Good old days: 14 ales a day

THERE is something oddly comforting about the fact that beer was ranked alongside bread as the most important dietary staple in Elizabethan Ireland.

Some workers were given a daily allowance of 14 pints of strong ale, according to a fascinating study by Dr Susan Flavin, lecturer in early modern history at Anglia Ruskin University in England.

She found that ale and beer were considered an essential source of nutrition, and were consumed in huge quantities.