Moon Under Water

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from a bus stop, but it is on a side-street, and drunks and rowdies never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

Its clientele, though fairly large, consists mostly of ‘regulars’ who occupy the same chair every evening and go there for conversation as much as for the beer.

If you are asked why you favour a particular public-house, it would seem natural to put the beer first, but the thing that most appeals to me about the Moon Under Water is what people call its ‘atmosphere’.

To begin with, its whole architecture and fittings are uncompromisingly Victorian. It has no glass-topped tables or other modern miseries, and, on the other hand, no sham roof-beams, ingle-nooks or plastic panels masquerading as oak. The grained woodwork, the ornamental mirrors behind the bar, the cast-iron fireplaces, the florid ceiling stained dark yellow by tobacco-smoke, the stuffed bull’s head over the mantelpiece — everything has the solid, comfortable ugliness of the nineteenth century.

In winter there is generally a good fire burning in at least two of the bars, and the Victorian lay-out of the place gives one plenty of elbow-room. There are a public bar, a saloon bar, a ladies’ bar, a bottle-and-jug for those who are too bashful to buy their supper beer publicly, and, upstairs, a dining-room.

Games are only played in the public, so that in the other bars you can walk about without constantly ducking to avoid flying darts.

In the Moon Under Water it is always quiet enough to talk. The house possesses neither a radio nor a piano, and even on Christmas Eve and such occasions the singing that happens is of a decorous kind.

The barmaids know most of their customers by name, and take a personal interest in everyone. They are all middle-aged women—two of them have their hair dyed in quite surprising shades—and they call everyone ‘dear,’ irrespective of age or sex. (‘Dear,’ not ‘Ducky’: pubs where the barmaid calls you ‘ducky’ always have a disagreeable raffish atmosphere.)

Unlike most pubs, the Moon Under Water sells tobacco as well as cigarettes, and it also sells aspirins and stamps, and is obliging about letting you use the telephone.

You cannot get dinner at the Moon Under Water, but there is always the snack counter where you can get liver-sausage sandwiches, mussels (a speciality of the house), cheese, pickles and those large biscuits with caraway seeds in them which only seem to exist in public-houses.

Upstairs, six days a week, you can get a good, solid lunch—for example, a cut off the joint, two vegetables and boiled jam roll—for about three shillings.

The special pleasure of this lunch is that you can have draught stout with it. I doubt whether as many as 10 per cent of London pubs serve draught stout, but the Moon Under Water is one of them. It is a soft, creamy sort of stout, and it goes better in a pewter pot.

They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Moon Under Water, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a handleless glass. Apart from glass and pewter mugs, they have some of those pleasant strawberry-pink china ones which are now seldom seen in London. China mugs went out about 30 years ago, because most people like their drink to be transparent, but in my opinion beer tastes better out of china.

The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its garden. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large garden with plane trees, under which there are little green tables with iron chairs round them. Up at one end of the garden there are swings and a chute for the children.

On summer evenings there are family parties, and you sit under the plane trees having beer or draught cider to the tune of delighted squeals from children going down the chute. The prams with the younger children are parked near the gate.

Many as are the virtues of the Moon Under Water, I think that the garden is its best feature, because it allows whole families to go there instead of Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone.

And though, strictly speaking, they are only allowed in the garden, the children tend to seep into the pub and even to fetch drinks for their parents. This, I believe, is against the law, but it is a law that deserves to be broken, for it is the puritanical nonsense of excluding children—and therefore, to some extent, women—from pubs that has turned these places into mere boozing-shops instead of the family gathering-places that they ought to be.

The Moon Under Water is my ideal of what a pub should be—at any rate, in the London area. (The qualities one expects of a country pub are slightly different.)

George Orwell, Evening Standard, 9 February 1946

Did Eric Visit Yorkshire?

My favourite public-house, the Moon Under Water, is only two minutes from the train station, but it is on a side-street, and lager and shot drinkers never seem to find their way there, even on Saturday nights.

The landlord and landlady take an interest in their regulars and know them all by name. They also have a sharp word for anyone looking for the kind of mass-produced insipid beer that has found its way into most other pubs.

The clientele comprise as many women as men and seem to represent every age, colour, creed and social class. What they have in common is a love of good fellowship, excellent beer, good manners and the craic. 

Its whole architecture and fittings are difficult to place in time but they are simple and honest – whitewashed walls, scrubbed tables and exposed beams. In short, unspoilt by progress – no fake beams, no ‘baked alaska’ on the walls, no faux country bric-a-brac. 

In winter there is always a good fire burning in the stove, and although it always feels cosy, somehow, I can always find a perch. Dogs are welcomed and if you don’t have a dog they will probably lend you one.

The only games are dominoes and, unusually in this technological age, bar billiards in a quiet corner.

There is no jukebox or background music of any kind. Just the sound of regulars enjoying a good chat.

The beer selection is wide enough to be interesting and short enough to be kept in top condition. There’s always some porters and stouts as well as the usual pale ales, and a range of strengths from mild to barley wine. None of the cask beer has travelled more than 50 miles from its brewery, the beer is always at the right temperature and there’s usually a couple of delicious beers served directly from the wood. The bar staff, a marvellous mix of characters, are all knowledgable about the beer and welcome everyone with the same interest and warmth. For non-beer drinkers there is a small list of wines, all excellent, and an interesting range of local gins. There is no lager on draught but there is a range of high quality beer, including a few lagers, in bottles and cans. If you want to take some beer home they’ll happily fill a growler for you.

