The drinking ban that shaped Wales and was still in place until the 1990s - with some crossing borders for a pint

More than 140 years ago a drinking ban was passed by the UK Parliament that would still see people crossing borders for a pint right into the 1990s. Sponsored by prominent Welsh nonconformists in the Liberal party - including the future Prime Minister David Lloyd George - the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act 1881 banned the sale of alcohol in any Welsh pubs on the Sabbath.

The act was a significant political moment, as it was the first legislation passed by Westminster that was specific to Wales since the annexation of the country in the Act of Union in 1542.

It was incorporated into new licencing acts with the blanket rule remaining until the 1960s. Following pressure from tourism and hospitality groups, who said it was impacting the sectors, things changed in The Licensing Act of 1961.

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But this did not mean an instant scrapping to drinking rules on a Sunday.

Instead each county was given the power to hold referendums on the issue every seven years. Some moved quickly to change - with Swansea, Cardiff, Flintshire and Merthyr among the first areas to ditch the ban at the earliest possible opportunity. More places followed suit in 1968 with Denbighshire and Radnorshire among the places where people voted to drop the rule.

Dr Mari Elin Wiliam, a lecturer in Modern History at Bangor University, said: "Whilst the Sunday Closing (Wales) Act of 1881 was greeted by many as a sign that Wales was a distinctive nation with different values to England, by the mid-20 century the restrictions on selling alcohol on Sundays was increasingly viewed as a millstone in many regions.

"The Welsh Tourist Board - established in the late 1940s as a voluntary organisation - was keen to promote a Welsh welcome to the world, and although it was swift to emphasise Welsh 'traditions' (such as the national costume), limiting the sale of alcohol on Sundays was perceived as off-putting to tourists in a more secular age.

"This meant that there was a push from the Board and several holiday resorts in Wales during the 1950s to repeal the ban. This led to Rhyl's Publicity Committee demanding in 1960 that the 'restrictive legislation' be dropped due to '...the marked change in social and economic conditions' since the Victorian era.

"However, Sunday restrictions went beyond alcohol, with fish & chip shop owners, for example, limited by unpopular Sunday trading clauses. In Rhyl in 1959 this saw the prosecution of Esplanade Fish & Chip shop for serving takeaways in October, when its season for Sunday trading had supposedly ended in September.

"Sunday trading, especially in alcohol, became a battle between tradition and modernisation in many parts of Wales, with Flintshire - which then included the seaside towns of Rhyl and Prestatyn - unsurprisingly amongst the first areas to drop Sunday Closing in the aftermath of the 1961 Licensing Act."

Another reader - who didn't want to be named - added: "Growing up in Wrexham in the 1960s this issue seemed to be as pressing as anything else going on in the world at the time. On the first ‘liberated’ Sunday lunchtime in 1968 a group of regulars turned up at the Cross Foxes in Abbott Street to be greeted by a locked door and the landlord, Bill Smallwood, quoting the Bible from an upstairs window: 'On six days shall ye labour…'. He stuck resolutely to Sabbath observance until he eventually went to his reward in heaven.

"A curious anomaly was the detached Marfod exclave of Flintshire which had two pubs on the old A483. They were very popular with drinkers from Wrexham on Sunday evenings, many of whom would eschew the last Crosville Bus after closing time to drive home unsteadily in their Ford Anglias and Triumph Heralds. In those more relaxed times the police would look the other way unless there was actually a crash."

Some areas hung on for another 30 years before ditching the law. In the district of Dwyfor on the Llyn Peninsula the ban was still in place in the 1990s, as one visitor from Conwy discovered.

Richard Jones said: "I was in my early twenties on a camping trip near Porthmadog in around 93/94 and we went to a local restaurant in the town. We ordered some beers but the waitress said she couldn't serve us. I thought it might be an ID issue and got mine out but she explained they couldn't serve alcohol on a Sunday and no one else in the town could either. We had no idea a rule like this was still in place.

"We thought it had dented our plans for the evening until a couple from another table whispered across about a bus over the border to a village just across the border of the no drinking zone. We tagged along and hopped on this packed mini bus which took us over a causeway to Penrhyndeudraeth, it felt like we were breaking the rules.

"I've no idea what the village is like on a normal evening but it seemed really busy and that lots of other people had done the same thing as us. We stocked up on a few drinks from a shop before a night in the pubs. There was a great atmosphere and we probably ended up drinking more than we would have in Porthmadog, it turned into quite a wild night!"

Dwyfor finally voted to drop the Sunday drinking ban in 1996. It was seven years later that the powers to hold a referendum were finally ditched under the 2003 Licensing Act - meaning there was no potential return under existing laws.