ring beneath a big top.
Beyond, you discover the small enclave of stables which Sarah has run for the past twenty years, offering riding to community groups from the surrounding areas and single-handedly keeping the age-old culture of horsemanship alive in this corner of London. She is evangelical about the social benefits of the stables, especially for children who have grown up in the city and may not have seen horses before. Yet the recent decline in income as an indirect consequence of cuts means that the stable is forced to choose between feeding horses or paying the rent, and now Sarah has been told her lease will not be renewed in February next year.
When I heard Sarah’s news, the pathos of the circumstance became apparent to me, standing there in the stables with the motorway roaring overhead. If we can justify the vast shopping complexes and the titanic motorways suspended in the air, why cannot this small but well-used stables be allowed to exist for the benefit of its immediate urban community? You might like to visit the West London Stables for yourself to experience horse-riding in this unique location while it is still possible and – in the meantime – you can sign the petition to help them survive here.
Sarah Tuvey
Paula Sheenan, Trustee
Carley Small, Rider
Tamara Heirons, Trainer
Photographs copyright © Patricia Niven
West London Stables, 20 Stable Way, London, W10 6QX
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Mr Pussy’s Chair
Mid-afternoon in Spitalfields, Mr Pussy snoozes
Is that an old fur hat on that chair in the corner? You would be forgiven for making such a simple mistake, but in fact it is my cat, Mr Pussy, slumbering the hours away in the armchair that is his ultimate home, the place where I first laid him down as a tiny kitten and the place where he has spent more hours of his life than anywhere else – even if it has now moved over two hundred miles from one end of the country to the other. It is Mr Pussy’s chair.
My mother bought this chair in 1963. She had been married five years and had a three year old child, and she was still struggling to furnish our house. She was patient, doing without and waiting until the opportunity arose to acquire suitable things. She had very little money to spend but she wanted furniture that would last, and the passage of time has proved she chose wisely. I think she bought this chair in a sale and, although I do not know if it can truly be memory on my part, I see her searching among the cut-price furniture in the shop and filling with delight to discover this handsome Queen Anne style wingchair that was within her budget.
It was a deep green velvet then and one of my earliest memories is of standing upon the seat, safe between the wings of the chair, and reaching up vainly attempting to grasp the top. I yearned for the day when I would be tall enough to reach it, for then I should grown up beyond my feeble toddler years. The chair seemed huge to me and I could climb beneath it comfortably, much to my father’s frustration when he was sitting in it on Saturday afternoons and attempting to take note of the football results from the television, in order to complete his pools form and discover if he had become wealthy.
He never became wealthy yet he never gave up hope of winning either, sitting in this chair and filling in the football scores every Saturday, for year after year, until he died. Just a few weeks after his funeral, I bought a small black kitten for my mother as a means to ameliorate her grief and the tiny creature slept curled up in the corner of the armchair, seeking security in its wide embrace. It was his earliest nest. By now the green velvet had faded to a golden brown and the cushion has disintegrated, so that if a stranger were to visit and sit down quickly upon it they would fall right through the seat. Yet this did not matter too much to us, because we kept the chair exclusively for the use of the cat who did not weigh very much.
Eventually, to rejuvenate the chair, we had a new seat cushion made and a loose fabric cover of William Morris’ Willow Leaves pattern, which is still serviceable more than ten years later. Once my mother began to lose her faculties in her final years, I often sat her in it that she might benefit from its protection, when her balance failed her, and not fall off onto the floor as she did from chairs without wings. After she died, it became the cat’s sole preserve and it still delights me to see him there in the chair, evoking earlier days. It is almost the last piece of furniture I have from my childhood home and, although I do not choose to sit in it much myself, I keep it because I can still see my father sitting there doing his football pools or my mother perched to read the Sunday supplement.
One day, I mean to have the armchair reupholstered in its original deep green velvet but until then, by his presence, Mr Pussy keeps the chair and the memories that it carries alive. I realise that Mr Pussy is keeping the chair warm for me and I am grateful to him for this service that he offers so readily.
