Buckden - a Huntingdonshire Village

WHERE TO GET A DRINK 187 CHAPTER 16/ WHERE TO GET A DRINK David Thomas Ale and beer have been made and drunk almost as long as barley or other cereals have been grown. Among the reasons for this are that they were often safer than water from wells or streams and had pleasant side-effects, two qualities which the early residents of Buckden would have appreciated. NB Premises in bold type also have an entry in the A to Z Section; those followed by a map reference are marked on the street plan on page [vii]. “Beer is Best”—but good drains are better here have been many wells and water pumps in Buckden: easy access to fresh water was the main reason for a settlement being founded here and remaining in continuous occupation for at least 2500 years. Unfortunately such settlements soon become a threat to the clean water supply that first attracted them. In the absence of planned drainage systems and sewage treatment, it is all too easy for both surface and subterranean water sources to become contaminated by human and animal waste or by the run-off from even small-scale industrial processes. Mains drainage came comparatively late to Buckden, with the first sewers being laid in 1939—not the best of timings: residents recall the work still continuing in the late 1940s and 1950s, having been suspended because of the war and the subsequent shortage of labour, construction and back-fill materials. In the previous world of earth closets and manure heaps standing directly on the soil, the small streams marked on early OS maps as "Public Drain No.1” etc. could have offered little protection against the diseases of contaminated water. But beer could: some water-borne germs were killed when the brewing mash was boiled, others by the alcohol content of the beer. Our ancestors may not have known how beer protected them from water-borne illness, but they recognized it had a disinfectant effect not present in water. (It had other pleasant effects, too.) Small, but plentiful, beer Village beers were often ‘small beers’, that is, they had a lower alcohol content than is usual today. In the home, this made beer a suitable alternative to water for invalids, women and children; 1 but it was equally suitable for farm hands of all ages and sexes labouring in the fields, since they could drink it throughout the working day, so staving off dehydration while remaining fairly sober: William Cobbett calculated that a labouring family would need almost three times as much beer a day in the harvest months as in the winter ones. 2 An act of 1830 (the Beer Act for short, although it also covered ale and cider) allowed any householder in England who paid rates to apply for a licence to brew beer and sell it from a public house or his own property. The government hoped that making it easier for people to buy beer than spirits (especially gin) would significantly reduce public drunkenness and riotous behaviour. The new licences were therefore made cheap to buy, incurred few running costs, and unlike those issued for existing drinking premises such as inns, alehouses and eating-houses, did not come under the jurisdiction of local magistrates. Not surprisingly, within a fortnight of the act coming into force on 10 October, several thousand licences had been applied for—and a leading clergyman who had once supported the act was grumbling that everybody was drunk, and that those who weren’t singing were sprawling. Beer and Buckden ‘Beerseller’ or ‘beer retailer’ soon became a common occupation in contemporary trade directories. Buckden was no exception: the 1854 Post Office Directory lists sixteen people licensed to sell alcohol, of 1 But not ‘little children’, unless they went out to work (William Cobbett, Cottage Economy 1820s, more than one edition). 2 Later in the nineteenth century, the harvesters’ beer was more likely to be bought-in than home-brewed or brewed on the farm. Commercial brewers such as Paine’s of St Neots would keep an eye on the weather and the progress of the crops; small advertisements would then be scattered through the local papers reminding farmers to start stocking up. T