Community functions of Licenced Premises
The largest inns in each town may have had reading rooms where newspapers and books were available. Some had ball rooms for social events, especially when the Assizes were in town and in the autumn when the gentry stayed in their town houses; when horse races were organised nearby and for other special occasions. Some had billiard tables and rooms for playing cards, listening to concerts and lectures or holding exhibitions.
Before 1834, Parliamentary elections were often held at one inn in each county, at which, it is claimed, the electorate were provided with alcohol by the candidates.
Pubs and Inns also acted as venues for:
• Magistrates courts and their Quarter and Petty Session meetings;
• Judges and their entourages when touring Wales to hear cases of serious crimes;
• Inquests;
• Town and Parish councils meetings;
• Turnpike and Harbour Trusts and Railway company meetings;
• Tithe commissioners meetings;
• local Friendly Society meetings;
• other regular meetings (often of men only); (sports clubs etc.)
• annual dinners;
• special events (such as celebrating St David's Day, coronations and the coming of age or marriage of the heirs of local estates);
• Inland Revenue Offices (e.g. Tregaron and Feathers Hotel, Aberaeron in 1868);
• paying men in local industries (truck system?);
• collecting rents;
• commercial travellers and their customers;
• fox and otter hunts meets;
• Drovers, sheep shearers;
• Auctions;
They also provided:
• posting horses (hired to take carriages from stage to stage)
• facilities for stage and mail coach drivers and passengers.
Examples:
Tre’r Ddol Petty Sessions timetable for 1892, to be held at the Halfway Inn, Tre’r Ddol. (Ceredigion Archives, ANC/25/addl 4)
E.T. PRICE, 'Pregethu mewn tafarn, bwrw golwg dros ddwy ganrif.' [Preaching in an inn, a survey of two centuries]. Llawlyfr Cymdeithas Ceredigion, (Llundain, 1968-70), Cyf.23, tud 21-3.
