Laws & orders

PUB bosses have welcomed plans for a "bonfire of licensing laws", as we revealed yesterday. New proposals would include cutting red tape, thought to be making it hard for watering holes to host music and food pop-ups. But, as JAMES MOORE reveals, pubs have had a tangled relationship with rules and regulations for centuries..

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HORNY ISSUE: Alehouses, as pubs were once known, were so common in 10th Century England that King Edgar decreed there should only be one per village. He also regulated the size of drinking horns.

BEER WE GO: Magna Carta brought in the idea of standard measures of ale in 1215 and in 1267 Henry III first tried to control prices.

SIGN OF THE TIMES: Pub signs in Britain started off as bushes on a pole outside Roman taverns. But, in 1393, English king Richard II ordered that all hostelries should have one or "forfeit their ale"