England’s oldest pub closes

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https://www.aol.com/england-oldest-pub-reopen-soon-174156727.html

The pub, dating back to the 8th century, is expected to reopen under new ownership.

I saw that story. The town it's in,St Albans,is also one of the oldest in England being known to the Romans as Verulamium.Chances are there are probably remains underground of an ancient Roman inn somewhere in the vicinity as well.

I always wondered how mead tasted.

Did this pub serve medieval drinks?

Surely if the original pub was serving ale to it's Anglo-Saxon patrons in 793 AD it would have been named Feohtan Hana or literally "Fighting male hens"

Never ceases to amaze me why the English don't properly preserve place names despite pretending to be all about "heritage"

Where my family are from (a small village near Lands End in Cornwall) there is a restaurant called The Meadery where they serve mead made locally and its all medieval themed. I haven't been in there for years but my memory of mead is that it can vary a lot but I had pints of it and it was like a fruity beer. Nice enough but the sweetness made it sickly after a while.

Well… new people move in and change the name. I live quite close to York… the place was named by Celts, Angles, Romans and Vikings… the Vikings named it Yorvik which became York.

The Romans were in the village where I live… they built a pack horse bridge near here, but they don’t go a bundle on Romans around here now. Mistrust of “funny foreigners” trumps heritage any day of the week. In any case, there is no “English”… the stereotypical view of English (by the rest of the world) is very different from Yorkshire folk. But you can say that about any country, as I learned when I had a road trip around the US.

You can get a bottle of mead at a liquor store. I've always been curious about it myself. Maybe someday I'll get around to following through.

Not something I have ever heard before about us tbh

I think there is just a ton of history here (as in most of europe) and you sometimes have to pick one bit of history to preserve at the detriment of preserving other history.

I wish there were pubs here.

The selling point is it's the oldest running pub. I thought the pub name should be preserved as its the centre of community in the local area. Kings and invaders come and go. The pub remains.

I think the same for Rome (or Roma). There is a strong continuity in the name of places of interest haven't changed.

Same. Australian pubs are awful. The local English pub is the centre of local village culture/community.

There is (true), there is a tonne of history in Britain. But there isn't the reverence to preserve that I would have liked to have seen that is practiced in other countries. I think (ironically) part of the reason is Britain is an island and has always been open to outside influence.

Modern English are engrossed in sport/beer more than in their history/culture in the same way the French/Germans or other continental Europeans. Take the closest cultural group to the English, the Frisians. They are damn proud of the history/place names their language and history and traditional dress.

It's funny:

I feel it's possible that, in some ways, the Romance languages are more similar to English than Frisian, even though Frisian is said to be English's closest "relative."

English became quite "romanticized" after the Great Vowel Shift.

The food also looks good and the music.We have nothing like that here.

Good hearty fare

Yes I like simple old English stews and crusty old bread. Hotpot pies, bangers and mash.

Watch some podcasts from linguists on which language English is closest. You are correct in terms of vocabluary that French/Latin contributes most of our words. But in terms of actual language, English is closer to west germanic. Frisian is our closest cousin. Most people find it easier to pick up German for that reason than French.

But classifying our language is irrelevant. Modern English is a stand alone language that anyone will find challenging to learn.