Looking back: Remembering long-gone Peterborough boozers from the 1970s

It is a sad time for Britain’s boozers. As each year passes, it seems almost inevitable that more and more pubs fall by the wayside.

Sadly, this is a phenomenon, which Peterborough’s drinking houses have not been spared.

To many Peterborians, the 1970s was the last real golden age of drinking in our fine city.

This was a time before large scale infrastructure projects changed the physical face of the city centre, and before shopping (driven by a new innovation called ‘credit’) replaced boozing as the nation’s number one leisure activity.

Long-time resident David, who relocated to Peterborough, in the late 1960s, remembers the time well.

“There were so many pubs in Peterborough in the ‘70s,” he said, “it was unbelievable.”

He recalls how places like Eastfield Road and The Triangle were so jam-packed with boozers that people would “navigate by pubs.”

Describing the 1970s as the “heyday” of pub life in Peterborough, the 69-year-old explained how “the pub was the hub of the community.”

“Every pub had a darts team, a dominoes team, a pool team,” he says. “Everybody knew everybody.”

David also remembers that, aside maybe from ten-pin bowling and going to the cinema, there was only really one thing on most people’s minds when they got paid from work each week.

“Once people had been paid on a Thursday, they were out on a Friday and Saturday,” he recalls: “everybody was in the pubs.”

We are fortunate that, unlike many other cities, we have seen a modest rise in the number of microbreweries and gastropubs opening across our region over the past few years. However, there is no doubt that Peterborough has lost much of its pub-related legacy since that 1970s heyday.

With that in mind, we – along with our good friends at Peterborough Images – thought now would be a good time to remember some of the many boozers, now sadly lost, which countless other Peterborians used to frequent so often, back in the day.