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The Cats of Spitalfields (Part One)
John Entick’s Spitlefields, 1766
John Entick, engraving by Guillaume Philippe Benoist, 1763
John Entick (c.1703 – 1773) had a reputation as an opportunistic hack writer who assumed the title of MA and the role of a cleric, by having a stern portrait engraved wearing a clerical wig, to promote a phoney scholarly impression. Yet his multi-volume ‘History & Survey of London’- from which I publish extracts below – based upon an earlier work by William Maitland, proves surprisingly revealing about Spitalfields.
Produced a few decades after the construction of Christ Church, Entick describes the new parish of Spitalfields with many of the elements in place that we know today and even the long-gone Artillery ground may still be recognised by street names such as Gun St, Fort St and Artillery Lane.
“Spitlefields was originally a hamlet belonging to the parish of St Dunstan, Stepney, but now it is a parish – made so by an Act of Parliament in 1723. In which year, the foundation of the church was laid and in 1729 it was finished, and dedicated to our Saviour, by the name Christ Church Spitlefields. This is one of fifty new churches, built of stone, with a very high steeple in which is a very fine ring of bells. It is a rectory endowed with one hundred and twenty-five pounds to be paid by the church wardens and the produce of three hundred pounds worth of land laid out.
The vestry consists of those who have served or signed for overseers of the poor, and officers are two church wardens, twelve auditors of accounts, four overseers, one sidesman, one constable, one headborough, one surveyor of the highways, four scavengers, two surveyors of the streets and one ale conner. The parish enjoys the privilege of a market, which is of great reputation for all sorts of provisions. And there are no less than four French churches and a French Hospital in Grey Eagle St, and Quaker’s Meeting in Quaker’s St.
At the east side of Bishopsgate St, we come to Spittal Sq, and the site of the ancient priory and hospital of St Mary Spittal, founded in the year 1197 by Sir Walter Brune and Rossina his wife, for canons regular, and dedicated to the honour of Jesus Christ and his mother the blessed Virgin Mary. It was a foundation of very great extent, for in the composition made by the prior of this house with the rector of St Botolph’s, concerning tythes, it appears to have begun at Berward’s Lane, towards the south and to run as far as the parish of St Leonard, Shoreditch, to the north. And, in breadth, from the king’s street in the west, to the Bishop of London’s field called Lollorsworth, now Spitlefield, on the east.
At its dissolution in the reign of Henry VIII, it was valued at four hundred and eighty pounds per annum and there were found in it one hundred and eighty beds standing for the relief of the poor, being a hospital of great relief. The site of this hospital is now covered with some of the best houses in this quarter of the metropolis and inhabited by manufacturers and merchants of great trade and worth, especially in the silk trade. But for many years there remained uncovered part of the churchyard and the pulpit cross in it. And on the south side there was a handsome house for the lord mayor, aldermen, sheriffs and people of distinction to sit and hear sermons preached upon the resurrection on Easter Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday (and perhaps on other occasions) by a bishop, a dean and a doctor of divinity, which custom was kept up until the year 1642, but in the grand rebellion the pulpit was broken down and the custom discontinued.
To the south, facing the street leading from Moorfields, stands Devonshire Sq and the street that leads to it, stood upon the ground once called Fisher’s Folly, but better known by the name Devonshire House where the earl of Devonshire used to reside. The square and Devonshire St are well built and inhabited, but it is scarce possible to describe the mean and ruinous state and condition of the houses and inhabitants of the streets, alleys and courts on all sides of them. Nevertheless, here we find a Baptist meeting house and a Quaker’s meeting house, just without the east passage.
About three hundred yards north east from this square lies a spacious enclosure, called the Artillery ground, let by the prior of St Mary Spittal to the gunners of the Tower, for thrice ninety-nine years for the use and practice of great and small artillery. And they came hither every Thursday to practice their large artillery, which moved His Majesty King Henry VIII to grant them a charter and the same was confirmed in 1584, and was established for the increasing of good gunners for the Royal Navy and forts. In both those characters, this ground being nominated and ordered to be set apart for those uses, the Artillery Ground became subject to the Tower. The streets built thereupon compose one of the Tower hamlets and the inhabitants summoned on juries belonging the courts held on Tower Hill.
