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 first Temperance Society was formed in Bradford in 1830 and, within 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.

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 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

London Coffee House, 17th century

Coffee petition - An anonymous pamphlet published in 1674

coffee, chocolate and tea from any shop or house. However, there was such an outcry that he had to relent and reverse the ban.

Coffee houses were very much a male bastion. A reaction to these male enclaves was the Women’s Petition Against Coffee in 1674 which claimed that the ‘Newfangled, Abominable, Heathenish Liquor called Coffee’ had transformed their industrious, virile men into effeminate babbling layabouts who idled away their time in coffeehouses. In 1696, Mary Astell wrote in ‘An Essay in Defence of the Female Sex’: “He converfes more with News Papers, Gazettes and Votes than with his Shop Books, and his conftant Application to the Publick takes him off all Care for his Private Concern. He is always fettling the Nation, yet cou’d never manage his own family.” An important outcome of the ‘coffee culture’ was the development of commerce. In 1698, in Jonathan’s Coffee House, commodity and stock prices were set by gentlemen meeting there, resulting in the forming of the London Stock Exchange; Christie’s and Sotheby’s developed out of the saleroom auctions that were attached to coffee houses. Edwin Lloyd ran Lloyd’s Coffee House in Lombard Street and his clientele were shippers, merchants and ship insurance underwriters conducting business - out of this developed Lloyd’s of London. The passion for coffee houses began to wane in the 18th century due to the new ‘rage’ of tea drinking, but was reinstated in Victorian times, largely because of the Temperance Movement, which was mostly led by women. This is somewhat ironic, given that in the 17th century it was women who were campaigning against coffee, and now women were endeavouring to get the men folk to ‘sign the pledge’. The coffee house was viewed by the Victorians as an alternative to the tavern and a place for socialisation for the working class. Later coffee culture again declined, but remerged in the latter part of the 20th century. No one walking down any high street, let alone a street in Tavistock, can doubt that coffee consumption has again become the drink and social activity of society. However Dukes Coffee House in Tavistock has retained a name that reminds us of the history of such establishments.

Chris Bellers & Claire Cavender Tavistock Local History Society

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