Abstract
There’s something of an irony reviewing The Roadhouse Comes to Britain: Drinking, Driving and Dancing in the midst of the Covid 19 lockdown, when drinking, driving and dancing have been in short supply. The book takes us through the rise and fall of the British Roadhouse; an establishment that grew out of the ability and desire of well-to-do individuals in the 1920s to make their way out of town by private motor car to have some fun; of varying salacious degrees. For the authors, the “intriguing aspect of the roadhouse is that it is almost forgotten’ and ‘even for most interwar historians, is an obscure relic of the period”. Certainly, this represents the first piece of literature I’ve seen that’s explicitly examined the roadhouse, and the result is a comprehensive overview of this largely forgotten phenomenon.
The book comes divided in nine chapters. We begin with an introduction followed by an overview of what constituted a roadhouse (replete with diagrams outlining its evolution). We unpick how the roadhouse differed from “super pubs” and other alternative establishments, though the distinction is necessarily a little vague given the wide range of establishments. Eventually we settle on a fairly wide definition of a “roadside location providing food, drink, and some form of diversion or entertainment to motoring customers. Entertainment varied considerably from a small zoo to super roadhouses that offered dancing, swimming, outdoor sports and flying fields”. The book then demonstrates well how the extravagance of the roadhouse set it apart from other establishments more than anything else; a lavishness and excessiveness that tried to appeal to an upper and upper-middle class clientele who could bankroll the entertainments of offer.
We then move into an outline of how the British Roadhouse represented a tamer and safer emulation of its prohibition-era American counterpart; the American comparison is a trend throughout. The British roadhouse is demonstrated to have levied a transatlantic reputation for salaciousness, including adulterous and homosexual sex, petting parties and excessive drinking, but without the risk of criminal brutality and police raids that characterised those in prohibition-era America. Even so, the book outlines how over time the British roadhouse fell victim to its disreputable associations, ultimately putting off the hard-spending high-class clientele it sought to attract. Perhaps the roadhouse that advertised its “Super-Super-Barmaids” didn’t help that trend. This is followed by an overview of driving to the Roadhouse, which highlights the rise of the motoring middle-class, whose ability to reach the formerly exclusive roadhouse was partly its undoing.
A chapter on negotiating class then outlines how the roadhouse links into broader British society. What’s particularly interesting is how the book demonstrates how segregation of the social classes wasn’t done explicitly, but implicitly. Elements such as high membership fees (as much as £52 per annum), sporting activities requiring expensive kit, and the provision of bottled rather than draft beer, all acted to push the expense of the roadhouse beyond the means of the masses. The use of ex-public school boys as staff added to the sense of exclusivity. The brief example given of one entrepreneur explaining his plan, ultimately not executed, of building a roadhouse fully segregated by social class akin to a nineteenth century railway to an “aghast” roadhouse owner adds to a sense that explicitly separating the classes was increasingly difficult in the 1930s (an experience certainly reflected on the railways of the era). In turn, the book outlines how this eventually marked the end of the roadhouse. With greater affluence and car ownership, the ability to use expense and location to ensure the exclusivity needed to sustain these places as retreats for the wealthy increasingly fell away.
We then move to an overview of the Americanization and modernization of the British Roadhouse, including an overview of the extremely well received and long-lived import of the cocktail. This is followed by an assessment of how the roadhouse was represented in the fiction writing of the time. We round off with an overview of the decline of the roadhouse. This highlights the ultimately fatal mixture of a disappearing upper-class clientele, increasing disreputability, the inability to turn a profit due to high expenses and finally the impact of the Second World War and its aftermath.
The result is a comprehensive overview of the roadhouse, and it’s hard to envisage a future need for anyone to delve into this world without a particularly fresh angle on the topic. There’s a good reference to wider source material, particularly Judith Walkowitz’ Nights Out in Cosmopolitan London which traces the history of London’s Soho nightclubs in the same time period. If I have a complaint, it is that the book doesn’t always flow easily for the reader. The introduction gets into wider theoretical background very early on, rather than easing the reader into what is likely to be an unfamiliar topic. There’s a lot of signposting throughout, which feels a touch excessive, and because the chapters tend to act independently from each other there’s a repetition of points and source material used elsewhere in the book.
The result is a book that contains some fantastic vignettes, source material, and is undeniably comprehensive; it opts for an analytical approach rather than a narrative style. It stands to reason that this will be the definitive book on the roadhouse, so for those with an interest in motoring and leisure in the 1930s this is certainly one to take a look at. There are also some good insights into how the roadhouse influenced and reflected British culture in the 1920s and 1930s, which will be of interest to those studying a wider remit of interwar British history. A comprehensive look at a niche and overlooked subject.