Kmflett's Blog

Whitsuntide (24th May 2026) Church Ales: the origins of the pub-crawl..

Whit Sunday is the 7th after Easter, hence 24th May 2026 (not always the same date, since 1965,as the UK Bank Holiday)

In the traditional calendar Whit Sunday and Whitsuntide, the days after it, are a period of festival and holiday. It represents a time when the weather is warmer and the agricultural calendar less pressing. It allows for outside gatherings.

Part of this is the Church Ale a practice which declined with the Reformation but like all the best customs continued on here and there.

The Church Ale was not a beer as such but a wider name for a festival where specially brewed beer was certainly consumed as was food. The aim was to raise funds for charitable causes, often as the rhyme below indicates the church itself.

It was also perhaps the origin of the pub crawl. It was not unknown for numbers of Church ales to take place at the same time allowing for an ale-crawl between several of them.

As usual I don’t expect we’ll hear anything from those who claim to stand up for an English or wider British way of life on this but it’s no less of a tradition for that.

The churches must owe, as we all do know,

For when they be drooping and ready to fall,

By a Whitsun or Church-ale up again they shall go

And owe their repairing to a pot of good ale

— ”Exaltation of Ale”, by Francis Beaumont