Enjoy Going To The Pub? You Can Thank The Black Death

‘Every cloud has a silver lining,’ the proverb says - and that even applies to the Black Death, which ravaged Britain more than 600 years ago.

Specifically, the plague, which killed 1.5 million people in England, seems to have led to the creation of the pub.

The sheer number of deaths reduced competition for work - meaning that peasants had time to unwind in the pub.

Speaking at the Chalke Valley History Festival, Professor Robert Tombs of the University of Cambridge said, 'Terrible though it is to say, the Black Death actually had some rather good effects. This was a good time to be alive.

‘After the Black Death, things started to look up. People got better off. There was more land to go around. Resources were not so stretched.

‘This was when the English pub was invented and people started drinking lots of beer and playing football and so on. That was in a way due to, or at least a consequence of, and wouldn’t have be