Ashley, James (1698–1776), kept the London Punch House on Ludgate Hill in the center of that city, the most famous establishment of its kind, for forty-five years. There, he pioneered and popularized the practice of mixing spirits with other ingredients to order in individual portions, making him responsible, perhaps more than any other person, for the creation of the modern bar. A native of Northamptonshire, in the English Midlands, Ashley was working in London by 1720. At some point he got into the wholesale cheese business, but that apparently did not satisfy his ambitions, and in 1731 he took out the lease on a large old tavern on Ludgate Hill and renamed it “The London Coffee House, Punch House, Dorchester Beer and Welch Ale Warehouse.” Before long, the coffee, beer, and ale ceased to be central to the enterprise. and it was known simply as the London Punch House.
Before Ashley, punch was retailed only in relatively large quantities, at de facto fixed prices, so that a quart of Batavia arrack made into punch cost eight shillings and one of rum or brandy six; furthermore, the smallest quantity generally made was based on a half pint of spirits, for one and a half or two shillings. See arrack, Batavia. Even skilled workers frequently made less than two shillings a day at the time, so these prices were prohibitive. When he opened his punch house, Ashley charged only six shillings for a quart of arrack made into punch and four for brandy or rum. What’s more, as his advertisements claimed, he was willing to sell smaller amounts, with prices “in Proportion, to the smallest Quantity, which is a half Quartern,” or an eighth of a pint. That half-quartern, like all his punch whatever the quantity, was mixed in front of the customer, allowing him to verify the proportion and quality of the spirits used. The result, following Ashley’s standard proportions of one part spirit to two parts other ingredients, was a nice cup—roughly 180 ml—of punch that cost as little as three pence—half the price of one of his bottles of Dorchester beer. This put punch within the reach of a great many more people and, as Ashley later boasted, “raised its reputation” with the general public. (Ashley could afford to charge so little because he had extensive cellars and could buy his spirits in large lots and age them himself.)
Ashley’s precise punch recipe has not been preserved, although from circumstantial evidence mined from advertisements and descriptions of the bar we know that it was always made with a premixed, bottled, and cellared “Sherbett” or shrub based on the peels and juice of sour Seville oranges. See shrub. This enabled his bartenders, the chief of whom was one Mrs. Gaywood, to have the punch, whatever the quantity, “as soon made as a Gill of Wine can be drawn.” That speed was necessary: the London Punch House was large and well-situated and had a reputation for high quality at a low price, all of which meant that it was perpetually thronged with customers. Its clientele ranged from dissolute youths like the young James Boswell (who recorded drinking “three threepenny bowls” of punch there in his journal) all the way to celebrities such as Benjamin Franklin and Oliver Goldsmith. Indeed, the London Punch House was one of the fixtures of the city, celebrated in prose and verse (alas, most of it doggerel). Its popularity and fame helped to spread the practice and techniques of punch making and the cult of punch drinking throughout England and the English-speaking world.
See also punch.
Advertisement. Grub St Journal, March 9, 1731.
“Biographical Anecdotes of Thomas Worlidge.” Monthly Magazine, April, 1796, 217.
By: David Wondrich
James Ashley as portrayed by Thomas Worlidge, ca. 1740.
© The Trustees of the British Museum.
James Ashley as portrayed by Thomas Worlidge, ca. 1740. Source: © The Trustees of the British Museum.