The pub signs are a changin’

The changing of pub names is not ‘keeping up with the times’ but is the sacrifice of tradition for short-term economic gain

Mathematics is a puzzling and untrustworthy science, particularly where it concerns probability theory. But there are times when those of us who confess to a certain innumeracy must bow to statistical logic.

It is said, for example, that if one were to seat an infinite number of monkeys at an infinite number of typewriters and leave them to tap away for an infinite time, they would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare.

A not dissimilar proposition, and one just as improbable, is that if you were to listen to an infinite number of politicians for an infinite time, one of them might, just for a moment, talk some sense.

Well, hold on to your hat, I think it’s happened. Mr Nicholas Winterton, who represents the Conservative interest in the town of Macclesfield, Cheshire, is calling upon the Home Secretary Michael Howard and the Environment Secretary John Gummer (both of whom would be better employed seated at typewriters, fuelled by bananas, and tapping randomly from here to infinity) to ensure that the names of long-established pubs cannot be altered without planning permission.

Mr Winterton is incensed by plans to change his Macclesfield local, the Bull’s Head, to the Pig & Truffle. “This is outrageous,” he fumes. “This pub is a point of identity and has been known by its existing name for hundreds of years. Why should the brewers want to change it? It’s all part of the theme pub concept.”

Mr Winterton’s comments prompted a wrong-headed response from The Daily Telegraph, which, in a leading article, accused him of being a “faintly bizarre” kind of Conservative. He had succumbed, said the paper, to the irresistible temptation which overcomes so many politicians to interfere in matters that are none of their business.

“One symbol of a free society, he should be told, is the indisputable right of brewers to change the names of their public houses to anything they fancy.”

That prompted a swift response from Mr Winterton, who, in defiance of all statistical probability, talked good sense for a second time, and with considerable force.

It would be an odd kind of Conservative, he argued, who did not want to conserve from the past that which is worth conserving. “What I have proposed,” he added, “is not a ban on changes or excessive regulation, merely a minor amendment to the existing regulatory regime… It is a bizarre anomaly that the size, scale and luminosity of a sign come within the planning regime, but the name which it displays, and which could cause greater offence, does not.”

And, in a sentence that ought to strike home to readers of this magazine and cause a few to hang their heads in shame, he said: “It is wrong that centuries of community heritage can be erased at the stroke of a marketing man’s pen.”

He is right. Much of modern marketing seems ill-equipped to consider anything other than short-term immediate gain. The idiots who tear down centuries-old pub signs and replace them with facetious gimmickry such as the Slug & Salad, the Rat & Parrot, and Dirty Mary’s are, in terms of taste, sensitivity and responsibility, no different from the morons who do their own aerosol spray sign-writing on station walls.

Invited to defend the idiots, Mr Tim Hunt, a spokesman for the Brewers’ & Licensed Retailers’ Association, recited the well-worn words of Excuses Ancient & Modern (number one in your hymn books) “Times change, people change, and so pub names change.” And (all together now): “We have to keep up with the times.”

How much stupidity has been wrought in the name of the silliest of sentiments. From the architects of high-rise tower blocks to the editors of tabloid sleaze; from the high priests of tourism to the second-rate copywriters behind the Gossard posters; from the farmers who tear up hedgerows and feed dead sheep to cows to the sponsors who dress up cricketers in striped pyjamas. From the psychiatrists who release murderers into the community to the TV producers who release drivel into our homes – all are driven by the compulsion to chase with butterfly nets the will-o’-the-wisp of changing times.

It was not always so. Inn signs have been an enduring part of the British scene for many, many centuries. They are a reminder of the days when most people could neither read nor write and tradespeople used signs to denote their occupations. The brewing industry, more than any other, has preserved this feature from the past and is actively continuing to do so.

“Much of the fascination of inn signs lies in the fact that they have so often captured aspects of the passing scene, carrying them down the years to serve as colourful and prominent reminders of things – and people – of bygone times.”

So said a pamphlet published by the Brewers’ Society almost 30 years ago. By that time the great keg beer folly was afoot, plastic pubs were coming in, and theme pubs were to follow. But, for all that, the brewers were still mindful, though perhaps a little shamefacedly, of their responsibility as custodians of a tradition and a heritage. Now that, too, has gone. Unless, that is, Mr Winterton succeeds in snatching the pen from the hand of the marketing morons.v

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