Temperance Buildings: The Way Out of Darkest England

Temperance was one of the most influential social movements in 19th century England.

Alcohol abuse led to widespread poverty and social distress, driving reformers to establish the first English temperance societies in 1830.

In response to their exclusion from alcohol-focused public spaces, these reformers went on to create an entire parallel infrastructure of buildings and institutions. Many of these are still visible on our streets today.

Signing the pledge

At first only spirits were taboo and drinking beer in moderation was accepted. In 1832, however, the ‘Seven Men of Preston’, led by Joseph Livesey, vowed to reject all alcohol. They became known as ‘total abstainers’ or ‘teetotallers’, a phrase coined by another Preston man, Richard Turner.

Over the next century, millions ‘signed the pledge,’ committing to a life of abstinence and advocating for alcohol restrictions, even prohibition. The ‘drink question’ dominated political debate for decades.

Temperance societies

By the end of the 19th century, thousands of temperance societies had appeared. Most towns and many villages had them, and there were societies for butchers, bakers, doctors, engine-drivers and many other trades, as well as for the army and the navy, and exclusively for women. One of the most successful was the Band of Hope, founded in Leeds in 1847, which enlisted the young.

At the start of the movement, temperance campaigners tried to ‘save’ drunkards, persuading them of the error of their ways.

In 1853 the foundation of the United Kingdom Alliance, influenced by events in the USA, led to a change of strategy. The emphasis was now on campaigning to restrict or ban the sale of alcohol.

Temperance halls and institutes

In the 1830s there were few public halls. Most meetings and social gatherings were held at inns, whose main business was selling alcohol.

Uncomfortable with meeting in these places, temperance reformers raised money to acquire their own premises. By 1853 over 300 temperance halls existed across England, with more than 90 in London alone.

Temperance halls came in all shapes and sizes, from wooden huts and corrugated iron ‘tin tabernacles’ to impressive architect-designed buildings.

Halls were built in many architectural styles. Many early halls looked like chapels or nonconformist meeting houses. Others could hardly be told apart from a house.

The largest hall, at Leicester, was a monumental Classical building which was demolished in the 1960s. The hall at Cirencester, Gloucestershire, is the oldest surviving one in Gothic style.

Some of these buildings were sponsored by middle-class and upper-class temperance supporters, but much of this vast building programme was funded through community donations and voluntary, unpaid labour, with working-class communities taking control of their surroundings in ways that anticipated modern community-led regeneration by more than a century.

The sheer range of uses that temperance halls were put to was extraordinary.

As well as temperance meetings and lectures by public figures (Charles Dickens often gave readings in temperance halls), dances and theatrical performances were held in them.

They were let out for political meetings, inquests were held in them, courts met in them, and the Rifle Volunteers (the Victorian Territorial Army) practised drills in them. Their main purpose, however, was to house temperance meetings.

Many temperance halls included educational facilities. ‘Temperance institutes’ supported their members’ desire for self-improvement by providing classrooms, libraries and newsrooms.

Well-off temperance supporters endowed reading rooms in villages across the country. They provided an educational alternative to the public house.

Temperance hotels

Temperance campaigners also needed alcohol-free places to stay.

The first temperance hotel opened in Preston in late 1832, and they spread rapidly across the country. At the movement’s height between 1880 and 1914, there were as many as 500 temperance hotels nationwide.

Early temperance hotels were modest buildings, but by the 1850s they were becoming larger. By the end of the 19th century, the best temperance hotels matched their licensed rivals in size and luxury.

The coffee tavern movement

Bars selling only non-alcoholic drinks appeared early on but made no attempt at first to mimic the public house. In 1867, however, a notorious pub in Leeds was bought by temperance campaigners and converted to a ‘public house without the beer’. Named the British Workman after a popular newspaper, it influenced many imitators.

Inspired by the British Workman, the ‘coffee tavern movement’ blossomed in the late 1870s, with hundreds of alcohol-free pubs appearing across the country. Some had rich sponsors, others were built by limited companies. The larger companies operated numbers of coffee taverns and paid high dividends to their shareholders.

As well as serving tea, coffee, cocoa and other non-alcoholic drinks, most coffee taverns served hot and cold food. They often provided facilities for playing billiards, skittles, draughts and chess, and some had newsrooms. They were often much superior to nearby pubs and forced pub-owners to upgrade their premises to compete.

