It’s nothing personal – you just don’t have a pub.

I don’t make the rules – well actually I did make the rule, the one and only rule of the Fourtharch that requires all members to have had at least one pint of real ale in a favourite hostelry anywhere in the UK before making their choice of venue for the annual weekend outing – obviously if a village, town or city does not have a pub then the first rule of the Fourtharch cannot be applied. To be fair to Sandbanks, the small spit that sits in Poole Harbour that I visited in January, there is probably no room left for a pub in-between the fabulously expensive glamorous properties built on land with the 4th highest value in the world, but Bournville Port Sunlight and New Earswick have no excuse.

These are the new model villages built for their workers by the Victorian industrialists George & Richard Cadbury, the Lever Brothers and Joseph Rowntree who all had one thing in common – they were Quakers meaning that there was no place for alcohol or a pub in their village plans. Letchworth in Hertfordshire, the first Garden City based on the ideas of another Quaker and social reformer Ebenezer Howard was slightly different in that although having a ban on the sale of alcohol it did actually build a pub but a pub with no beer, the temperance Skittles Inn therefore again failing the Fourtharch prime directive. I have enjoyed visiting all but one of the above and can only admire the work of Victorian social reformers and industrial philanthropists but as a group we look to celebrate the institution that is the British pub and rules are rules or in our case, the rule is the rule so no pub or even worse a pub with no beer then regrettably the Fourtharch will not be coming.