The distinction was legal, it mattered enormously, and both words now mean exactly the same thing
The Abbey Tavern in Kentish Town holds a 4.2 from one thousand and eleven people, is listed at one to forty pounds, and the word on the sign used to be a legal category.
The three
For several centuries, English law distinguished sharply between three kinds of drinking establishment, and getting it wrong was an offence.
An alehouse sold ale. Only ale. It was the cheapest and the most common, and it was frequently just somebody’s front room.
A tavern sold wine. It was licensed separately, it was considerably more expensive, and it served a wealthier customer.
An inn provided lodging. It had beds, and stabling, and it was there to serve travellers.
And the law cared
Enormously.
The number of taverns permitted in each town was restricted by statute in the sixteenth century – and the numbers were small, and London was permitted a specific figure.
Because wine was foreign, and expensive, and associated with a class of person the authorities were relaxed about, whereas ale was drunk by everybody, in quantity, and the authorities were not relaxed about that at all.
An alehouse keeper needed a licence, was answerable to magistrates, and could be shut down.
Now they mean nothing
Every one of those words now means, simply, pub.
Seven postcodes. Six hundred and eighty-three articles. Six hundred venues.
And the words on the front of them are the fossils of a licensing system, a class system and a heraldic system – all three of which have completely collapsed – and the words are still there, doing nothing, and nobody minds.
Arms meant heraldry. Tavern meant wine. Inn meant beds. Alehouse meant ale and nothing else.
All of them now mean: a room where you may buy a drink.
Which is fine
And we have come round to it, and it took seven postcodes.
A pub name is a handle. It exists so that one person can tell another where to meet.
It does not need to be true, and almost none of them are – and the only requirement is that it stays the same, which is the one thing renaming a venue breaks.
The abbey
Which was very probably not here.
Kentish Town had a chapel of ease, and land held by ecclesiastical bodies – and an abbey on a pub sign in London usually means the land once belonged to the church, rather than that there was ever a building.
Which is the same thing we found at the Mitre. The sign told you whose ground you were standing on.
Verdict
Good pub, honest number, cheap.
Go, and order wine, which is the only thing the sign is technically licensing.
The free house
Which is the one word on a British pub front that still means exactly what it says.
A tied house is owned by, or leased from, a brewery or pub company, and is obliged to buy its beer from them – at a price it does not negotiate, from a list it does not choose.
A free house owns its freehold and buys what it likes.
Which is why the beer in a free house is frequently more interesting and the landlord is frequently in a better mood.
Read the small print under the sign. Seven postcodes and six hundred and eighty-three articles, and it is the only honest information on the outside of a British pub.
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