Subject: RE: BS: Beer anecdotes-any length
From:
Jim Carroll
Date: 26 Aug 15 - 12:47 PM
"Glasses used to have handles"
My home town of Kirkby, outside Liverpool, was dry for many right up to the 1960s - something to do with a clause written into the sale of the land, which was once owned by somebody opposed to alchohol.
When they finally built pubs there (The Peacock - closely followed by The Johnny Todd), dimpled pint glasses were all the rage, but they only lasted for a year because the handles made them extremely convenient weapons - don't know whether they ever came back into use.
A similar situation existed on Merton Road, in Wandswonth, just around the corner from where we lived in South London
A similar clause went into the sale of the land, so there was only one pub, which owed its existence to the fact that, in Victorian times, when that part of London expanded enormously.
The building labourers were mainly Irish and it became very difficult to recruit labour in an area where there were no pubs, so they knocked two terraced houses into one and turned it into a pub - it is still known as 'The Builders Arms'.
London is a fascinating place for pubs; a friend of ours, Tim Richards, wrote a book in cop-operation with an architect on City of London pubs, Tim did the social history, his mate described the buildings.
Tim used to organise pub tours when I first moved to London in the late sixties - my baptism of fire was his 'Circle Line' tour.
You'd purchase a ticket on the underground which enabled you to get out at every stop, have a half pint in the nearest pub to the station, then move on to the next one - there are twenty two (?) on the line.
I nearly made it once!
Jim Carroll
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sj
