A pub, or public house, is a house licensed to sell alcohol to the general public. It is a drinking establishment in Britain, Ireland, Australia. In many places, especially in villages, a pub is the focal point of the community.
Town pubs
Good people drink good beer.Hunter S. Thompson
Pubs can be traced back to Roman taverns, through the Anglo-Saxon alehouse to the development of the tied house system in the 19th century. Pubs are socially and culturally distinct from cafés, bars and beer halls. Most offer a range of beers, wines, spirits, and soft drinks and snacks. Traditionally the windows of town pubs were of smoked or frosted glass to obscure the clientele from the street but there has been a move towards clear glass and brighter interiors.
Pubs outside Great Britain
I drink to make other people more interesting.Ernest Hemingway
It was the pub that first introduced the concept of the bar counter being used to serve the beer. Until that time beer establishments used to bring the beer out to the table or benches, as remains the practice in (for example) beer gardens and other drinking establishments in Germany.
- The Nutshell – Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk
- The Lakeside Inn – Southport, Lancashire
- The Little Gem – Aylesford, Kent
- The Smiths Arms – Godmanstone, Dorset
- The Signal Box Inn – Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire
Counter bar
Alcohol may be man’s worst enemy, but the bible says love your enemy.Frank Sinatra
Until the 1970s most of the larger pubs also featured an off-sales counter or attached shop for the sales of beers, wines and spirits for home consumption. In the 1970s, supermarkets and high street chain stores and off-licences undercut pub prices and all but a handful closed their off-sale counters. By the 20th century, the saloon had become a middle-class room — carpets on the floor, cushions on the seats, and a penny or two on the prices, while the public bar remained working class with bare boards, hard bench seats, and cheap beer.