Pub pages

I'm halfway through reading, admittedly rather belatedly, The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, the socialist classic by Robert Tressell (actually Noonan, the pen name being a pun from the building trade) about a gang of housepainters in "Mugbsborough", a fictionalised Hastings, the Sussex town where he wrote the book between 1906 and 1910.

As you might expect from a novel about a group of working men, there's a pub in it, The Cricketers. While Hardy and Dickens describe the city and country pubs of the Victorian era, and Graham Greene, Patrick Hamilton and George Orwell interwar and wartime London ones, I can't think of a literary pub from the Edwardian age, expect maybe the one the title character escapes to in The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells, although that's really a riverside inn, and so even though I've drunk in a few well-preserved examples, especially Joseph Holt's dwindling estate of them in Eccles, it's good to have such a detailed depiction of one as this:

"Viewed from outside, The Cricketers' Arms was a pretentious-looking building with plate glass windows and a profusion of gilding. The pilasters were painted in imitation of different marbles and the doors grained to represent costly woods. There were panels containing painted advertisements of wines and spirits and beer, written in gold, and ornamented with gaudy colours. On the lintel over the principal entrance was inscribed in small white letters: "A. Harpy. Licensed to sell wines, spirits and malt liquors by retail to be consumed either on or off the premises".

The bar was arranged in the usual way, being divided into several compartments. First there was the Saloon Bar, on the glass door of which was fixed a printed bill: "No four ale served in this bar". Next was the jug and bottle department, much appreciated by ladies who wished to indulge in a drop of gin on the quiet. There were also two small private bars, only capable of holding two or three persons, where nothing less than four pennyworth of spirits or glasses of ale at threepence were served. Finally, there was the public bar, the largest compartment of all.

Wooden forms provided seating accommodation for the customers, and a large automatic musical instrument—a "penny in the slot" polyphone, resembling a grandfather's clock in shape—stood close to the counter, so that those behind the bar could reach to wind it up. Hanging on the partition near the polyphone was a board about fifteen inches square, over the surface of which were distributed a number of small hooks, numbered. At the bottom of the board was a net made of fine twine, in which several india rubber rings about three inches in diameter were lying. There was no table in the place but jutting out from the partition which divided the public bar from the others was a hinged flap about three feet long by twenty inches wide, which could be folded down when not in use. This was the shove-ha'penny board. The coins—old French pennies—used in playing this game were kept behind the bar and might be borrowed on application. On the partition, just above the shove-ha'penny board was a neatly printed notice, framed and glazed:—

NOTICE

Gentlemen using this house are requested
to refrain from using obscene language.

Alongside this notice were a number of gaudily coloured bills advertising the local theatre and the music hall, and another of a travelling circus and menagerie then visiting the town and encamped on a piece of waste ground about half way on the road to Windley.

The fittings behind the bar, and the counter, were of polished mahogany, with silvered plate glass at the back of the shelves. On these shelves were rows of bottles and cut glass decanters, gin, whiskey, brandy, and wines and liqueurs of different kinds."