text: It was the pub that first introduced the concept of the bar counter being used to serve the beer. Until that time beer establishments used to bring the beer out to the table or benches, as remains the practice in (for example) beer gardens and other drinking establishments in Germany. A bar might be provided for the manager to do paperwork while keeping an eye on his or her customers, but the casks of ale were kept in a separate taproom. When the first pubs were built, the main room was the public room with a large serving bar copied from the gin houses, the idea being to serve the maximum number of people in the shortest possible time. It became known as the public bar[citation needed]. The other, more private, rooms had no serving bar—they had the beer brought to them from the public bar. There are a number of pubs in the Midlands or the North which still retain this set up but these days the beer is fetched by the customer from the taproom or public bar. One of these is The Vine, known locally as The Bull and Bladder, in Brierley Hill near Birmingham, another the Cock at Broom, Bedfordshire a series of small rooms served drinks and food by waiting staff. In the Manchester district the public bar was known as the "vault", other rooms being the lounge and snug as usual elsewhere. By the early 1970s there was a tendency to change to one large drinking room and breweries were eager to invest in interior design and theming.