- Caroline Boswell: And there were different strengths
of drink at this time.
You had small beer, which would be a weaker beer,
often brewed by pouring additional hot water
on top of the original mash from the first brew.
You had middle beer, which would be, you know,
the first batch of relatively strong beer.
And then you had strong beer.
And this was really what we would call high-gravity beer.
And of course, people at the time drank all three kinds
depending on the time of day it was.
You probably drank small beer in the morning,
and then maybe middle and strong beer
over the course of your day.
And a lot of it depended on your occupation.
For a long time, historians assumed that poor people
and especially day laborers, perhaps farmhands,
drank only small beer, but in fact,
they often drank strong beer because,
part of the reason drink was an everyday necessity
was that it's, as we know, high in calories, right.
And so, actually, landowners would fight
for the best farmhands by offering the strongest beer
because that would actually be part of your pay.
And this would be, you know, legendary
or it would be passed down by rumor that such-and-such a farm,
if you labored there, had the strongest beer on offer.
And now, people have asked me, well, how exactly was it
that people were able to be productive
if they were drinking particularly strong beer?
And that is a question
that historians have not quite answered yet.
[audience laughing]
Let's talk a little bit, something about the name.
Public house, they weren't owned by the state,
despite the fact they're called public houses.
They were public houses because they were open to the public.
Right, and so, therefore, they had to provide
very specific services to be licensed.
And that's where the name "pub" comes from.
It's a short version of "public house."
They very specifically had three different types
of drinking establishments.
They had inns, they had taverns, and they had ale houses.
Inns were large establishments.
Innkeepers were relatively wealthy.
Sometimes they even participated in local politics.
And they catered to a wealthier clientele.
You're not gonna find your dukes or kings here.
The toffs don't go to where the ordinary people hang out.
But still, you're gonna be talking about
relatively wealthy people.
And they're gonna be attending inns
largely because they need sustenance, right,
and they need a place to stay.
So inns, in order to be licensed,
obviously had to offer accommodations to people.
They had to have stables, which again,
suggests they're wealthy clientele
if you can afford a horse.
And, of course, you had to have food.
But additionally, what people wanted
was access to private rooms.
Not just to sleep, but to socialize
because they didn't necessarily want to mix
with the general population
that might be attending the inn at any given time.
And so, they very much cater to a specific, more elite class
and as such they offer more beverages
than, say, an ale house.
They're gonna offer wine in addition to beer,
ale, and potentially cider and perry,
depending on what part of England you're in.
Taverns, again, catered to relatively well-to-do,
as they would call them, people in the early modern period.
They specifically sold wine,
though you could, of course, purchase beer there as well,
but you went to the tavern to purchase wine.
And wine was more expensive in England than beer
because it was not produced there.
And so, it was again, wealthier merchants
who would be able to afford this.
So they're largely going there to purchase their wine.
And in fact, sometimes you would go
just to simply purchase it and take it home, right,
because most people did not make their own wine.
In fact, the vast majority of people did not.
Taverns, much like inns,
also had to offer a degree of accommodations,
though that wasn't their primary purpose like an inn.
The lowest and most prolific of all of these
kind of drinking establishments was the ale house.
Ale houses were far less permanent structures
than taverns or inns.
Oftentimes, they were simply someone's house
that had opened up as an ale house
in part to supplement income.
But they were definitely much smaller, less affluent places.
Their primary purpose, of course, was to offer beer.
Originally they offered ale,
but ale had more or less been replaced,
since ale is unhopped beer in England.
This is the Medieval image
and you can see what's going on here,
is this woman, who is an ale wife,
right, she runs an ale house,
is welcoming her new customer, who is clearly a monk,
he's quite thirsty, very happy to see
that she has ale available for him.
And how does he know this?
Well, at this time, if you were going to sell ale
and you didn't do it regularly,
the way in which you signaled the fact
that you had a fresh brew ready
was that you put the ale stake at the top of your house.
Which in this case is this broom, so it's an ale stake,
hanging out to signal to passersby:
"Hey, we're open for business today.
"Come on in, we've got a fresh brew."
And this, obviously, is the precursor to the pub sign,
right, which becomes a more permanent fixture in the future.
But this was how ale houses tended to operate
in the Medieval era.
Eventually, they'll become more permanent structures,
but the illegal ones, kind of in and out, as you might imagine,
depending on when they were unearthed
by the local authorities.