Animal horns were among the favoured vessels of the Anglo-Saxons. They were clad in engraved metalwork and, tapering to a point at the bottom, had to be held constantly in the hand while filled.

In medieval times, one way of taking your ale was from a black jack, a large mug made of leather, which would be waterproofed with beeswax or pitch. This was a peculiarly English vogue, which our continental visitors typically found faintly repulsive. To the fastidious French, it looked like the English drank out of their boots! The jack was still in use in certain regions as late as the early Victorian era: the Rev W Tuckwell, in a historical portrait of Winchester, reports leather jacks being used in the 1840s to bring beer up from tavern cellars. It was then poured out into customers’ individual pewter tankards.

A pitcher made of treated pigskin was known as a “piggin”, and was a very popular type. Ale or cider might well be drunk directly from these, over-enthusiastic imbibing resulting in a state known as being “pig drunk”. In time, it became more polite for beer to be served from one of these capacious pitchers, either leather or earthenware. It would be decanted either into individual mugs or into one communal mug, which was then passed from hand to hand around the table.

As well as leather, drinking vessels might be made from pewter, clay pottery or even wood (usually maple or sycamore). The wooden tankard, with its capacity of up to four pints, was the commonest form of drinking vessel in the late Saxon era. Despite being shared, the contents were usually speedily dispatched, encouraging riotous drunkenness. So it was that King Edgar (who reigned from 959-975) introduced a decree stipulating that the tankards were to be fitted with pins or pegs all the way down, with each interval denoting one person’s measure. You drank the ale down to the next peg, and then handed it on. Drinking more than your share therefore entailed taking the next man down a peg or two.

The commonest form of drinking vessel of the 13th to the 15th centuries was the mazer, a wooden cup with a wide bowl of generous capacity. These were used by all classes of society, but among the better-off they would be mounted in silver and sometimes gold, with the mounts often bearing engraved inscriptions. The bottom of the bowl would often have a circular medallion, known as a “print”, set into it, perhaps bearing a devotional image such as that of the Virgin and Child, which would be revealed as the last of the contents were drained.

By 1635, the playwright Thomas Heywood, in a work splendidly entitled Philocothonistra, Or The Drunkard Opened, Dissected And Anatomised, is able to report the huge diversity of types of drinking vessel in common use:

“Of drinking cups, divers and sundry sorts we have, some of them elme, some of box, some of maple, some of holly &c; Mazers, broadmouthed Dishes, Noggins, Whiskins, Piggins, Crinzes, Ale-bowls, Wassal Bowls, Court dishes, Tankards, Kannes from a pottle to a pint, from a pint to a gill... We have besides, cups made out of horns of beasts, of cocker-nuts [coconut shells], of goords, of the eggs of ostriches; others made of the shells of divers fishes. Come to plate, every taverne can afford you flat bowles, prounet cups, beare bowles, beakers; and private householders in the citie, when they make a feast to entertain their friends, can furnish their cup boards with flagons, tankards, beare cups, wine bowles, some white, some purcell [porcelain] gilt, some gilt all over, some with covers, others without, of sundry shapes and qualities.”

A particular novelty of the late 17th century was the whistling tankard, which had a whistle set into the bottom of a tapered base, so that you could notify the publican that you needed a top-up when the tankard was dry.

The age of glass

Modern pint glass
© Cognitive Applications/Robert Gillam

The very earliest existing English glass vessels probably date from around 1200, and would have been made by foreign glassmakers working here. Some large glass drinking vessels were brought back from the Holy Wars, and the English examples possibly copied from these designs. Because glass is obviously such a fragile medium compared to others, it was quite common for legends to grow up around certain highly decorated pieces, usually to the effect that a family’s good fortune would run out if ever the vessel were to be broken - which is why these items were known as “lucks”.

Only later did the glass receptacle come into general use, the advent of glass contributing among other factors to an improvement in the quality of beer. When you could see what you were drinking, beers that were previously full of the solid residues of fermentation began to be cleaned up. The earliest glass vessels were tumblers, so called because they had a rounded base and wouldn’t stand up.

By the late 17th and early 18th centuries, English glassmaking was known for being the finest in Europe. Glasses and decanters of lead crystal, in which fine wines and liqueurs were served, had been refined to the highest pitch of excellence, as is noted in GJ Monson-Fitzjohn’s Drinking Vessels Of Bygone Days (1927):

“Although we were taught the mystery of making table glass by the Italians, the Dutch and the French, it is nevertheless a curious fact that no glass made out of Britain can be compared with our own products for ring and quality. Foreign glass, after being flicked with the finger, tinkles for a second or two, then the sound rapidly disappears, but this is not so with our own glass, which produces those rich bell-like notes of F or G sharp on the piano, which throb themselves out with lingering resonance.”

A novelty receptacle for taking beer from was the yard glass, or yard-of-ale glass. As its name suggests, this was a 3ft-long flared glass tube with a hollow bulb at the bottom end. It was filled with beer as a challenge, the drinker being invited to drain it at a single draught without spilling a drop. The twist came when the glass had to be tipped to release the final quantity from the bulb, which would as often as not end up all over the user’s face as it flowed out in a rush. Successful completion of the yard-of-ale challenge was no mean feat. The standard capacity of the glass was about a quart (two pints).

The last drop glass was another singular novelty. It was a tankard-type glass with the figure of a hanged man engraved on its base, which became fully visible as the drink was finished. The joke was that although you could take the last drop from the glass, the last drop (of the condemned man from the scaffold) nonetheless remained.