In the year 1585, the state and nation being threatened with an invasion from Spain, some brave and active citizens voluntarily exercised themselves, and trained up others in the use of arms, so that within two years there were almost three hundred merchants and other persons of distinction qualified to teach the common soldiers the management of their guns, pikes and halberts. They met every Thursday, each person by turn bearing office from the corporal to the captain, and some of those gentlemen were distinguished by the title of knights of the Artillery garden.
To the south east, we proceed into the Whitchapel Rd and on the south side, at the stones end, stands the parish church dedicated to St Mary, founded about the year 1329 as a chapel of ease to Stepney. Here is also a prison for debtors, called Whitechapel Prison. On the same side, but more to the eastward, is cut a new road to Cannon St, Ratcliff Highway, and between that and the Mile End Turnpike, facing Whitechapel Prison is the London Hospital formerly called the London Infirmary which began in the year 1740, in Prescot St, Goodman’s Fields. This building, raised and supported by public subscriptions and contributions, is plain, elegant and commodious, fitted with up to one hundred and sixty beds for patients which are constantly full, besides an unlimited number of outpatients, and all accidents whether recommended or not, are received at any hour of the day and night.”
Images courtesy Bishopsgate Institute
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Meatball Season In Bethnal Green
Mr Mondo (also known as ‘Meatballs Dave’) has been spreading rumours that meatballs are back on the menu at E.Pellicci – London’s best-loved family-run cafe – and now Nevio Pellicci has confirmed that his mother Maria will be making meatballs this Tuesday, so I feel it is my duty to reminder readers of one the East End’s perennial culinary delights that are now in season again.
Maria Pellicci – the Meatball Queen of Bethnal Green
With the arrival of Autumn in Spitalfields, my mind turns to thoughts of steaming meatballs. So I hot-footed it up the road to Bethnal Green and the kitchen of Maria Pellicci, cook and beloved matriarch at E. Pellicci, the legendary cafe that has been run by her family since 1900. Although I find it hard to believe, Maria told me that meatballs are not always on the menu here because people do not ask for them. Yet she graciously assented to my request, and even granted me the honour of permitting my presence in her kitchen to witness the sacred ritual of the making of the first meatballs of the season.
For many years, meatballs and spaghetti comprised reliable sustenance that could deliver consolation on the grimmest Winter day. If I found myself in a cafe and meatballs were on the menu, I had no reason to think further because I knew what I was having for lunch. But then a fear came upon me that drove away my delight in meatballs, I began to doubt what I was eating and grew suspicious of the origins of the ingredients. It was the loss of an innocent pleasure. Thus began the meatball famine which lasted ten years, that ended when Maria Pellicci made meatballs specially for me with fresh meat she bought from the butcher in the Roman Rd. Maria has worked daily in her kitchen in Bethnal Green from six until six since 1961, preparing all the dishes on the menu at E.Pellicci freshly as a matter of principle. More than this, reflecting Maria’s proud Italian ancestry, I can confirm that for Maria Pellicci the quality of her food is unquestionably a matter of honour.
Maria mixed beef and pork together with eggs, parsley, onion and other herbs, seasoned it with salt and pepper, letting it marinate from morning until afternoon. Then, as we chatted, her hazel eyes sparkling with pleasure, she deployed a relaxed skill borne of half a century’s experience, taking bite-sized pieces from the mixture and rolling them into perfectly formed ruby red balls, before tossing them playfully onto a steel baking tray. I watched as Maria’s graceful hands took on independent life, swiftly rolling the meatballs between her flattened palms and demonstrating a superlative dexterity that would make her the virtuoso at any card table. In no time at all, she conjured one hundred and fifty evenly-sized meatballs that would satisfy thirty lucky diners the following morning.
