When beer was banned in Coldharbour Lane

Temperance is not something associated with Brixton’s Coldharbour Lane in recent years, yet it is home to a important landmark for the temperance movement and features in a book on the subject published today (9 January).

Historic England, the official guardian of the country’s built heritage, chose Dry January to highlight the. temperance movement’s architecture.

The former Brixton Temperance Billiard Hall on Coldharbour Lane is one of the key London temperance buildings it features.

In the second half of the 19th century, millions signed the teetotal pledge. At the movement’s height, there were as many as 500 temperance hotels nationwide.

Abstainers could attend meetings at the Temperance Hall, eat and drink in the coffee tavern, enjoy leisure time in the temperance billiard hall, be treated in a hospital taking only teetotal patients, and insure their lives with a company that dealt only with non-drinkers.

A vast temperance building programme was funded partly through community donations and voluntary, unpaid labour, and private sponsorship

Historic England and Liverpool University Press today announce the publication of The Built Heritage of the Temperance Movement: ‘The Way Out of Darkest England’ by English Heritage’s Andrew Davison.

It is the first comprehensive study of the architectural legacy left by what was once England’s largest social campaign. It explores the movement’s lasting physical legacy, revealing a forgotten world shaped by the fight against drink.

The Brixton Temperance Billiard Hall, at 411-417 Coldharbour Lane, was one of more than 20 halls built across London by Temperance Billiard Halls Ltd, a company founded to provide “respectable”, alcohol-free recreation for working people.

Designed by company architect T R Somerford and opened before the First World War, the hall was part of an ambitious national enterprise that combined billiards with cafés and shops, offering an alternative to the pub-based leisure culture of the era.

The company’s success demonstrated the popular appetite for temperance entertainment.

In later years, the building was home to what was Brixton’s only supermarket – Continental Foods – until the mid-1980s when a Tesco opened for a few years on Popes Road.

More recently it has housed a police station, hotel, restaurants and shops, with a large HMO – house in multiple occupation above.

Other South London building featured in the book include The Old Vic theatre on Waterloo Road and its remarkable temperance backstory.

In 1879-80, pioneering social reformer Emma Cons, the first woman alderman of the London County Council, transformed the venue into the Royal Victoria Coffee Music Hall, bringing “purified entertainment” free from alcohol to working-class audiences.

Her temperance-driven vision was continued by her niece Lilian Baylis, who introduced opera and Shakespeare to wider audiences, ultimately establishing the theatre as the first home of the National Theatre Company in 1963 under Laurence Olivier.

Not far away are the premises of the Sons of Temperance Friendly Society. The Order of the Sons of Temperance was founded in New York in 1842, and introduced to England in 1849.

Its former offices survive at 176 Blackfriars Road. They were designed in 1909-10 by the order’s regular architect Arthur C Russell.

Evoking the design of Edwardian pubs and banks, the name of its owners appears in large letters across the frontage, which also includes mosaic roundels and stained glass incorporating the friendly society’s device.

In 2011 the Sons of Temperance sold the building and moved its British headquarters to Hampshire. The building then became an architects’ office.

The Streatham Society records that it was built by the Revd. Stenton Eardley, vicar of the nearby Immanuel Church, as a temperance house to provide a sober alternative to the beer and spirits served at the Pied Bull pub next door.

At the movement’s height between 1880 and 1914, there were as many as 500 temperance hotels nationwide.

Yet, says Historic England, most of these buildings have vanished from both the landscape and collective memory.

Countless village halls conceal temperance origins and drinking fountains across the country stand as monuments to this forgotten crusade.

The movement had strong links with other social campaigns, such as that against slavery, and those for universal education, and male and female suffrage.

It created opportunities for women’s public leadership in an era when their political participation was severely limited. The British Women’s Temperance Association funded major building projects including the Temperance Institute at Thorne in South Yorkshire.

Public health was improved by the provision of drinking fountains providing clean water as an alternative to beer; inebriates’ homes offered treatment facilities; and coffee taverns created social spaces free from alcohol’s influence.

Andrew Davison says research for the book revealed one of the most remarkable but forgotten chapters in English social and architectural history.

A trained archaeologist and an inspector of ancient monuments with Historic England, he also has interests in medieval brewing and the development of the public house.

“The temperance movement created a parallel world that touched every aspect of Victorian life,’ he says. “Yet the origins of these buildings have become invisible to us.

“Every surviving temperance building connects us to ancestors who believed passionately that they could change society for the better.”

Historic England encourages members of the public to contribute their knowledge of Temperance buildings across the country through the Missing Pieces Project.

The Built Heritage of the Temperance Movement: ‘The Way Out of Darkest England’ by Andrew Davison is published by Liverpool University Press.

liverpooluniversitypress.co.uk/doi/book/10.3828/9781836245834