The screens are finally back!
When it was first rumoured the screens were coming back some people assumed we were reinstating the televisions ~ not so.
But after at least 30 years the old pub dividing screens are back. And jolly good they look too.
It is a 40-foot bar and when it was first built in the 1880s was sub-divided into four separate drinking areas. Each was served by a different entrance but all united at the one long bar counter. To compound the sense of separation two of the bars also had decorative snob screens about 12 inches square which rotated. Customers wishing an element of privacy, merchants avoiding customers or staff or others who would rather not be seen could position themselves behind the screens and, when their thirst demanded, could rotate the screen slightly and ask "another pint of wallop, please Doris" without compromising their position.
The snob screens, once a common feature, went years ago, as they did in many Victorian pubs. The only set of original ones I know of are in the Lamb in Lamb's Conduit Street in London.
The partitions stayed a little longer but, in the style of the sixties and seventies, gave way for the bigger, more open bar. Ultimately it paved the way for the kind of sports bar this had become.
But now we've had them put back. Joiners have sympathetically recreated them in as an authentic style as possible.
And it is fascinating how it changes the dynamics. People now happily sit at the bar. Conversations are becoming a key to this place. The staff are responding too. It is so much nicer to be able to talk to people rather than shout across the void.
Groups can commandeer sections of the bar without being intruded on or intruding on others. It feels safer, cosier and more intimate. In the past the pub either felt 'full' or 'empty'. Now it has a wonderful feel.
So the question remains. Do we go the whole way and reintroduce the snob screens?
A month after we arrived here my daughter salvaged a single smashed screen she found in one of the outbuildings. Reverently we cleaned it and realised what a terrible act of vandalism had occurred. They were beautiful. The prevailing wind of change at that time had little concept that these wonderful artefacts would again be treasured.
Can we reproduce them? I don't honestly know. But I'm tempted.