A British bar starts to fill up at a certain hour, between five and seven in the evening, in a manner that seems almost staged. Sliding into his customary seat is a retired bricklayer. Without glancing at the faucets, a junior attorney in an overly glossy suit places an order for a pint.
A half of bitter is being nursed by someone’s grandmother beside the window. They are all strangers to one another. They don’t really need to. For the next two hours, they will breathe together, listen in, occasionally exchange nods, and depart in some way lighter. These days, it’s difficult to ignore how uncommon that is.
Unbeknownst to most, the bar has long been used as a social equalizer. Because pilgrims of all ranks ended themselves beneath the same low roof, Chaucer purposefully put the prologue of the Canterbury Tales within the Tabard at Southwark. Shakespeare used the Garter Inn in a same manner.
Dickens, who was a bit too fond of pubs for his own well being, frequently revisited them as settings where dustmen and dukes could coexist in a room without anyone appearing especially out of place. Reading it all again gives me the impression that English literature has always subtly maintained that the pub is where the nation comes together.
The romanticism is that. Looking at the industry now, the reality is more intricate and fascinating. Pubs are situated at a peculiar nexus of class, business, and culture. They contribute almost £23 billion to the economy and sustain about 884,860 employment. Industry data also shows that during the epidemic, they lost almost 2,000 employees, with many elderly publicans simply deciding they had no interest in reopening. When you pass a boarded up village bar in rural Wales or Lincolnshire, you get the impression that the property has lost more than simply a tenant it has lost a role that the village hasn’t yet found a replacement for.
| Topic Fact File | Detail |
|---|---|
| Subject | The British public house (pub) |
| Sector size (UK) | Around 884,860 jobs supported |
| Economic contribution | Approx. £23 billion to UK GDP |
| Tax revenue generated | Nearly £13 billion to HM Treasury |
| Pubs lost during the pandemic | Over 2,000 closed permanently |
| Notable cultural references | Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales; Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor; Dickens’ Victorian novels |
| Key industry body | British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) |
Sociologically speaking, pubs are unique since they are among the few places in British society where everyone must pay the same entrance fee. The price of a pint is what it is. At the door, no one looks up your postcode. Theoretically, the barman will serve a barrister and a builder in the same order that they entered.
It’s not utopian; anyone who has seen a London gastropub fill with patrons who obviously attended the same three universities understands that equalization isn’t complete, but the bar’s rule that you take your turn and buy your round applies to people of all income levels in a way that virtually no other contemporary social setting does. The ultimate leveller is the round itself. You will be reminded if you forget to purchase yours, and you will be silently ridiculed if you purchase too many. In any case, you are not helped by your job title.
Scholars who have studied pub sociability in great detail typically come to similar conclusions. In its 2021 research “The Power of Pubs”, the Localis think tank stated it almost too succinctly: “where there’s a pub, there’s a community.” They argued that pubs serve as “third spaces” that are neither home nor work, and that social and economic outcomes are typically worse in locations with fewer of these spaces.
Weaker civic relationships, worse health, and higher unemployment. Of course, it’s possible that none of this is due to pubs. It’s also feasible that they’re holding together better than we realize, particularly in the kind of abandoned towns that politicians have spent the past ten years revitalizing.
A classic pub’s interior design also does quiet work. Because no one is seated at the head, round tables reduce hierarchy. Strangers are unintentionally brought close together by long benches, and the slight social awkwardness vanishes as soon as the second pint is served.
People may talk without performing thanks to lower ceilings, darker lights, and a faint background noise hum. I was once informed by a buddy who used to own a bar in Sheffield that he could tell when a group of patrons had become regulars because they no longer sat in the same arrangement every time. “The space eventually rearranges you”, he added.
There are opposing viewpoints, and they should be taken seriously. For a large portion of its history, equalizing exclusively applied to men, as feminist scholars like Valerie Hey correctly noted. For a very long time, women were either openly ostracized or subtly made to believe that they shouldn’t be there by themselves.
Although not entirely, that has changed significantly during the past forty years. The demographic mix of some rural residents still resembles a 1974 photo when you walk into them on a Sunday afternoon. It takes time to break old habits, just like old wallpaper.
There is something unyielding about the pub’s fundamental purpose as you watch it evolve to gastropubs, micropubs, artisan taprooms, and whatever the next trend may be. People want a stranger to nod at, a chair they don’t have to buy, and a place they don’t have to clean. Customers continue to gently resist the market’s attempts to maximize this experience.
The somewhat sticky table is what they desire. The dog should be sleeping beneath the bench. They want the regular at the bar to inform them that last night’s football was terrible without being asked. It’s actually questionable if that will endure another ten years of rising rents, more duties, and shifting drinking patterns. But for the time being, the bar continues to do the unglamorous, quiet job of bringing people together in a nation that frequently finds it difficult to find common ground anyplace else.
i) https://www.sipthestyle.com/how-to-design-a-traditional-pub-to-foster-social-connection-a-unique-approach-for-bar-owners
ii) https://easysociology.com/sociology-of-culture/pubs-and-the-british-class-system/
iii) https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s41978-020-00068-x
iv) https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/ijchm-12-2015-0717/full/html