I was at the snug corner table beside the serving hatch in Pellicci’s immaculately cosy cafe next day at the stroke of twelve. After ten years of waiting, the moment was at hand, as Anna Pellicci, Maria’s daughter proudly delivered the steaming dish, while Salvatore, Maria’s nephew, brought the Parmesan and freshly ground pepper. The wilderness years were at an end, because I had spaghetti and meatballs in front of me, the dish of the season. Maria made the tomato sauce that morning with garlic, parsley and basil, and it was pleasantly tangy and light without being at all glutinous. As a consequence, the sauce did not overwhelm the subtle herb-inflected flavour of the meatballs that crumbled and then melted in my mouth, the perfect complement to the deliciously gelatinous spaghetti. Sinking my teeth into the first meatballs of the twenty-first century, I could only wonder how I lived through the last decade without them.
Outside an autumn wind was blowing, so I took courage from ingesting a syrup pudding with custard, just to finish off the spaghetti and meatballs nicely, and restore substance to my attenuated soul. The special quality of E. Pellicci is that it is a family restaurant, and that is the atmosphere that presides. When I confided to Anna that my last living relative had died, she told me at once that I was part of their family now. Everyone is welcomed on first name terms at Pellicci’s in an environment of emotional generosity and mutual respect, a rare haven where you can enjoy honest cooking at prices everyone afford.
I call upon my readers to help me keep meatballs on the menu at E. Pellicci now, because we need them to help us get through this Winter and the rest of the twenty-first century that is to come. Let us send a collective message to the Pelliccis, that we love their meatballs with spaghetti, because when we have a cook like Maria Pellicci, the meatball queen of Bethnal Green, we cannot forgo the privilege of her genius.
Maria Pellicci has been making meatballs in Bethnal Green for half a century.
Anna Pellicci with the first meatballs of the season in Bethnal Green.
The coveted corner table, next to the serving hatch at E. Pellicci.
E.Pellicci, 332 Bethnal Green Rd, E2 0AG
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Christmas Ravioli at E.Pellicci
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits ( Part One)
Colin O’Brien’s Pellicci Portraits (Part Two)
The Luchadors Of Bethnal Green
Lucha Britannia
Passing the terrace in Paradise Row, Bethnal Green, with a blue plaque commemorating the former residence of the legendary eighteenth century prize-fighter, Daniel Mendoza, I took the next turning under the railway, and walked through a dark and narrow arch to enter an unmarked door between the panel-beating and the joinery workshops, where I discovered an empty wrestling ring beneath blazing lights, awaiting the contestants of the night.
I had arrived at the European centre of Lucha Libre – an evolved style of Mexican Wrestling characterised by the use of colourful masks and employment of rapid sequences of flamboyant moves, including high-flying aerial techniques. Contributing Photographer Simon Mooney was already poised at the ringside, ready to capture the spectacle of Lucha Britannia in close up.
Before I knew it, the space was crammed with an excited audience of aficionados and fans cheering in anticipation as Benjamin Louche, the be-sequinned MC, asked “Do you like the sound of breaking bones?” When the Luchadors emerged from the crowd amidst loud music, bursting into the ring and taunting the audience, I realised that this was sport counterpointed with an equal measure of pantomime. First came the robotic Metallico, then Freddie Mercurio crowd-surfed his way onto the platform, followed by the undead Necrosis and the African Prince Katunda in tiger skin pants.
I wondered what universe these ill-assorted spectres had been conjured from – whether a comic book Parnassus or murky Gothic netherworld. Yet all regions of the collective imagination were represented in this trashy posse of snarling and roaring grotesques, both male and female, who took turns in the ring during the evening. These were brash fantasy alteregos unleashed by the wearing of a mask and a skimpy costume – needy, petulant emotional characters finding primal expression in violent physicality.
