HistoryPoints News

Dec 6, 2020

Booze bans, then and now


Today is the first Sunday under Wales' latest coronavirus restrictions on alcohol sales, but at least the situation is temporary. The 1881 law which banned alcohol sales on Sundays in Wales was permanent, albeit with long-distance travellers exempted. At The Plough in St Asaph, an early form of "booze cruise" brought ...

drinkers from Rhyl each Sunday in a carriage drawn by four horses - because the pub was just about far enough from Rhyl for the journey to qualify as long-distance. Some of our other web pages about pubs or courthouses (which you can access by scanning our QR codes there with your mobile) reveal how landlords fell foul of the Sunday alcohol ban. Brewer Thomas Delafield, of the King's Arms, Abergavenny, was fined for selling booze at a Monmouthshire Rifle Volunteers camp. Northop magistrates fined Alfred Hume after police caught 17 men drinking beer and ginger ale at the Red Lion on a Sunday, and at Tremeirchion a thirsty blacksmith landed the Salusbury Arms' licensee in trouble. The defence that drinkers were genuine travellers didn't wash when deployed by the landlords of the Erskine Arms, Conwy, and the Aqueduct Inn, Froncysyllte.