George Orwell is one of my favorite authors. I have read, several times each, every novel he wrote. I first became acquainted with Orwell in high school in Scotland, where we read his two classics, Animal Farm and 1984. Neither of those are my favorite Orwell novels, however – that honor belongs to his 1934 work Burmese Days. It was Orwell’s first novel, and tells the story of John Flory, a timber merchant, disillusioned with life in 1920s imperial Burma. Orwell had lived in Burma between 1922 and 1927, where he had served with the Indian Imperial Police; so he had first hand knowledge of life in that part of the world. In addition to Orwell’s novels, I have also read and enjoyed, all of his essays. Among my favorites are A Day in the Life of a Tramp (1929), Shooting an Elephant (1936), and The Moon Under the Water (1946). It is to this latter essay that I now turn.

The Moon Under the Water is an imaginary London pub. It is a creation of Orwell’s imagination. It is, in fact, Orwell’s ideal pub. In actuality, Orwell’s ideal pub, comprises several distinct bars where drinks are available – a public bar, a saloon bar, a ladies’ bar, an upstairs dining room, and a bottle-and-jug – the latter serving “those who are too bashful to buy their supper beer publicly”.

In discussing his ideal pub, Orwell identifies ten qualities that it should have. These are:

1. It is highly accessible. In the case of The Moon Under the Water, it was a two-minute walk from the nearest bus stop.
2. Most of its patrons are ‘regulars’, who occupy the same chair every evening. Their motivation for going is to engage in conversation as much as it is to drink beer. In fact, the atmosphere of the pub is more important than the beer.
3. The barmaids know the names of most of their customers, and take a personal interest in everyone. 
4. The architecture and the internal decor of the bar are “uncompromisingly Victorian”, and includes a “good fire”.
5. It is not too loud and so is always quiet enough to talk. There is no radio or piano.
6. It sells tobacco, cigarettes, aspirins and stamps. If you need to use the pub’s phone they are good about letting you do so.
7. It sells Draught Stout.
8. They are careful to use the proper glassware. For example, a pint of beer would never be served in a handleless glass. They also have both pewter mugs and strawberry-pink China mugs. The latter were going out of fashion, and were rarely seen in London Pubs when Orwell was writing this essay.
9. It has an outdoor garden with tables and chairs. The garden has swings and a chute (slide) for children. On summer evenings families gather in the garden. Orwell likes the garden because “it allows whole families to go there instead on Mum having to stay at home and mind the baby while Dad goes out alone”.
10. Games, such as darts, are only played in the public bar.

Reading Orwell’s essay reminded me of the work of Ray Oldenburg, an urban sociologist at the University of West Florida. In 1989, Oldenburg published a book titled “The Great Good Place”. It was subtitled, “Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community”. It was within the pages of this book that Oldenburg introduced the concept of the Third Place. A Third Place is a strikingly simple concept. To Oldenburg, Third Places are “nothing more than informal public gathering places.” As Stuart M. Butler and Carmen Diaz tell us, they are places where people come to “exchange ideas, have a good time and build relationships.” They are, according to Michael Hickey, “the living room of society”. Third Places exist in contrast to First Places (home) and Second Places (work).

In The Great Good Place, Oldenburg devotes six chapters to specific types of Third Place – The German-American Lager Beer Gardens, Main Street, The English Pub, The French Café, The American Tavern, and Classic Coffeehouses. In three of these (German-American Beer Garden, English Pub, and American Tavern) beer is the staple product sold. Third Places, according to Oldenburg, have seven characteristics. These are:

1. Third Places are neutral meeting places,
2. Third places are inclusive and everyone is welcome; no one is excluded,
3. Conversation is the main activity,
4. Third Places have regulars; people who go there on a regular basis,
5. Third Places are physically plain and have an unpretentious ambience,
6. In Third Places, the mood is playful and wit is prized,
7. Third Places are a home away from home.

In a later piece, Oldenburg describes some other characteristics of Third Places. For example, “they work best when within walking distance of the people they serve.” Reading Orwell’s description of his ideal pub and Oldenburg’s descriptions of Third Places, I can’t help but feel that they are describing very similar places. Both are places where community gather. Both are frequented by regular customers. Both are easily accessible to their clientele; they are either walkable from home (in the case of Third Places) of are within a few minutes walk of a bus stop (in the case of Orwell’s ideal pub). In both places, conversation is one of the main activities that occurs. In Orwell’s ideal pub, the opportunity to engage in conversation is, to some patrons, more important than the beer. In Orwell’s ideal pub proper glassware is used – as it would in the taproom of a reputable craft brewery.  Many Victorian pubs also had a “bottle-and-jug”, where patrons could purchase beer to take home. This is not unlike the concept of walking into a craft brewery with a growler and asking the bartender to fill it with your favorite IPA or Brown Ale, which you then take with you for home consumption. A wide variety of venues in a community can function as Third Places, including libraries, coffee shops, churches, and craft breweries. Indeed, as I have argued before, many modern-day craft breweries deliberately position themselves as Third Places within their communities; places where neighbors, friends, and family can come together and enjoy the company of one another.

There is one important aspect of Orwell’s ideal pub that may seem inconsistent with the philosophy of modern-day craft breweries. And that is the fact that it had a number of distinctive and separate drinking areas. As noted by Geoff Brandwood in his essay “The vanishing faces of the traditional pub’, the English pub (that Orwell would have been familiar with) was a “multi-room establishment and one which involves a hierarchy of rooms.” At the bottom of this hierarchy was the public bar, which Brandwood describes as a“predominantly male preserve”. Drinks in the public bar were cheaper than in other parts of the pub. Brandwood suggests the cheaper drinks acted as as “an effective financial incentive towards keeping customers in their appropriate place.” It was “where the working class were expected to congregate and drink.” Other rooms included the ‘lounge bar’, where drinks were more expensive and the customers middle class. Females, accompanied by males, patronized the lounge bar. As noted by Brandwood, “financial (and social) segregation was an entrenched feature of pub-going until well after the Second World War.” The ‘snug’, a small private drinking room, was another feature of English pubs in the Victorian era. Orwell’s ideal pub, however, did have a beer garden – and it was here where families (father, mother, and children) could be together. Given the English climate, the beer garden would have been very much a summer phenomenon.

The separation of drinkers based on characteristics such as sex or class was antithetical to the ideas of Oldenburg, whose Third Places welcomes everyone. Segregation is not a feature of Oldenburg’s Third Places. And modern-day craft breweries see themselves as more inclusive than typical bars. Walk into any craft brewery today and do not be surprised to see young children there, with their parents. Dogs are also an increasingly common piece of the craft brewery landscape. Craft breweries consciously promote themselves as a community space where everyone, regardless of socio-economic status, are welcome.

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Orwell’s ideal pub and the modern day American craft brewery are separated by ~70 years and thousands of miles. As such, however, they provide us with a timely reminder that the fundamental human desire to gather and enjoy each other’s company transcends both time and space.

Further Reading:

Brandwood, Geoff. 2006. The vanishing faces of the traditional pub. The Journal of the Brewery History Society, Summer, Number 123, pp. 110-128.

Oldenburg, Ray. 1989. The Great Good Place. De Capo Press: Cambridge, MA.

Oldenburg, Ray. 1996-97. Our vanishing “third places”. Planning Commissioners Journal, Number 25, pp. 6-10.

Orwell, George. 1946. The moon under the water. Evening Standard, February 9.