This is what proper British pub lock-ins used to be like
If you’re under 60, you’re unlikely to have experienced a proper British pub lock-in. But there was a time when it was a cornerstone of a good night out, a rite of passage and a membership to an illicit club. Andy Blackmore tries to remember the good old days
A few decades ago, this country had some of the most repressive licensing laws in the West. This was thanks to the Defence of the Realm Act 1914, which curtailed pub hours to stop munitions workers getting shitfaced ahead of the night shift. The law – which far outlasted the war – mandated that pubs close at 11pm, or even earlier if you had the misfortune to live in the suburbs.
Worse still, on a Sunday they opened at 12pm, closed at 2pm and then opened again at 7pm. Imagine the blind panic when you lost track of time, only to realise you’d missed your precious drinking window. Thankfully, there was a mystical land where such restrictions were irrelevant, a Shangri-La where draconian rules did not apply. For those in the know, the country was littered with boozy utopias: pub lock-ins.
Back in the 1980s and 90s, my home-town of Bideford claimed – probably without cause – to have the highest number of pubs per square mile in England, making it prime lock-in territory. I’d often end up in the dim, smoky Swan just as last orders were being called, on the trail of my father, a keen frequenter of the local watering holes (what I’d give for a pint with Mr IJ Blackmore today!).
Raise a toast to the pub lock-in
As the holidaymakers and the fair weather drinkers reached for their coats, we waited. It was never a dead cert, but the odds were decent that the landlord would cast a surreptitious eye around the bar, tug the curtains closed and draw the heavy bolt on the door. A lock-in was afoot!
Here, gladiators came to do combat, not with swords but something just as deadly: cider (it was strong enough to put hairs on your chest but somehow not strong enough, so we added gin for ‘extra body’, glugging it down like vikings seeking Valhalla at the bottom of a glass).
We were a brotherhood and the landlord was our high priest. Like made men, there was no easy way out. We had a strict omertà: you did not breach the perimeter of the sacred space. This was no place for “one more pint” – it was all or nothing. We were walking the plank and getting wet was just a matter of time. Grown men would fall asleep in a corner rather than suffer the indignity of being a ‘jibber’, the first to jib out and leave.
Eventually, of course, someone would crack. The side door would furtively open, and they would tumble into the night. The spell would be broken and we would all awaken the next day with sore heads and little recollection, feeling like we had been mugged. Looking in our wallets seemed to confirm this (lock-ins might be friendly but they aren’t free).
When I moved to the capital, I’d go out drinking at London pubs with my brother-in-law Paul, this time at The Ten Bells in Spitalfields. Not that it was ever called that by the locals. This was not the trendy bar it is now, but its ghost, known to all who drank in her as the Jack the Ripper or just “The Jack”.
Back then, Spitalfields was a very different place. Rough, ready and dirty. Prostitutes who manned the doorways turned tricks with punters in the cardboard debris from the markets. It was a place of typesetters and fruit-sellers, a million miles from Bideford – yet it observed all the same rituals.
I found my own slice of this mythical land, my Eden, a few years later at the Bricklayers Arms in West Norwood. At first, no one spoke to me or my mate Doug. For 12 long months we were roundly ignored, and when last orders were called, it was not-too-subtle code for “fuck off”. But we paid our dues, bought our pints and our crisps, and showed deference to all the Irish regulars, for this pub was as Irish as Irish can be.
Then, one Sunday, we were offered a ticket – not to the ball but to the meat raffle. That was our entry into this secret society, every bit as meaningful as rolling up a trouser leg and uttering an oath to the Grand Master. After that, we could drink all Sunday night, join the Monday club and occasionally the Tuesday one, too. The musty velvet curtains would be drawn, the doors would be locked, and battle would commence.
Sod the Masons: this was a club with real benefits. How much money did I spend in the muffled, church-like quiet, talking nonsense and getting pissed? Who knows what wrongs were righted, or what rights wronged.
Then, in the early noughties, the licensing laws changed and the culture died, drifting out of existence with barely a whimper. No one raised a glass to the lock-in. No one wore black armbands. How do you mourn something that doesn’t exist?
But we felt the loss in ways we couldn’t quite articulate: an emptiness where once there had been companionship, silence where once there had been bonamie.
So, ladies and gentlemen – but mostly gentlemen, for it was mainly men – raise a glass to the lock-in: a brotherhood, an institution, a way of life. God rest her soul.
Andy is picture editor at CityAM