Inns, alehouses and beerhouses.
Originally an inn was an establishment which lodged and entertained travellers and these inns or lodging houses could provide alcohol for their guests without a liquor license. Alehouses and taverns, the distinction between which is not well defined, sold to all comers and required a license from whatever constituted the licensing authority of the time.When inns opened to non residents they too needed a license. The distinction became smaller as time went on and most inns held a license, with the inns and hotels often being larger and usually better class establishments than public houses or alehouses, although many had only pretensions in this direction. Definitions can be blurred and a licensed house name contained the word inn or otherwise according to the wishes of the owner or license holder. Many grand sounding names were held by small, low class premises. The status of the beerhouse on the other hand is quite clearly defined. These establishments, which only came into being with the passing of the 1830 beerhouse act, sold beer and cider and, more rarely, wine, with a permit from the local excise officer.They did not sell spirits as this required a license from the magistrates. So from 1830 onwards licensed premises can be put into two categories; alehouses, which held a spirit license, and beerhouses which did not. Any rate payer could open a beerhouse and ten were opened in Tewkesbury in 1830, with the passing of the beer act in that year, with thousands more nationwide.