AN EMPTY shop in the heart of Prudhoe is set for a new life – as an old fashioned pub.

Planning permission is being sought to turn a shop in Front Street which used to sell computer games into a hostelry which will be unlike any other in Tynedale.

It will sell only real ale, wine and soft drinks – there will be no lager, alco-pops, spirits or cocktails – and nor will there be a juke box, television or a fruit machine.

Bar meals are also off the menu, other than a limited range of crisps and nuts.

Allison Thear, of Cranbrook Drive, in Prudhoe, is the woman behind the bid to turn the shop into a micropub – the modern equivalent of the old ale houses of a century ago.

Her application states that the premises will not be used as a standard pub, aimed at the mass market vertical drinking concept offered by the national pub chains, and clubs.

Instead, the micropub will provide a warm and friendly atmosphere where a restricted number of people can meet and chat over a drink.

It will serve real ale from local microbreweries, along with good quality wine and soft drinks.

The suggested opening hours are 11am to 11pm, and Mrs Frear will run the business herself.

Because beer will be served from the cask, there will be virtually no waste, with wine and pop bottles recycled back to the suppliers.

The premises are in a poor decorative state, but Mrs Frear says they will be redecorated to a high standard.

The Micropub Association is a membership based organisation which is committed to promoting and celebrating all that is great with the concept of the micropub movement.

The definition of a micropub is “a small, often one-roomed freehouse which listens to its customers, mainly serves cask ales, promotes conversation, shuns all forms of electronic entertainment and dabbles in traditional pub snacks.”

* THE increasing popularity of “beer only” micropubs like the one being proposed in Prudhoe’s Front Street is in reality turning the clock back some 200 years.

For in 1830, more than 24,000 public houses selling nothing but beer sprang up virtually overnight – not as a bid to promote beer, but rather to discourage the consumption of gin.

Britain in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars was drowning in a sea of gin and other spirits, with widespread drunkenness a matter of real concern to the Duke of Wellington’s Tory Government.

The situation led to the rise of the Temperance Society, which campaigned for the closure of the gin houses, believing Mother’s Ruin was detrimental to the lives of the working class.

The problem arose because beer was heavily taxed, and spirits were not, meaning it was cheaper to drink the hard stuff.

It should also be noted that beer was safer to drink than water, which was so highly contaminated that the chances of catching typhoid or cholera from drinking water were very high.

The Beerhouse Act of 1830 abolished the beer tax, as well as extending the opening hours of licensed public houses, taverns and alehouses to 18 hours a day rather than the previous 15 hours.

Beerhouses could sell only beer, usually brewed on the premises, but the brew could be sold at anytime between 4am and 10pm, for consumption either on or off the premises.

Although hard liquor was not permitted, the booming beerhouses did provide food and games and some even laid on lodging for travellers.

They became known as ‘Tom and Jerry’ shops – a nickname which still lingers in the nickname of the West Wylam Inn at the other end of Front Street, known by the soubriquet “The Jerry” to generations of Prudhoe boozers.

Beerhouses flourished for a little over 30 years, by which time many had become low-class dives, frequented by criminals and prostitutes – some even becoming brothels.

The Government reacted by bringing in the Wine and Beer House Act of 1869, which brought licensing of the beerhouses back under the control of the local justices.

Many closed immediately, or were purchased by breweries and changed to the fully licensed public houses of today.