I run quite a few public house historical web sites, covering the South East
of England. These sites cover most of
London, ALL of
Essex, most of
Suffolk, most
of
Hertfordshire, most of
Kent, parts of
Sussex and bits of other
areas. I update the site, with a few friends who regularly supply new
information.
Many people who contact, are either interested in finding their relatives, who are listed as Victuallers on various certificates; or have found a Victualler / Publican in a census and want to know the name of the Public House. Most are just looking for a picture - if you are looking for pictures, and I do not have them, then I do not have them!
You can search this site, using the search engine, by address or Pub name. Try to not use the common terms, e.g. street, road, but actually use a surname, a road number etc.
Licensed Victuallers seem to be at addresses where the name of the Public House is registered. Publicans and Beer Retailers suffer, that as they are only licensed to sell beer, they are often listed as Beer Houses, and Off Licences [obviously]. There are a few work-arounds to this problem. If you are looking for any Public House before 1901, the census, sometimes, name a Public House by the name of the sign outside the door.
The irony of it all, is that we tend to ignore the early beer houses - many were just off licences. [BUT], many were the pre-cursor of the modern pub. There are a great number of Pubs in London that started their life as a beer house, literally thousands.
The next step is to find more detail about the relevant pub / Beer House - the best source of information is the Petty Sessions victuallers records. These are hand bound, original copies of the original recordings from the local magistrates court, and these should be available in the record office that pertains to an area.