Context 165 - August 2020

C O N T E X T 1 6 5 : A U G U S T 2 0 2 0 27 Food and drink pubs to have men-only rooms, but these became outlawed from 1 January 1976, when the Sex Discrimination Act came into force. Another, much later, legislative change, making the 2020 pub very different from its 1960 counterpart, was the introduction of smoking bans, first in Scotland in 2006, followed by the rest of the UK in 2007.This has changed the atmosphere of the pub in more ways than one and is thought to be a contributory factor in urban pub closures. Another change since 1960 has been the marked decline in the long-established tradition of table service. In many a pub one can still see bell-pushes on the walls of what were ‘better’ rooms which were used to attract attention for service. They were connected to an indicator box within sight of the servery. Pressing a bell would activate a buzzer and cause a disc to wobble to show where service was required.This writer also remembers waiters patrolling pubs in Manchester in the early 1960s in search of custom. One paid a little more for the drink than in public bars and it was usual to give a small tip to the waiter. By 2000 it was only at a tiny hand- ful of pubs on Merseyside where table service seems to have been a continuous tradition: it is now re-emerging, notably throughout the JD Wetherspoon chain where their app, rather than a bell-push, can be used to summon a drink. Food has been part of the pub scene for centuries, but it has assumed ever-growing importance since the early post-war period. Wet-led pubs, especially in inner urban areas, have had a tough time of it but the rise of the gastropub, with its emphasis on upmarket food, has transformed a small part of the pub scene since the 1980s. The term was coined in 1991 with the opening of what is claimed to be the first of the breed, the Eagle in Farringdon, London. Gastropubs are often associated with the fashion for paintwork in pastel shades. This has transformed the character of many a pub in an effort to appear modern and get away from the usually brown colours of the traditional pub. Until the current pandemic, the Volunteer Canteen, Waterloo, Merseyside, was one of the last pubs with a continuous history of once-common table service (Photo: Geoff Brandwood) The side-street Retreat in Reading, Berkshire, is seen here before its character was transformed about 2015 with the repainting of all wooden surfaces in fashionable pastel green (Photo: Michael Slaughter)