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Pub Crawl (British History)
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TelMiles


In: London
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I am sure that I have it in a book somewhere that someone came up with the idea of how large Dark Age kingdoms were based on pub names around Wales...can't remember what book though, and there are a lot to get through. I became interested in this when a pub in my sister's town of West Wickham changed its name from "The Wheatsheaf" to the "Olde Anthropologist". There was a protest at the time and people said the Wheatsheaf name was ancient. It turned out to be medieval in the end, but still. From then on I have been interested in pub names.

How about the unofficial names of places Mick? I live about two miles south of Bromley, near Petts Wood. My Address is Bromley, but the place where I live is unofficially known by its old name, Southborough. There are more (although they escape me at the mo), but I think there could be something to this too.
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Mick Harper
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There was a protest at the time and people said the Wheatsheaf name was ancient. It turned out to be medieval in the end, but still

Do you mean that somebody found a document that read, "1394: Lady Bountiful conducted the opening ceremony and delighted everyone present by dubbing it "The Wheatsheaf"." Or do you mean that the first reference to there being a Wheatsheaf in West Wickam is medieval. Actually in practice you'll probably find that the whole story stems from a cub reporter on the Wickam Gazette ringing up the local Libray and being told, "Oh, it certainly goes back to Medieval times."

How about the unofficial names of places Mick? I live about two miles south of Bromley, near Petts Wood.

You might look into Pratt's Bottom (to give us a laugh) and Pease Pottage (to see how this allegedly Anglo-Saxon name got changed into such cherishable English).
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Hatty
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I remember being interested in the origins of Blue Boar pub names when reading about the De Vere family whose name cropped up in connection with Templars and beer. (The founder of the Knights Templar is said to be one Godfroi de Vere de Bouillon.) The De Vere family crest featured a blue bear or boar. The Blue Boar was mentioned in connection with Shakespeare and of course there was a De Vere who was allegedly the "author" of some of the Bard's later work.

{Blue must be a symbolic colour in this context and according to their lineage - how many families have spurious 'royal' lineages? - they're descended from a Pictish and Merovingian line going back to the House of Scythia, if I remember correctly, and blue is a Pictish colour}.
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Mick Harper
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There's quite a lot of previous musings by me about the "beerage" and its role in English history. I won't repeat it all in case somebody wants to dig it out.
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TelMiles


In: London
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Beer

Just watched an old Time Team on the telly and the head archie, Mick Aston, said that EVERYONE in medieval Britain drank beer as water was too dirty. He said even kids had their own beer and that the adult beer was something like ten times as powerful as modern beer. Anyone else think this whole thing is utter rubbish?
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Ishmael


In: Toronto
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Why do you think it rubbish?
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TelMiles


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I just can't see everyone drinking beer all the time. I don't doubt they did drink it, but all the time is a bit of a stretch. Means everyone was pissed most of the time. Also, they knew they had to boil water to get the impurities out, why not then just drink it when it cooled? They also filtered water from streams with stones...

The whole thing just doesn't sit right with me.
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Mick Harper
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I noticed on my French exchange, all those years ago, that everybody including the kids drank watered wine. It was a standing assumption among Brits that when on the Continent "one didn't drink the local water" and indeed local people didn't.

Now the assumption about medieval beer is that the water wasn't to be trusted and that beer was -- which is kinda reasonable, certainly in towns. But does wine have any kind of antiseptic effect? Or can wine be made to have a negligible alcohol content as (I think) beer can and hence water can be left out of the equation.
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Ishmael


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Mick Harper wrote:
I noticed on my French exchange, all those years ago, that everybody including the kids drank watered wine.

If they put water back into the wine, how is that any healthier than just drinking the water?
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TelMiles


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Mick Harper wrote:
Or can wine be made to have a negligible alcohol content as (I think) beer can and hence water can be left out of the equation.

Surely this is immaterial, Mick, since the other Mick said that medieval beer was more powerful than modern beer.
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Mick Harper
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I think you both missed both my points. I was wondering if wine, when added to water, had any antiseptic qualities. But assuming it doesn't I was further assuming that alcohol is inherently healthy (whenever straight water isn't) and that therefore both wine and beer were drunk as simple potations. Since then children must drink it (and working peasants must drink it by the gallon in the noonday sun) I am assuming that weak beer and weak wine must be the usual drink-of-choice.

I don't know what Mick Aston was referring to -- it would not in the least surprise me that pub beer was stronger then than it is now (ditto London gin, navy run, absinthe etc etc ad nauseam in the gutter) but I would be amazed if everyone was drinking pub beer through the day. It would be interesting though to find out if each household brewed its own (weak beer) or whether, like bread bake houses, people tended to get daily supplies from one local source.

I doubt that the Time Team crew would think the matter through as opposed to saying the obvious, headline finding.
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Mick Harper
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And speaking of Time Team, I have decided to stop posting over there. I've had all the fun and profit immediately available and the relentlessness of the opposition is beginning to get me down. If others continue I will watch with pleasure and perhaps comment here.
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TelMiles


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Mick Harper wrote:
I doubt that the Time Team crew would think the matter through as opposed to saying the obvious, headline finding.

Very true, Mick. Which they appear to do a lot of the time.

Mick Aston didn't qualify his remark at all, just said that they all drunk beer more powerful than modern beer. That there were 3 different types, one each for kids, women and men.

By the by, I think that those could afford to did indeed brew their own and a lot of those that could used to sell their beer to others that couldn't.
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Mick Harper
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By the by, I think that those could afford to did indeed brew their own and a lot of those that could used to sell their beer to others that couldn't.

Now it's you who's not thinking it through. Remember all those Boots home-brewing kits we had maundering away in the airing cupboard? It's the poor what does their own brewing (we had nobbut the shoes on our backs when I were a nipper), the ingredients being virtually free. Those that aren't poor wouldn't be setting themselves up as de facto brewers. Unless they were brewers of course.
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TelMiles


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Boots home brewing kits? Never heard of 'em, although my dad did brew his own wine and cider.

And I have to say I concede to your point about the poor 'cause the same thing happened with the gin in London later on.
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