The luchadors flew around the ring, chopping and punching, bouncing off the elasticated ropes, leaping off the corners, spinning and somersaulting, twisting arms and pulling each other around in swift acrobatic moves that sent their partners crashing onto the floor – as if they were as incapable of injury as cartoon characters, but leaving me wincing at the bruises thus inflicted. Innumerable times, wrestlers ended up in the crowd and came flying back into the ring. Underscored by a constant soundtrack, this was a night of unrelenting energy intensified by the confines of the cavernous arch and whipped up by an audience that grew increasingly intoxicated by the drama, and the heat, and Day of the Dead beer.
This collective excitement proved irresistible, delighting in chaos and excessive behaviour, yet coloured with pathos too. We all cheered for the working class Bakewell Boys to beat Sir Reginald Windsor and then booed when the posh nobs prevailed over the scruffy plebs. Similarly, when the five foot Lucha Britannia champion took on the seven foot Fug in the most exciting match of the evening, leaping around the ring with the grace and speed of a flying monkey, he won the fight only to be defeated in the final moment by Fug’s brutal pal appearing in the ring. These poignant losses won the hearts of the audience and undermined simple notions of victory in a sport which finds its expression in bravura theatrical technique as much as in physical domination of the opponent.
To one such as myself, only vaguely familiar with wrestling in any form, the presence of more than two fighters in the ring at once compounded the dramatic possibility exponentionally. Meanwhile at the ringside, Benjamin Louche and his colleague, Tony Twotops, kept a running commentary, showgirls, Maz & Viva, strutted around with signs announcing the acts, while referee, Gino Giovanni, struggled to keep the contest fair and Nurse Buckett, in a green rubber dress, tended the casualties.
As an audience, we were such willing co-conspirators in this charismatically surreal version of a wrestling match – so far beyond self-parody and satire yet enacted with a winning display of skill and panache – that when all the contestants invaded the ring at the finale and Benjamin Louche suggested, “Let’s not fight, let’s take a photograph,” we were more than willing to participate in this sublime moment, capturing the exhilarating emotional triumph of the night.
Photographs copyright © Simon Mooney
Lucha Britannia takes place monthly at 265 Poyser St, Bethnal Green, E2 9RF
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The Language of Beer
Since I published the Printers’ Terminology last week, my attention has been drawn to this collection of specialist lingo associated with another area of passionate interest – pubs and beer – and so I offer this selection today lest it may be of use to any of my readers who might be planning to spend Saturday night at the local.
Life in the East – At the Half Moon Tap, 1830
Barrel – A cask built to hold thirty-six gallons.
Beer – There is no bad beer but some is better than others.
Binder – The last drink, which it seldom proves to be. Also used to describe the person who orders it.
Boiling Copper – Vessel in which wort is boiled with hops.
Boniface – Traditional name for an innkeeper, as used by George Farquhar in ‘The Beaux’ Stratagem.’
Bragget – A fancy drink made of fermented honey and ale.
Brewer – The artist who by his choice of barley and other ingredients, and by his sensitive control of the brewing process, produces beer the way you like it.
Butt – A cask built to hold one hundred and eight gallons.
Buttered Beer – A popular sixteenth century drink of spiced and sugared strong beer supplemented with the yolk of an egg and some butter.
Cardinal – A nineteenth century form of mulled ale.
Casual – An occasional visitor to the pub.
Cheese – A heavy wooden ball used in the game of skittles.
Chitting – The appearance of the first shoots while the barley is growing during the first stage of the malting process.
Coaching Glass – An eighteenth century drinking vessel with no feet that was brought out to coach travellers and consumed at one draught.
Collar – The frothing head on a glass of beer between the top of the beer and the rim of the glass.
Crinze – An earthenware drinking vessel, a cross between a tankard and a small bowl.
Crawler – One who visits all the pubs in one district, drinking a glass of beer in each.
Dipstick – An instrument used to measure the quantity of wort prior to fermentation.
Dive – A downstairs bar.
Dog’s Nose – Beer laced with gin.
Down The Hatch – A toast, usually for the first drink.
Finings – A preparation of isinglass which is added to the beer in the cask to clarify it.
Firkin – A cask built to hold nine gallons.
