Ale, Taverns, and the Village Drink Problem

Forget the picture of a purpose-built village inn. Most medieval ale was sold from a front room and that front room was often tended by a woman since brewing was overwhelmingly a female trade both for consumption and for sale.

If you had a batch of ale ready, you announced it with a staff and garland displayed outside your house visible from the street. No licence or other signage was needed save the staff, a marker for the whole village as to what was on offer that week. The ale varied incredibly from a thin, almost bread like liquid to a genuinely potent clear substance and “small ale” which was run a second time through the wort was light enough for everyday consumption.

The coroners that investigated sudden deaths clearly had a view on the results. Their records include drunk men falling off carts on the way back from the tavern, a drunk fisherman who drowned the next morning while fishing, a man tripping over his own feet when attempting to throw a stone at a dog that had bitten him and general late night stumbling into ditches, wells and rivers. Women drank at taverns too and one remaining carol takes pot shots at those wives who spend the day drinking with the meat and fish they bought and then tell their husbands they were at church all along.

A nicely deflating view on those who picture medieval villages as universally pious and sober is given by the fact that the sign of the tavern was a fixture on every street and the coroners clearly knew why.

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