Like the very best things in life, it began in Muswell Hill. In December of 1979, Tim Martin opened Martin’s Free House on Colney Hatch Lane, on the site of an old bookies. He’d bought it off his friend and one-time business partner, Andrew Marler. A month later, after one of the windows got smashed by an A board, he changed the pub’s name to JD Wetherspoon – an amalgam of both JD Hogg from The Dukes of Hazzard and an old teacher of Martin’s who assured him as a child that he’d never amount to anything. And so, in 1980 began a very British pub empire; one that’s as divisive and mocked as it is celebrated or revered.

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The history of the nation’s most popular pub chain is well documented. There was the rapid expansion in the 1990s; there was the Brexit controversy in the 2010s; and then, post-COVID, there was a quiet shutdown of some of their most loved pubs. But with even more closing in the autumn of 2025 – from the Mos Eisley weirdness of Baxter’s Court in Hackney to The Water Gate in Barnstaple – what does the future hold for Spoons? What role does the McDonald’s of boozers play in Britain today? I spent almost an entire day in my nearest one to try to find out.

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My local, like so many across the country, opens at a mind-boggling 8am, Monday to Sunday. I rock up just gone 10am and am struck first of all by that smell. You’ll know the exact odour if you’ve ever set foot in a Wetherspoons – that strange sort of part-vinegar, part-cooked meat, part-bleach, part-stale lager stench that seems to be exactly the same whether you’re pinting in Poole, Penrith, or Pontefract. I sit down and fire up the app. Although there are a few people drinking – older men sitting separately alone, presumably retired, and for whom time has no real meaning – most of the clientele at this hour of the morning are families.

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Since introducing non-smoking sections in his pubs – long before anyone else really bothered to – in the early 1990s, food has been at the forefront of Martin’s chain. Much like its booze selection, the price of grub is OS astonish-ingly low for a public house: you can feasibly feed a family of four for just under £40, which is why in the afternoons the pubs sort of have the feel of a provincial Wimpy. I opt for refillable Lavazza coffee and a traditional breakfast (egg, bacon, sausage, beans, hash browns, toast) for just under £8. It arrives with unnerving speed. The food here is, of course, microwaved. But much like a fast food chain, you know exactly what you’re getting, no matter what branch you end up at: a cheap eat; a quick bite; passable ballast to line the stomach before gorging on six to eight pints of continental grog.

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As the afternoon drags on the genre of punter shifts. The families begin to dissipate. The lonely old men are replaced by different, slightly younger lonely old men. Then in come the students. The sparkies. The post-work pinters. Ladies’ nights. Lads’ nights. People nipping in for a quick one before they go on elsewhere; people who plonk themselves down in a banquetted booth and who won’t move until last orders. I try to leave it for as long as possible, but by 4pm I can’t take it anymore. Three coffees and two lemonades in, and it’s time for a pint.

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One thing almost every person who’s ever set foot in a Spoons can agree on is that the quality, quantity, and diversity of hooch on offer is excellent. The first pub to make it into CAMRA’s Good Beer Guide was Dick’s Bar in Hornsey in 1983 (now a window and door shop), and today 251 of their 800-and-something UK pubs have made it into the craft connoisseurs’ 2025 edition. Their lager selection is excellent – I opt for a Poretti for £4.99 – but it’s undoubtedly ale and craft where JD Wetherspoon really found their niche, and it remains one of the most reliable places to find something warm, flat, and fruity, if you’re the kind of maniac who’s into that sort of thing. There must be enough of them: each year Spoons holds a real ale festival (this year featured 30 varieties from countries as diverse as India and France) with prices starting at a cool £2.15 a pint.

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At 6ish I finally shut my laptop for the day, having been using their WiFi for several hours free of charge. The atmosphere now has fully shifted. That swimming pool ambience that washes over you by day is replaced by something more urgent, frenetic, and loud. Still the food orders come in around me – burgers, curry, pizza, a bowl of peas sent to someone via the app as a joke. Sales topped £1 billion for the first time earlier this year and given the fact virtually every table in the pub is in use you can see why. There’s something unhinged and beautiful about a Wetherspoons once the sun goes down. It’s the great British leveller: a classless vibes den where everyone’s welcome, and everyone inside is united in trying to get as smashed as possible. It’s clubbing without the music; one nation under an Extra Smooth. Indeed, in some more provincial places, the Wetherspoons acts as a sort of de facto club: places for younger people to gather and flirt and romance and fight and laugh.

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By 10pm and six pints I’m pretty done. I’ve been sitting largely in the same seat (bar toilet and cigarette breaks) for around 12 hours. Where else in the country can you do that? Pubs are the original third space – places that are neither your home nor your work. Wetherspoons is this notion perfected. Want to eat? Spoons. Want to drink? Spoons. Want to work? Spoons. Want to play? Spoons. Sometimes if I’m caught short when I’m out and about, I’ll find the nearest one and use their toilet. No one ever asks why or tells me that I can’t. It’s a public space, for the people. Long may it continue.