Flip – Beer and spirit mixed, sweetened and heated with a hot iron.
Fob – The word used in a brewery to describe beer froth.
Goods – The name used by the brewer to describe the crushed malted grains in the mash tuns.
Grist – Malt grains that have been cleaned and cracked in the brewery mill machines.
Gyle – A quality of beer brewed at one time – one particular brewing.
Heel Tap – Term for beer left at the bottom of the glass.
Hogshead – A cask built to hold fifty-four gallons.
Hoop – A device displayed outside taverns in the middle ages to indicate that beer was sold. Later, it became the practice to display certain objects within the hoop in order to differentiate one tavern from another. eg The Hoop & Grapes
Kilderkin – Cask holding eighteen gallons.
Lambswool– A hot drink of spiced ale with roasted apples beaten up in it.
Liquor – The term used in the brewing industry for water.
Local – The pub round the corner.
Long Pull – Giving the customer more than they ordered, the opposite of a short pull.
Lounge – The best-appointed and most expensive bar of the public house.
Mash – The mixture of crushed malted grains and hot liquor which is run through the masher into the mash tun and from which is extracted liquid malt or wort.
Merry-Goe-Down – Old term describing good ale.
Metheglin – A spiced form of mead.
Mether Cup – A wooden drinking cup used by the Saxons, probably for Metherglin.
Mud-In-Your-Eye, Here’s – Traditional toast, with a meaning more pleasant than it sounds.
Nappy – Term describing good ale, foaming and strong.
Noggin – Small wooden mug, a quarter pint measure.
Noondrink – Ale consumed at noon when trade was slacker. Also, High Noon, drunk at three o’clock when street trading was finished.
One For The Road – Last drink before leaving the pub.
Pig’s Ear – Rhyming slang for beer.
Pocket – A large sack made to contain one and a half hundredweight of hops.
Porter – Popular in the late eighteenth and nineteenth centuries among London market porters, equivalent to a mixture of ale, beer and twopenny.
Public Bar – Where everything is cheapest and decoration and equipment is smiplest.
Puncheon – Cask built to hold seventy-two gallons.
Quaff – To drink in large draughts.
Regular – One of the mainstays of the public house.
Round – An order of drinks for more than one person.
Saloon Bar – Enjoying better amenities than a Public Bar and therefore more expensive to the customer.
Shandy – A drink of beer mixed with ginger beer, or sometimes beer and lemonade.
Short – A gin or whisky, usually taken before a meal.
Small Beer – A beer of lesser gravity, hence a trifling matter.
Smeller – A man employed in the brewery to examine casks after they have been washed and prior to their being filled with beer.
Snifter – Colloquial term for a drink.
Snug or Snuggery – Semi-private apartment in the pub, by custom reserved for use of the regulars.
Sparge – To spray hot liquor onto the grist in the mash tuns.
Spell, To Take A – To go round to the local for a beer, coined by Mr Peggotty in David Copperfield.
Stingo – A strong ale, similar to Barley Wine, popular during the winter months and usually sold in a bottle.
Stool – A useful piece of furniture for a customer who wants to stay at the bar, but is anxious to sit down.
Swig – To take a draught of beer, generally a large one.
Thirst – Suffering enjoyed by beer drinkers.
Tipple – To drink slowly and repeatedly.
Trouncer – The drayman’s mate who pushed and manhandled the wagon over potholes.
Tumbler – A flat bottomed drinking glass, derived from the Saxon vessel that could not stand upright and must be emptied in one draught.
Tun – Vessel in the brewery where the fermenting takes place.
Twopenny – A pale, small beer introduced to London from the country in the eighteenth century at fourpence a quart.
Wallop – Mild ale.
Wassail – Hot ale flavoured with sugar, nutmeg and roasted apples.
What’s Yours? – An invitation which sums up the companionable atmosphere of a public house.
Wort – The solution of mash extract in water, derived from the grist in the mash tuns.
Image from Tom & Jerry’s Life in London courtesy © Bishopsgate Institute