You cannot get dinner at the Moon Under Water, but there is always an interesting snack; maybe excellent local cheese and apples, homemade chacuterie, crunchy fresh pork pies, hot juicy sausages or toasted rare beef sandwiches. They don’t sell the usual packets of crisps but they make their own and they’re always fresh and delicious.

They are particular about their drinking vessels at the Moon Under Water, and never, for example, make the mistake of serving a pint of beer in a ‘window’ glass.  If you ask for a pint you get a plain, straight-sided sleever and the rare complainers are made to sit in a corner facing the wall. They also have stem glasses for wine and beer as you like. 

The great surprise of the Moon Under Water is its courtyard. You go through a narrow passage leading out of the saloon, and find yourself in a fairly large, shaded, cobbled courtyard, and in the evening this is lit with festoon lamps. Water continuously trickles from an ancient brass spout into a massive stone trough, and in the cooler months a fire pit is always lit.

But now is the time to reveal something which the discerning and disillusioned reader will probably have guessed already. There is no such place as the Moon Under Water (but if you combine The Little Ale House in Harrogate, with the The Craven Arms in Appletreewick, with The Mikkeller in Copenhagen you would be pretty close!).

God’s Country

DoublePump is located in Yorkshire – a county blessed with some very good beer and some of the best brewers in the country; over 130 of them to be precise, more than any other county. When the rest of the country was awash with keg rat’s piss made by the likes of Watneys, Courage and Whitbread, Yorkshire was the last bastion of quality hand-pulled cask ale – usually a creamy pint of Tetley’s or Tim Taylor’s. If any reader doubts that Yorkshire has the best beer then I ask you, where else in the World could a beer as good as Tim Taylor’s Landlord be considered a fallback option? Nowadays the market is full of pop-up craft breweries and high-octane blockbuster beers, but as Madonna (the famous beer-hound and part-time singer) will attest, TTL can still take on the best in the World and come out smiling.

Why Was Burton Built on Trent

‘Terence, this is stupid stuff: 
You eat your victuals fast enough; 
There can’t be much amiss, ’tis clear, 
To see the rate you drink your beer. 
But oh, good Lord, the verse you make, 
It gives a chap the belly-ache. 
The cow, the old cow, she is dead; 
It sleeps well, the horned head: 
We poor lads, ’tis our turn now 
To hear such tunes as killed the cow. 
Pretty friendship ’tis to rhyme 
Your friends to death before their time 
Moping melancholy mad: 
Come, pipe a tune to dance to, lad.’

Why, if ’tis dancing you would be,

There’s brisker pipes than poetry.

Say, for what were hop-yards meant,

Or why was Burton built on Trent?

Oh many a peer of England brews

Livelier liquor than the Muse,

And malt does more than Milton can

To justify God’s ways to man.

Ale, man, ale’s the stuff to drink

For fellows whom it hurts to think:

Look into the pewter pot

To see the world as the world’s not.

And faith, ’tis pleasant till ’tis past:

The mischief is that ’twill not last.

Oh I have been to Ludlow fair

And left my necktie God knows where,

And carried half way home, or near,

Pints and quarts of Ludlow beer:

Then the world seemed none so bad,

And I myself a sterling lad;

And down in lovely muck I’ve lain,

Happy till I woke again.

Then I saw the morning sky:

Heigho, the tale was all a lie;

The world, it was the old world yet,

I was I, my things were wet,

And nothing now remained to do

But begin the game anew.

Therefore, since the world has still 
Much good, but much less good than ill, 
And while the sun and moon endure 
Luck’s a chance, but trouble’s sure, 
I’d face it as a wise man would, 
And train for ill and not for good. 
‘Tis true, the stuff I bring for sale 
Is not so brisk a brew as ale: 
Out of a stem that scored the hand 
I wrung it in a weary land. 
But take it: if the smack is sour, 
The better for the embittered hour; 
It should do good to heart and head 
When your soul is in my soul’s stead; 
And I will friend you, if I may, 
In the dark and cloudy day.

There was a king reigned in the East: 
There, when kings will sit to feast, 
They get their fill before they think 
With poisoned meat and poisoned drink. 
He gathered all the springs to birth 
From the many-venomed earth; 
First a little, thence to more, 
He sampled all her killing store; 
And easy, smiling, seasoned sound, 
Sate the king when healths went round. 
They put arsenic in his meat 
And stared aghast to watch him eat; 
They poured strychnine in his cup 
And shook to see him drink it up: 
They shook, they stared as white’s their shirt: 
Them it was their poison hurt.

I tell the tale that I heard told. 
Mithridates, he died old.

From A Shropshire Lad (1896), by A.E. Housman

A Women’s Scorn

Many years ago reading up on the ancient history of brewing in England I Iearnt that the task of brewing beer for the farm fell to the missus. By tradition if the brewster, or ‘ale-wife’, had any surplus beer to sell she would display a broomstick outside the brew-house. Word would soon get around the neighborhood if one ale-wife or another was knocking out a reliable brew. The ‘local’ was born. Recollecting this story I suggested to my wife that by rights she should go on the brewing game and, to that end, presented her with a broomstick and a book entitled “Brewsters Through the Middle Ages”. Given her academic interest in English folk life I thought I’d pulled off a master stroke but I was astonished to discover I had made a schoolboy error. Despite my invocation of ancient traditions she was staunchly intransigent … and has been so for more than 30 years. I have therefore had to accept that she is not going to change her mind and, contrary to tradition, I have taken on this selfless and noble duty myself.