Wetherspoons
- Thread starter Dirk
- Start date
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Brandane
Legendary Member
- Location
- Costa Clyde
Which makes it all the more amazing that a mod managed to find the 7 year old thread with the wrongly spelt title, to then merge the two threads using the misspelt title!
- Location
- London
Lots of things are "portrayed" about wetherspoons in online and offline media.
I often find that the pieces say more about those doing the portraying.
The issue could merit a page or so in a social history of the early 20th century.
A lot of material.
Parts of it would be an interesting successor to the Mass Observation project
(they spent a fair bit of time in pubs in Bolton etc)
- Location
- London
maybe they had some help with this demanding task?Which makes it all the more amazing that a mod managed to find the 7 year old thread with the wrongly spelt title, to then merge the two threads using the misspelt title!
- Location
- London
In praise of Wetherspoons
I remember looking inside when I was very young - maybe I imagined it but I remember lots of empty space*, an impression maybe wrong of sawdust on the floor. Seemed like another possibly dangerous world. As I became older I was always amused by the name - never had the idea that the clientele were fine wine connoisseurs
I also remember a very interesting interior though never went in - it would have made a fine spoons in my opinion - they are very sympathtic restorers of old buildings.
* Probably accurate - years later in an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery I got talking to a chap in front of a photo of a Yates Wine lodge in its later days. He said that the company had a policy of very little seating - that folk usually drank standing up - have no idea what that was all about.
My childhood musings about what lay through those Wine Lodge doors were only ever momentary - I was really there for the treat of being bought a bumper summer special edition of the Beano or whatever from the news stall above the public toilets.
I remember looking inside when I was very young - maybe I imagined it but I remember lots of empty space*, an impression maybe wrong of sawdust on the floor. Seemed like another possibly dangerous world. As I became older I was always amused by the name - never had the idea that the clientele were fine wine connoisseurs
I also remember a very interesting interior though never went in - it would have made a fine spoons in my opinion - they are very sympathtic restorers of old buildings.
* Probably accurate - years later in an exhibition at Manchester Art Gallery I got talking to a chap in front of a photo of a Yates Wine lodge in its later days. He said that the company had a policy of very little seating - that folk usually drank standing up - have no idea what that was all about.
My childhood musings about what lay through those Wine Lodge doors were only ever momentary - I was really there for the treat of being bought a bumper summer special edition of the Beano or whatever from the news stall above the public toilets.
Adam4868
Legendary Member
It was the place to be...well my dad spent enough time in there ! Lovely building in lts day with lots of history and story's to be told.Pic from the late 70s
My personal dislike of Wetherspoons was well before the Brexit,political angle.Allways found them bland.Like you could of walked in one and been anywhere if that makes sense.The Mcpub ! Everything else just confirmed there not for me or my money 😁
- Location
- London
is that the Blackpool one?
It does look incredibly Spartan at floor level - which is why I think as a child when I looked in it seemed like a den of iniquity - as in no home comforts at all - somewhere you would only go if there for a hard serious drink. The Yates I saw the photo of in Manchester Art Gallery would have been relatively recent (60s/70s) and was unbelievably spartan - folk seemed to be standing in a bare room getting their drinks from a hatch. It almost reminded me of a tiled cellar I once went to in Soviet Moscow where folk drank terrible yellow beer with little evident joy.
I also note in that pic few women, no children, no families, customers of a certain age.
I can't help but say that if you think all spoons are the same you can't have been in many - or are slightly skew-eyed from drinking elsewhere - I would be hard pressed to think of any "chain" of anything less alike (I could post pics). And that's before you get on to the beer - very different in all of them - changes all the time in a single one, often very local.
Got to say: If your dad drank in places like the pic above I can't help but think he'd think he'd gone to heaven if he wandered in your average and many not so average spoons.
On the fraught Brexit issue it may or not surprise you that I have nattered on the issue a few times in my local spoons and there are all sorts of opinions expressed by folks of all backgrounds and leanings - but always I think it fair to say with more civility and empathy (and therefore intelligence) than often the case in the dreaded pit on here. And that's after a few pints.
What were the leanings of the Yates' establishment owners and backers?
(Didn't the Blackpool Yates have some fine ironwork - coloured in that exhuberant Victorian way?)
- Location
- London
More research confirms my idea that the Yates Wine Lodge pics I saw were from the excellent Martin Parr exhibition, return to Manchester.
