Curmudgeon's "Opening Times" Column - January 2010

The drinking scene of thirty years ago showed some amazing contrasts with the present day

AS A NEW DECADE dawns, it is interesting to look at just how much the pub and beer scene has changed over the years. So here are a few points of the drinking and pubgoing experience of the start of the 80s that are very different from today:

• Most pubs here in the North-West just served standard mild and bitter. Apart from the odd sighting of Pedigree or Draught Bass, there was nothing that could be called a premium beer
• Beer was often sold from unmarked handpumps
• Electric beer dispense was commonplace, typically using diaphragm meters, which were generally unmarked too
• Free houses were virtually unknown and there were no guest beers. It was just the regular products of the owning brewery
• Across the board, there was a lot of choice, with substantial tied estates belonging to Border, Higsons, Burtonwood, Oldham Brewery, Boddingtons, Matthew Brown, Mitchells and Yates & Jackson that have now largely vanished from the face of the earth
• But in many local areas there was a marked dearth of choice, in particular with large areas such as Warrington being dominated by Greenalls
• It was considered a point worthy of note that in Macclesfield you could get beer from eight different breweries (Ansells, Bass, Boddingtons, Robinsons, Marstons, Greenalls, Tetleys and Wilsons)
• Central Manchester was, surprisingly to the outside observer, virtually devoid of pubs tied to the local independent breweries – it didn’t have a single Holts pub
• Many older drinkers still drank splits – a half of draught beer topped off with a bottle of brown or pale ale
• Although there was a compulsory afternoon closure (around here, generally 3-5.30), most pubs stuck fairly closely to the standard permitted hours. Weekday lunchtime closure was very rare
• Closing time was 10.30 pm Monday-Thursday, with 11 pm closing only on Friday and Saturday
• Sunday lunchtime opening was a strict 12 noon – 2 pm, during which many pubs were packed
• There was a lot more lunchtime drinking by office and factory workers
• Middle-aged couples would just “go out for a drink” in the evening in a way they don’t tend to now
• There was much less food served in pubs, especially in the evenings. Many of today's high-profile country dining pubs did not serve evening meals at all
• On the other hand, food was much more varied and there was more of a sense of experimentation with styles and formats. It had not yet settled into today’s standardised “pub menu”. For example, a number of pubs had extensive lunchtime buffets – something you never see nowadays
• A lot of the bottom-end pubs were extremely scruffy in a way that is very rare now
• There was a clear hierarchy amongst country pubs of “No coaches”, “Coaches by appointment only” and “Coaches welcome”. Does anyone (apart from CAMRA) actually organise coach trips to pubs any more?

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