Yorkshire’s Real Heritage Pubs, Campaign For Real Ale, £4.99

Historic pubs are an important part of Yorkshire’s cultural and architectural heritage, yet worrying numbers are either closed or up for sale.

The great tradition that pubs represent is under threat as never before, with rising numbers falling victim to the harsh economic climate, changes in legislation and shifts in drinking habits thanks largely to cheap supermarket booze. Another painful truth is that few authentic old pub interiors have survived the tidal wave of modernising. The 129 public houses listed in this guide, published by the Campaign For Real Ale (CAMRA), still have internal features of historic importance – but are a mere two per cent of Yorkshire’s total pub stock of around 6,000.

This book, edited by David Gamston, focuses on the region’s most important historic pub interiors, celebrating its pub heritage and calling for more protection. It’s a result of CAMRA’s work on the Yorkshire Regional Inventory, part of a national inventory of pubs with intact and outstanding interiors.

The ‘What Shaped Yorkshire’s Pubs’ chapter reads: “Its (Yorkshire’s) glorious geographical diversity is reflected in the variety of its public houses. Old country pubs, scattered among attractive villages and usually built of traditional local materials, look very different from the Victorian and later pubs purpose-built for the great towns and cities. But these outward differences conceal a similar underlying story. In Yorkshire, just as elsewhere, it has been the commercial activities of brewing companies and the way their ambitions interplayed with official regulation, mainly by licensing magistrates, that has done more than anything to shape the development of the English pub.”

The book includes several Bradford pubs, and reveals how the development of pubs in the district went hand-in-hand with its Victorian urbanisation. The Cock and Bottle – which, as the T&A recently reported, is up for sale – is listed as an ornate pub similar to the grand Victorian and Edwardian ‘drinking palaces’ largely confined to London and a few other big cities.

The pub, on Barkerend Road, is described as “a late Victorian gem” with one of the finest interiors of its type in northern England. Originally dating from the 1820s, it is “rich in finely-worked joinery and cut, etched and leaded glass”.

“This wonderful pub was one of the very first on Tetley’s list designated under their ‘Heritage’ scheme in the 1980s, but now finds itself perched beside a big modern ring-road system and its recent trading history has been beset by changes.”

The New Beehive in Westgate, Bradford, built in 1901, is mentioned as a rare case of design by the city council as part of municipal street improvement.

The Black Bull in Birstall is included “solely for its upstairs function room which has two elaborately carved and painted ‘boxes’ – most likely deriving from its former use as a lodge for the Ancient Order of Druids, who had connections there from 1834”.

Other pubs featured include The Old Ship, Brighouse, The Grey Horse, Horsforth, The Old White Beare, Norwood Green, The Royal and The White Horse, Pudsey, The Yew Tree, Otley, and The Ring O’ Bells, Shipley.

With a comprehensive guide to pubs, from the ‘golden age’ of the 19th century to the post-war years, new patterns of ownership, the dark years of losses and CAMRA’s call to arms, this guide makes it crystal clear why the need to safeguard what few historic pubs we have left is such a vital conservation challenge.