Booklet here
https://manchesterartgallery.org/wp...04/MAG_Martin-Parr-Large-print-16pp_Print.pdf
but also reminded me, which I had forgotten or maybe could scarceley believe at the time, that the pics were from the 80s!
excerpt from the text here:
@@
Yates’s Wine Lodges are the oldest pub chain in the UK,
founded in 1884 in Oldham by Peter Yates. Within 20
years there were nearly 20 lodges around Lancashire
and whilst they spread nationwide, they retained a
stronghold in the North of England. Yates’s marketed
themselves on being open all day and providing good
value food and drink. Parr decided to make a series
documenting every branch of Yates’s at that time which
were mainly in the North West but also further afield in
Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham and Wakefield. He was
interested in the rituals around drinking and socialising
and the people who frequented them. The day in
the life of a pub is captured, with people drinking
on their own or with friends, the queuing system of
drinkers forming an orderly line behind a rail and how
the atmosphere changed whether the pub was full or
empty. Parr said “the unspoilt, original wine lodges,
with their high ceilings and bare floorboards, their
pillars and rails for propping yourself upright, seem
clearly designed for the determined and joyless business
of taking the quickest route to oblivion.” The images
aren’t posed and show Parr’s interest in gestures,
glances, movement and composition, which prefigures
his more familiar contemporary colour reportage work.
On loan from The John Rylands Library, The University
of Manchester.
Booklet here
https://manchesterartgallery.org/wp...04/MAG_Martin-Parr-Large-print-16pp_Print.pdf
but also reminded me, which I had forgotten or maybe could scarceley believe at the time, that the pics were from the 80s!
excerpt from the text here:
@@
Yates’s Wine Lodges are the oldest pub chain in the UK,
founded in 1884 in Oldham by Peter Yates. Within 20
years there were nearly 20 lodges around Lancashire
and whilst they spread nationwide, they retained a
stronghold in the North of England. Yates’s marketed
themselves on being open all day and providing good
value food and drink. Parr decided to make a series
documenting every branch of Yates’s at that time which
were mainly in the North West but also further afield in
Leeds, Newcastle, Nottingham and Wakefield. He was
interested in the rituals around drinking and socialising
and the people who frequented them. The day in
the life of a pub is captured, with people drinking
on their own or with friends, the queuing system of
drinkers forming an orderly line behind a rail and how
the atmosphere changed whether the pub was full or
empty. Parr said “the unspoilt, original wine lodges,
with their high ceilings and bare floorboards, their
pillars and rails for propping yourself upright, seem
clearly designed for the determined and joyless business
of taking the quickest route to oblivion.” The images
aren’t posed and show Parr’s interest in gestures,
glances, movement and composition, which prefigures
his more familiar contemporary colour reportage work.
On loan from The John Rylands Library, The University
of Manchester.
- Location
- London
fine - you keep talking to yourself.
Ian H
Ancient randonneur
Re Yates' wine bars, I recall being in the Nottingham one in the early 70s. A quick google found this: http://www.smfpics.com/backcat/yatesbardance/ and also a news item from 2019: "Yates's in Nottingham has closed - as work gets underway to convert it into a Slug & Lettuce"
Adam4868
Legendary Member
My dad is still alive and I can tell you he wouldn't and doesn't have a good word to say about Wetherspoons.
Used to call Yates sort of pubs spit and sawdust places,I guess that's what you meant before ?
- Location
- London
that's sad.
I knew some folk from that area at university and I remember one or two referring to the Nottingham Yates - in tones that implied serious drinking went on there.
Round the turn of this century I ended up living in the area for a while and went in a couple of times, maybe while waiting for a bus. I had the idea that since those university reminisces it had been restored. Fine interior. Usually very busy of an evening.
- Location
- London
maybe he's pining for a return to spit and sawdust.
Maybe there's a market for a retro recreation - with premium prices.
Out of interest - what's his objection to spoons - what sort of stuff does he drink?
Adam4868
Legendary Member
His pub days are near enough over....but he'd be more a working man's club sort of drinker.Yates would of been something almost upmarket for him.
On a last point regarding myself I don't drink in them by choice.The same way I very rarely eat in Pizza hut and other such places.Not being snobby because I'm far from that.I choose where I want to spend my money.So if there's another option I'll allways go there.Im sure you've been to the Wetherspoons in Poulton ? I allways go out with a few old friends around Xmas there.Used to be a bit of a tradition of a pun crawl.In the last few years my friends have allways wanted to meet there or go.Its without doubt the busiest place in that small town/village.Feck you can even eat outside in nice weather overlooking the car park ! This place has had a detrimental effect on the other pubs there without a doubt.So for me there's a bit of principle why I won't.In fact they could do a penny a pint night and I'd still drink next door.
The nearest I've been to having a night in one....my partner got paid to do some art work for one in Blackpool.So we went to see it.Id take there money but not give it back.