HISTORY
The temperance movement and coffee houses
South Western Temperance Hotel c.1911
A blue plaque commemorates the Ordulph Arms in Pym Street, presumably named after Ordulf, the builder of Tavistock Abbey in 974. The building is immediately in front of the site of the former town house of the Glanville family; the archway to the left, which used to bear the Glanville family coat of arms, originally formed the entrance to the stable yard of the town house. The building with the plaque now houses Drake’s Wine Bar and Café but has had many uses. From 1928 to 1974, it was used as offices for Tavistock Rural District Council. It remained empty until 1980 when it was acquired with the intention of opening a public house called the Five Stars, but instead it opened in 1982 as the Sir Francis Drake. In 1988 it became the Ordulph Arms, in 2017 The Explorer, and in 2019 it was used as a club (The Venue) and then a Craft Emporium. However, its original use when it was built in 1837, was as a Temperance Hotel, including a library, reading room and assembly area, as well as accommodation.
the decade, Temperance Societies had been formed throughout the country. This included Tavistock where the Tavistock Temperance Society was formed in 1832. At that time, there were some twenty licensed premises in Tavistock but nothing that offered comparable standards of hospitality and refreshment without supplying alcoholic drinks. The Temperance Hotel was intended to fill that role and for many years provided a meeting place for the many local temperance groups. It also became a focal point for the Band of Hope which had been founded in 1855 for children under 16 to prevent them starting to drink alcohol and to provide education about drug and alcohol abuse. By 1870, the hotel was known as the Temperance Family and Commercial Hotel, then the Temperance and Commercial Hotel and later as the South Western Temperance Hotel. While the hotel was used to host the various temperance groups, tea played a central role with hundreds of adults and children sitting down to tea after a march or before a meeting - however, it is likely that coffee was the drink of choice for residents. Indeed, when the Duke of Bedford bought the lease in 1846, to ease the hotel’s financial problems, his agent had advised against the purchase on the grounds that there were ‘several small coffee shops’ in the immediate area. Until around 1875, there was another Temperance Inn nearby, at No. 2 King Street (between two public houses), also owned by the Bedford Estate.
century, coffee was the drink of choice in Turkey, Egypt, Persia and Syria. Soon, coffee houses, hubs for socialising, sprang up in cities, towns and villages across East Africa and the Middle East. Coffee arrived in Venice in 1600. Being a trading port, coffee became part of its commerce, and coffee houses became known as ‘schools of the wise’. They were the places to be and to be seen – places for intellectual exchange and socialising, where news, information, gossip and world developments were transmitted. In Britain the first coffeehouse to open was in Oxford in 1650. One opened in London in 1652 near the churchyard of St Michael, Cornhill in St Michael’s Alley by Pasqua Rosée. There, 600 dishes of the exotic liquid were consumed per day by a cross section of London’s society. It was viewed that a side effect of coffee consumption was the prevention of violence, drunkenness and lust, whilst promoting a level of sophistication, intellect and wit along with pure thoughts. Celebrity diarist Samuel Pepys visited one evening and recorded, ‘finding much pleasure in it, through the diversity of company and discourse’. During the regeneration of London after the Great Fire of 1666, eighty-two coffee houses rose from the ashes. A phrase that became common was ‘coffee-house politicians’ – a reference to the men who spent their days commenting on the government, the state, and the king, amongst many topics – sharing their thoughts with anyone who would listen. King Charles II saw coffee houses as places of potential insurrection, and in 1875 tried to ban them and the sale of
The first Temperance Society was formed in Bradford in 1830 and, within
In around the 11th century, coffee cultivation and trade began on the Arabian Peninsula, hence the coffee known as arabica. In 1475, Constantinople was the first place to have a coffee house and, by the 16th
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