Pub numbers decline in Bolton

Pub numbers. Pub closures. A very topical topic. But one that's been kicking around for longer than my lifetime.

This is a very specific look at pubs in a particular Lancashire town. In particular, how many of them there were. I'm bringing this quite specific account because it's typical of the developments in pub numbers across the UK in the second half of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th. The same pieces of legislation had much the same effect everywhere. Principally, a sharp reduction in the number of pubs and virtually now new licences ever issued.

At the time this piece was written in the late 1930's, there were 304 pubs in Bolton.

"In this book historical material is only being used to illustrate facts about the contemporary pub, and not for the sake of trying to include a "history of the pub" as such. Now, in order to understand more fully the factors of pub distribution, and to deal with the basis of the different types of pub that are examined later, we require some relevant history.

Some Worktown pubs can be traced back from before the Industrial Revolution. There is a list of 61 names and addresses of pubs existing in 1824. Nineteen of these are still in existence, same names and addresses.

Mackies Worktown Directory and Almanack for 1849 gives the following list:

Inns    117
Beerhouses    188
Beerhouses supposed to exist without a licence    15
Inns and Beerhouses where thieves and prostitutes resort    20
Inns and Beerhouses where gambling is practised    13
Inns and Beerhouses having musical entertainments    14

That is, ignoring the pubs without licences, Worktown had one more licence in 1848 than in 1937. Only, then there were 170 inhabitants per pub, now 559.

Said Mr. Taylor, Coroner for the Borough, 1848, in a speech to the licensing magistrates:

These ale and beerhouses would hold every man, woman, and child in the Borough . . . there is a drinking place for every 25 houses . . . such are the present resources for selling drink — or poison — some called it by one name, some by the other.

By 1854 there were another 25 beerhouses in existence, though the number of full licences had remained the same; and the absolute number of pubs continued to rise, until in 1869 there were 452 of them.

By then there was also a powerful and militant temperance movement in existence. At a packed meeting of 2,000 people in the new Temperance Hall the Rev. C. Garrett declaimed "No working man in Lancashire need be without clothes, but if he will insist in clothing the landlord and landlady in purple and fine linen, he must be content to remain in poverty and rags". Since 1830 there had been no restrictions whatever on the issue of beer licences; this policy remained the same for 39 years, when the Act of 1869 empowered the magistrates to refuse to grant the renewal or issue of beer licences; and another Act of 1872 still further restricted the conditions of issue and renewal of licences. The general basis of the present day licensing system had been established. From that time it is possible to trace statistically the ratio between pub and population variation.

Though in 1869 there were nearly half as many pubs again as there had been in existence twenty years earlier, the amount of full licences had only increased by 6, from 117 to 123. Next year, when the Act came into force, 69 beerhouses were abolished right away. The diagram opposite shows that the population: pub ratio has never subsequently decreased, steadily rising from 210 people per pub in 1870 to its 1935 figure of 559.

For nearly thirty years after the new act came into force, the absolute number of pubs continued to fall, while the population was still rising. In 1898 the borough boundaries were enlarged, which besides adding to the population increased the number of pubs by 61. (The break in the curves on the diagram, that are joined by dotted lines, indicate this.) For a few years the absolute number of pubs increased again slightly, but after 1903 began a long, steady fall, decreasing on an average by about three pubs every year. And in 1928, after a period of stagnation, the population too began to fall."
"The Pub and the People" by Mass Observation, 1943 (reprinted 1987), page 73.

The Beer Act of 1830 ushered in an, historically considered, untypically liberal licensing regime. Basically anyone could open a beer house, that is a pub that only sold beer and no spirits. Unsurprisingly, the number of pubs rocketed. From the 1869 Act mentioned onwards, increasingly strict legislation was introduced, mostly designed to close beer houses. It was a task that continued into the 1980's. Sometime around then beer houses finally disappear from the licensing statistics, having fallen to just a couple of hundred in the 1970's. As you can see from the table below.

You'll notice that Bolton was very close to the national average for the number of pubs per head of population in the 1930's: 1 per 559 people, when in 1938 the average was 519.

Pubs in England and Wales
Date	fully-licensed pub	beer house	Total Pubs	clubs	Total on Licences	Off Licences	On and Off licences	population	pop. per pub
1900			102,189			..	..	30,515,000	299
1905			99,478	6,589	106,067	25,405	124,883
1910			92,484	7,536	100,020	24,438	116,922	33,651,600	364
1915			86,626	8,902	95,528	23,202	109,828
1920			83,432	8,994	92,426	22,198	105,630	35,230,200	422
1931	57,072	19,814	76,886	14,377	91,263	22,105	113,368	39,988,000	520
1938	56,173	17,747	73,920	16,951	90,871	22,052	112,923	38,348,400	519
1941	56,961	17,249	74,210	15,864	90,074	21,756	111,830	41,748,000	563
1951	59,757	13,664	73,421	19,511	92,932	23,669	116,601	43,815,000	597
1961	64,570	4,366	68,936	24,418	93,354	23,934	117,288	46,196,000	670
1965	65,353	1,217	66,570	23,598	96,157	26,352	122,509	45,870,100	689
1971	63,640	447	64,087	26,548	101,863	28,166	130,029	49,152,000	767
1976	64,666	361	65,027	28,203	108,905	32,595	141,500	49,184,500	756
1982			68,373	30,269	121,232	39,362	160,594	49,634,000	726
1985			70,331	30,277	125,871	42,646	168,517	49,763,600	708
1991			74,299	28,999	134,404	47,944	182,348	51,099,000	688
1994			75,522	28,520	135,451	47,735	183,186	41,620,500	551
1995			75,392	28,277	133,711	45,986	179,697	51,820,600	687
1998			77,934	26,461	134,174	45,425	179,599	52,421,400	673
2000			77,876	25,032	131,682	45,450	177,132	52,942,800	680
2001			78,540	25,785	132,293	44,696	176,989	52,211,000	665
2003			81,933	23,912	135,307	47,478	182,785
2004			81,455	23,664	133,283	46,582	179,865
Sources: Statistical Handbook of the British Beer and Pub Association 2005, page 62 Statistical Handbook 1974, page 48