INNS, ALE & BEERHOUSES OF YATELEY

Introduction to 1997 Exhibition

Written by Peter Tipton, April 2008

The text of the Yateley Society's May Fayre exhibition mounted in the spring of 1997 is reproduced on this website as a series of linked pages. The exhibition included many photographs and drawings, for which the Society obtained permission from the copyright holders to use in the display, but which are not included here.

The exhibition did not set out to be a comprehensive history of every pub in Yateley, although the exhibition had something to say about every pub. Until its 2004 Exhibition, Yateley in World War 2, the Society maintained a policy of not displaying research about events after the date of the latest published census. In 1997 we still awaited publication of the 1901 census. The year 1830 was seminal for the sale of alcoholic beverages in Yateley. Before 1830 there had been, at various times in history, more than one drinking house in the area we now (2008) call the Civil Parish of Yateley, but in 1830 there was only one the Dog & Partridge, still owned by the Church. Between the Acts of Parliament of 1830 and 1869 most of the pubs we know today had their origins: either as Licensed Victualling Houses, regulated by the Licencing Magistrates, or as what became known as Ante 1869 Beerhouses, which enabled ordinary householders, on paying an annual fee to HM Excise, so sell beer from their homes.

When we mounted the 1997 Exhibition we had not yet located in Hampshire Record Office records of the Courts of Petty Sessions held from 1873 at Odiham, and later at Aldershot, by the Licensing Magistrates . The registers of liecences (33M73XP) were deposited on 29 Sep 1983 but the index was kept on the desk of the archivists rather than on open shelves. Our research into pubs in the later Victorian period therefore relied on directories, and the manorial court books, but mainly on copies of historic documents very generously supplied by the archivists of the brewers: Morlands, Courage and Bass -- still in 1997 all existing as independent companies, and still all brewing.

The 1997 exhibition was therefore essentially about the reasons for the explosion of pubs in Victorian England, and in Yateley in particular. The exhibition can be read as a narrative account showing how most of today's pubs in Yateley had their roots in that period, and why. There is some material earlier than 1830 relating to the Dog & Partridge, particularly as it relates to the genesis of other estabishments. There is also a brief section on the inns of Blackwater. These inns, the orgins of which go back many centuries, now need further research.

A more comprehensive account of the history of listed buildings such as the White Lion can be accessed from the listed buildings main page. Now that Listed Buildings are to be renamed Registered Heritage Assets we have coined the phrase Supplementary Heritage Assets in Yateley to cover other historic buildings, or sites of former historic buildings, which have not been officially listed. If we have carried out more extensive research into a pub, over a wider timeframe than appears in the 1997 Exhibition, you may find a link to it in the SHAIY list. Any factual errors in the 1997 text are being amended.

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