England's finest
Pubs are one of the country's greatest contribution to world culture; instantly recognisable, unique, and authentically indigenous in all their varieties. In these drawings we celebrate the pubs built for Courage Brewery by Aylwin & Falkner Architects between the Wars.
A pub is such an instantly recognisable place to almost anyone globally of a drinking age, exported worldwide but somehow only really belonging when situated in a peculiarly British Isles context. While some pubs claim antiquity, many date from the Victorian period when the British Isles urbanised.
Photograph of front elevation to The Wooden Bridge Hotel & Public House, Guildford, Surrey for Messrs Courage & Co. Ltd. (1935) by Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
The pub for the motoring age
With further population expansion outwards from historic cities into the countryside and with the wide ownership of the motor car, breweries went on an expansion in the decades in the years between the Wars.
Model photograph of The Wooden Bridge Hotel & Public House, Guildford, Surrey for Messrs Courage & Co. Ltd. (1935) by Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
Breweries saw an opportunity to meet new markets by building minted fresh pubs in recently built housing estates on the edge of cities and towns. These sites were often larger and provided parking, which an old building in the historic towns did not.
Before drink-driving bans came in in the 1960's, these pubs and their model thrived for a short but fervent period, enriching communities. Sadly many of these are now disappearing as tastes change.
Revival architecture
With larger sites, mostly on unbuilt plots amongst housing but in prominent spots along principal byways, these new pubs were often built in a variety of styles but with stripped back ornament - a real potpourri of architectural taste.
The architecture harked back both to vernacular traditions as well as more Classical architectures of the Neo-Georgian. There are many Tudor revival pubs, with lots of half timbering as well as Neo-Gothic. These pub architects gleaned ideas from almost any British style of the last few hundred years. These pubs were domestically scaled and sometimes appeared like the houses amongst which they were peppered.
Pub livery
The livery was also important and writing and signage was key to the identity of the building so that they stood out from other similarly styled houses around.
Photograph of The Red Lion Public House, Aldershot, Hampshire for Messrs Courage & Co. Ltd. (1931) by Falkner, H & Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
Traditional materials
Although often stripped back of much ornament, these pubs were still lovingly created true to established and still living vernacular traditions of craftsmanship
This pub does not look out of place with local vernaculars of the Home Counties around London. These forms are instantly recognisable as a variant of the cottage of ancient form. Given that pubs originated as a room within someone's private house, the domestic quality of the architecture is vital to the story of the 20th century pub prior to post-war reconstruction pubs. The publican of these brewery owned establishments often lived above the bar, so still a living public house.
Occasionally, an old house would be co-opted as a pub, but with a new frontage, retaining its domestic quality but increasing the frontage and seating and bar areas to meet demand for larger pubs than any town centre pubs could offer. Old pubs in historic centres had to make do with being carved out of an ancient building with restricted plot dimensions.
Proposed re-building of The New Inn, Perry Hill, Worplesdon, Guildford, Surrey for Messrs Courage & Co. Ltd. (1939) by Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
These pubs still used what we would now consider to be high-status and expensive products - dressed quarried stone, special bricks, mouldings, faience or terracotta - materials that today would go straight onto the cutting room floor.
Re-building scheme for The Seven Stars Public House for Messrs Courage & Co. Ltd. (1929) by Falkner, H & Aylwin, GThe Blower Foundation
Roadside pubs
Roadside buildings with wide frontages as cars speed by, are especially a feature of the mid-Century pub.
Hotels & Inns
Also, offering accommodations, a new kind of 'coaching inn' for the motor age emerged. Sadly, after WWII, post-war austerity killed pub construction and many new pubs when the economy picked up were built in modernist traditions, somehow not quite cutting it with the public.
A pub has a distinct quality and this is absolutely its architecture and interior feel. A cocktail bar or brasserie are not the same.
In recent decades, the pub has been in crisis. The best will survive of course, but we lament losing so many from this flourishing pub boom of the motor age - especially the suburban and rural pubs away from population centres.
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