The 1970s were a time of high inflation. Not knowing any better, I soon got used to pub prices increasing not once, but three, four or more times a year. It's just the way things were.
How different from the forty years leading up to WW I, where the price of beer didn't change. Can you imagine that? What must it have been like for older drinkers when the price of beer doubled in the space of a year or two? It must have seemed like the world was coming to an end.
Older drinkers must have felt something similar in the 1970s. Because from 1947 to 1962, there was no change in the average price of draught Bitter. The price rose steadily in the late 1960s, but went crazy in the mid-1970s.
When I first ventured into pubs, there was quite a difference in prices between different breweries. I happened to grow up in one of the cheapest regions, the East Midlands. Where there were strong regional breweries who kept prices down. Beer from the Nottingham breweries was 1p or 2p cheaper than beer from the Big Six breweries. Which was quite a large percentage when a pint cost 13p or 14p.
Talking of different prices, inflation really eroded the differential pricing for styles and rooms. When beer was 13p per pint, Bitter cost 1p more than Mild and cost 1p more in the lounge than in the public bar. That remained the same, even when the price of beer had doubled.
One of the reasons I was never even vaguely tempted by Lager was that it was such poor value. Most were the same strength as Mild or maybe Ordinary Bitter, but cost 25-30% more. Keg Bitter was more expensive than cask, too. Though the difference was smaller, usually 1p per pint.
More than just memories today. I've also some numbers. Where you can see that the price of Bitter trebled in the 1970a.
| Average draught beer prices 1970 - 1979 | ||
| Year | Bitter | Lager |
| 1970 | 10.7 | |
| 1971 | 12 | |
| 1972 | 12.5 | |
| 1973 | 13 | 17 |
| 1974 | 15 | 19 |
| 1975 | 20 | 23 |
| 1976 | 23 | 28 |
| 1977 | 27 | 32 |
| 1978 | 29 | 35 |
| 1979 | 34 | 40 |
| Source: | ||
| "Statistical Handbook of the British Beer & Pub Association 2003", p. 44. | ||
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8 comments:
Holt's Bitter was 79p a pint when I first drank it in the late eighties. I think the mild was a couple of pence cheaper. It was claimed to be the cheapest beer in the country, only passing a pound a pint in the early to mid nineties. It's now £3-4.
As well as inflation in the seventies, you also had decimalisation, which must have led to some rounding up of prices.
Hello Ron,
do you have South London prices for the mid 1960s when I started drinking.
I am sure it was under a shilling at say 11d a pint.
thanks,
tankard
When I read references to the lower orders drinking in the "four-ale bar", I always assumed it was a bar that served four different ales (although that didn't seem very likely). It never occurred to me that it was a reference to the price of the ale until I saw it spelt out (probably by yourself or Martyn Connell). The idea of the price of even low-end beer staying the same - in that case 4d a pint - from one year to the next, even from one decade to the next, is mindboggling even now.
park town,
your memory is deceiving you. Well over a shilling a pint in the mid-1960s. You'd have to go back to the 1940s to find a pint under a shilling. 1/5d to 1/8d a pint is what you'd have been paying.
Phil,
4d wasn't the price per pint. It was the price per quart. It was 2d per pint.
I think quart or two pint glasses should be a legal measure
Superb post as always Ron, I would say a lot of us have seen people exclaim about prices of the past a few hundred for a Rolex submariner, a pint of beer for mere pence, less than a thousand for a car or my favourite a couple thousand for a house. Reality was it was all relative, granted buying power, wages and conditions have been declining since then.
As I read it I don't think there is any legal bar to serving quarts as they are a multiple of a pint. Howver, the glasses will probably be disproportionately expensive and if I were the publican I would want a minimum fiver deposit or make them strictly table service only. They do see beer by the litre in Germany, especially Bayern, but I think it is mainly in beer halls or at festivals.
[IPW]
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