The “Cambridge yard” (glass), also known as a “long glass”, or an “ell glass” was a yard-long (914cm) drinking glass. Yard glasses, because they were made without a flat bottom, were found mounted on the walls of many English pubs. There are a number of pubs named The Yard of Ale throughout the country.
I remember the famous “Cambridge Yard (glass)” hanging over the bar in there [the Angel Inn in Market Street, Cambridge], used in the popular traditional pub drinking contest of who could drink its contents the quickest. You were guaranteed to get soaked if a learner.
David Runham on the Facebook page Cambridge in the good old days from the 1960ts Before and Now
Typically, a yard of ale holds around 2.5 imperial pints (1.4 l) of beer. The glass is approximately 1 yard long, shaped with a bulb at the bottom, and a widening shaft which constitutes most of the height. It was used mainly for drinking feats, special toasts and for playing tricks on unsuspecting drinkers who take the challenge of drinking a yard of ale without realising that, due to the shape of the glass, that they are likely to be splashed with a sudden rush of beer towards the end of the drink.
The fastest drinking of a yard of ale (1.42 litres) in the Guinness Book of Records is 5 seconds. Former Australian Prime Minister Bob Hawke was a onetime holder of the record when, in 1954 as a Rhodes scholar at Oxford, he downed his drink in eleven seconds.
The yard, the British imperial unit of length – 3 feet – 36 inches – 0.9144 metres – was one of a number of weights and measures that from 1381 until 1856 the University (rather than the civic authority as in most towns and cities) had the sole right to determine, test and enforce. The university publicly exercised these rights annually in a ceremony observed in the Senate-House which involved the trying of all weights, wine measures, yard-wands, ale and milk measures, bushels, pecks, half Pecks, and quarterns. A hammer, a wedge, and an adze (a tool similar to an axe used for cutting large pieces of wood) were used for breaking the deficient Weights and Measures.
Butter Yard
In the nineteenth century and earlier, butter was sold in Cambridge not by weight but by length – that is, it was offered in long cylindrical rolls of a standard thickness and up to a yard long. It was retailed by the inch. For the market and for house-to-house delivery these were carried in specially designed long and narrow baskets. An example may be seen in the Museum of Cambridge (Folk Museum).
Yard butter, now only a memory among the older inhabitants of Cambridge, has played a part in the history of the University, the City, and even of the country. The golden rolls in their swathes of muslin have vanished since about 1920 from shop counters and market stalls, but the long baskets, the special butter scales, and a picture of a Mr. Smith delivering butter at a house door, his basket at his feet, are still in the Folk Museum as reminders of this old local custom.
Enid M Porter
References:
Stubbings, Frank (1995) ‘Bedders, Bulldogs and Bedells: A Cambridge Glossary’ Cambridge University Press
Porter, Enid M, (1956) ‘Butter by the yard’ in ‘Gwerin, a half-yearly journal of Folk life’ ed I.C. Peate.