The Altered State: England, Literature and the Pub, by Steven Earnshaw

DICKENS

Oliver Twist (1837-9)

 

'He had been crouching on the step for some time, wondering at the great number of public-houses (every other house in Barnet was a tavern, large or small), gazing listlessly at the coaches as they passed through...'

 

The inn at Barnet where Oliver stops off is not named, but 'we believe he had in mind the Red Lion' (Matz, p.22. Matz incorporates a photograph of the place, so possibly extant). The Angel Islington. Extant. The Coach and Horses Isleworth (Dickensian, vol.1, p.261) The Eight Bells Hatfield. This is the alehouse where Sikes stays when leaving London, although it is not named in the novel. It was nine o'clock at night, when the man, quite tired out, and the dog, limping and lame from the unaccustomed exercise, turned down the hill by the church of the quiet village, and plodding along the little street, crept into a small public-house, whose scanty light had guided them to the spot. There was a fire in the tap-room, and some country-labourers were drinking before it. They made room for the stranger, but he sat down in the farthest corner, and ate and drank alone, or rather with his dog, to whom he cast a morsel of food from time to time. The George Inn The Red Lion Barnet. Extant. The Three Cripples Bill Sykes's pub. Fictional/generic. In the obscure parlour of a low public-house, in the filthiest part of Little Saffron Hill; a dark and gloomy den, where a flaring gas-light burn all day in the winter-time; and where no ray of sun ever shone in the summer: there sat, brooding over a little pewter measure and a small glass, strongly impregnated with the smell of liquor, a man in a velveteen coat, drab shorts, half-boots, and stockings, who even by that dim light no experienced agent of police would have hesitated for one instant to recognize as Mr William Sikes.