The drinking fountain movement

In the 1850s a rich local businessman, Charles P Melly, became very concerned about the lack of drinking water at Liverpool docks. It meant that dock workers and the thousands of emigrants waiting for ships to take them to the USA had no alternative but to visit the dozens of pubs that ringed the dock wall.

In 1853 he was given permission to install 2 standpipes in Prince’s Dock. These proved so successful that the council gave him permission to place permanent drinking fountains around the docks and across the city. By 1858 there were over 40 in place, most to a standard wall-mounted design in polished red granite. Melly also donated drinking fountains to towns across the country.

Others followed his example, and donated drinking fountains to their communities.

In 1859 the Metropolitan Free Drinking Fountain Association (from 1867 the Metropolitan Drinking Fountain and Cattle Trough Association) was formed to erect drinking fountains around London. It produced a series of standardised designs, which could be customised as memorials or to commemorate special events.

By the First World War many thousands of drinking fountains had been erected. They ranged from simple mass-produced designs in cast iron to elaborate one-off designs produced by leading architects and sculptors. Events such as coronations and royal marriages were marked by the erection of drinking fountains across the country.

Temperance missions

Mission and outreach among the very poor and people whose jobs left them vulnerable to alcohol abuse was an important strand of temperance work.

The East End of London was a particular focus. The Salvation Army was founded there in 1865 and expanded to work with poor communities country wide, erecting distinctive buildings as it did so.

Buildings where merchant seamen could stay when on shore survive in many ports. From the 1870s, royal sailors’ rests provided places for sailors of the Royal Navy on shore leave to stay, while soldiers’ institutes provided leisure facilities for soldiers. Boatmen’s rests reached out to canal boatmen, and railway missions to workers on the railways.

Temperance healthcare

When the temperance movement appeared, it was believed that alcohol had an essential role in healthcare. The London Temperance Hospital, near Euston Station, was founded in 1875 to provide alcohol-free treatment, which gradually became accepted practice.

Doctors no longer prescribed drink to ‘build up’ their patients. As realisation dawned that alcoholism was a disease, inebriates’ homes, ‘colonies’ and ‘retreats’ appeared, where sufferers could be treated for their addiction.

The Independent Order of Rechabites, founded in Salford in 1835, was the first of several temperance friendly societies, providing support for their members when ill or unable to work. Several built convalescent homes where sick members could recover from serious illness. Others built sheltered accommodation for elderly members.

Insurance companies which catered specifically for non-drinkers also appeared.

Temperance leisure

As the 19th century progressed, workers gained more leisure time. Billiards was a major leisure activity, played in pubs and in licensed billiard halls.

Drink-free billiard halls were promoted by temperance activists. Several of the attractive halls developed by Temperance Billiard Halls Ltd survive around Manchester and South London.

Visiting the music hall was another popular leisure activity, much disliked by temperance activists for its association with drink and bawdiness.

Attempts to replicate the music-hall experience without alcohol were largely unsuccessful, though the Royal Victoria Coffee Palace and Music Hall survived for some 30 years, and is now the Old Vic theatre.

The temperance movement faded away before the Second World War. Better housing and an increasing range of leisure activities meant that the pub was no longer the only recreation available to the working class.

Excluded from public spaces that sold alcohol, temperance supporters built a parallel world of their own. They gathered in temperance halls, dined in coffee taverns, and relaxed in alcohol-free billiard halls and reading rooms. Hospitals, insurance companies, and social institutions emerged to serve those who had forsworn drink.

Though many buildings have been lost in the past 50 years or so, the remarkable physical legacy of the movement can still be found on our streets. It is a forgotten world shaped by the fight against drink.

Written by Andrew Davison
Feature image showing Baroness Burdett Coutts Drinking Fountain presented in 1862 to Victoria Park, Tower Hamlets, London. Photo contributed to the Missing Pieces Project by Conor Sandford. View List entry 1235552

Further reading

• New book: The Built Heritage of the Temperance Movement by Andrew Davison
• How Did Victorian Drinking Establishments Become Family-Friendly Pubs in the 20th Century?
• Research report: Countering the ‘deadliest of foes’: public houses of the Central Control Board and the State Management Scheme, 1916-73