The Snail and Roquet (with parmesan shavings): What happened to proper pub names

Q. The Horseshoe or Shoe's Bar

A. Breweries are calling time on ancient pub names and are being accused of destroying Britain's cultural heritage. There is a growing fashion for rebranding pubs with names along the lines of the Dog 'n' Donut or the Goose and Granita, which have little relevance to the history of their locality. They are charged with endangering an important part of our local history.

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Q. Any good examples

A. Examples of controversial name changes are The Castle in Newbury, Berkshire, which became the Pig in Hiding; the Roe Buck in Cannock, Staffordshire, which turned into the Laughing Lepardz, featuring yellow and black spots on the walls; and the Lord Rodney's Head in Whitechapel, east London, now known as the Funky Monkey. Why-oh-why

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Q. Does this matter

A. Well for most people, the ancient pub names of England are one of the taken-for-granted bits of our heritage -�like sheep safely grazing without�a backdrop of smoke from the local funeral pyres and Margaret Rutherford tweedily cycling through the mist. We might be vaguely aware that the Lamb and Flag is something to do with the Crusades, and may have been told once upon a time that the Marquis of Granby was famous because his wig fell off in battle, but mostly we don't question a pub name, they are just part of the scenery.

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These names are a detail that made English drinking establishments different to Scotland, where the bars are often named drearily after their owners, or Ireland, where they nearly all are. It is an unhappy irony that the most durable trend in pub names in the 1990s has involved turning a genuine English pub into a fake Irish one called O'Somethings.

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Q. How did the traditional names come about

A. Pubs were often named after everyday objects, such as the Brick and the Plough. There are also lots of animals celebrated in pub names, the Swan, the Dog and Duck and the Bull, for example. However, no satisfactory explanation has been put forward to explain the Red Lion, the Dancing Newt, the Green Dragon or the Blue Boar, none of which have ever made their homes in the parks and forests of England.

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Q. What about the Queen's Head

A. There's even less reason for the English habit of naming their watering holes after parts of the body. The Queen's Head nestles next to the Cricketers' Arms, while those who drink down the Cock and Bottle try not to think about it too hard. Then there are the awful puns, such as the Dew Drop Inn, the blatant lies - The Jolly Farmer - the infuriatingly chirpy the Tally Ho! and the plain disturbing the Swan with Two Necks and the World Turned Upside Down.

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Q. And the King's Head

A. The King's Head refers to the beheading of Charles I, while the Royal Oak celebrates the tree in which his son, who became Charles II after the Restoration in 1660, hid before escaping into exile.

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Q. So we're stuck with 'the best f****n beer in town'

A. Indeed, the name-change saga is a subplot of the battle raging for the soul of the pub ever since most of the traditional local breweries vanished in the 1960s and 1970s. The marketing departments of the big new companies have introduced a system in which a drinker rarely has the vaguest idea who owns his local and what their game might be.

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The great chase is for young boozers with cash and evenings to spare, who are unimpressed by old-worlde lettering but highly susceptible to heavily advertised fizzy beers, served in chains of bars with names they have heard of. In the old days, the name of the brewery gave the drinker reassurance. Now it is the name of the bar itself.

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And this is the real essence of the change: pubs are being turned into bars, smoother and more 'modern', and the characterful, dingy old haunts of yore are soon to become a thing of the past. Who knows, in�50 years' time people might be complaining that the Banker and Porsche has been turned into the Three Tuns, all the ersatz chrome ripped out and warm, brown, flat beer being served.

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For more on Phrases & Sayings click here

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By Simon Smith