Newbury Pubs – 1903

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In 1903 a debate was raging over the proposed Compensation Bill being proposed by the Governement. For many years local licensing magistrates had had the power to refuse a licence to a pub or beerhouse on the grounds of ‘redundancy’, but were reluctant to use the power because the loss of a licence would seriously impact upon the licensee, who would be out of a job, and the property owner (a licence added significantly to the value of a property). The new Bill proposed a scheme to provide financial compensation to licensee and owner if a licence was refused on these grounds.

‘Redundancy’ was the term used to suggest that there was an over-supply of pubs in an area and, hence, where the number could sensibly be reduced with no inconvenience to potential customers in the area. The scheme was attractive to Government because they didn’y have to pay for it – the Compensation Fund would be built up by contributions from all licensees though an increase in the license fee. Magistrates liked it because it salved their consciences to know the landlord would get a redundancy payment as did the brewers (most pubs were brewery owned) who sat on the Borough Council with them, attended the same social gatherings and were often good friends.

There was plenty of opposition to the Bill, but also strong public support for a reduction of licences, the Temperance movement was strong in this period and there was one pub or beerhouse for every 137 citizens, including children (Newbury population 1901 census = 11,061). Modern Newbury has fewer establishments serving four times the population.

On 19^th February 1903, the Newbury Weekly News contributed to local discussion by publishing lists of all the licenses in the area, one list for the Borough of Newbury and one for the Newbury ‘County Petty Sessional Division’ , essentially Newbury Rural District. From the list it could easily be seen that there were areas of the Borough in particular where there were more pubs than necessary. The data for the Borough is given below.

Parliament passed the Compensation Act in 1904 and it was soon being tested in action.

The list presented here is a slightly modified version of the Newbury Weekly News list. The type of licence is indicated in the newspaper by printing it in three sections for Alehouse, Beerhouse and Grocer licences with Six Day or Early Closing licences indicate by a † or * symbol alongside the name. This information has been combined into an extra column here.

Types of Licence

• Alehouse – the conventional pub licence – the holder is allowed to sell beer, cider, wines and spirits
• Beerhouse – a hangover from the 1830 Beer Act – houses that were only allowed to sell alcohol in the form of beer or cider.
• Grocer – Off-sales only – applied to off-licences, grocers and chemists all of whom commonly sold alcohol in some form or other.
• Six Day – Cannot sell alcohol on a Sunday.
• Early Closing – Usually combined with Six Day, cannot sell alcohol after shops closed on the local early closing day.

Alehouse licences were more expensive than Beerhouse and it was not unknown for a publican to opt for the saving if his spirits sales did not justify the extra cost. Conversely many beerhouses sought to upgrade to alehouse, which was often refused by magistrates seeking to minimise drunkeness in the working classes that were the typical market of a beerhouse.

Six Day and Early Closing reduced the cost of a licence and were popular with shops and brewery taps, which typically didn’t open out of normal shop hours.

The List

The quality of the list being transcribed is of poor quality (see page header) the occasional transcription error would not be a surprise!