Uniform with this volume INNS AND TAVERNS OF OLD LONDON Setting forth the historical and literary associations of those ancient hostelries, together with an account of the most notable coffee-houses, clubs, and pleasure gardens of the British metropolis. By Henry C. Shelley With coloured frontispiece, and 48 other illustrations L. C. PAGE & COMPANY 53 Beacon Street, Boston, Mass.   The Chequers, Loose Text of Title Page...

“Why do your guide books tell us about nothing but Churches and Manor Houses?” Such was the not altogether unjustifiable complaint of an American friend whose motor car was undergoing repairs. He was stranded in a sleepy old market town of winding streets, overhanging structures and oddly set gables, where every stone and carved beam seemed only waiting an interpreter to unfold its story. In the following pages we have attempted a classification and description of the inns, which not only shelte

MANORIAL INNS Which among the thousand of old inns to be met with on our country roads has a right to be called the oldest? There are many claimants. The title-deeds of the Saracen’s Head at Newark refer back to 1341. Local antiquaries cite documentary evidence to prove that the Seven Stars at Manchester existed before the year 1356. Symond Potyn, who founded St. Catherine’s Hospital for poor Pilgrims at Rochester in 1316, is described as “of the Crown Inn .” A Nottingham ballad relates the adve

MONASTIC INNS Rural England, during the two centuries after the Conquest, was practically under martial law. The hardy Men of Kent and the Vale of Holmsdale were strong enough to retain some of their ancient rights and privileges. Beyond these districts local government was suppressed and a military despotism took its place, administered often by half-civilized chieftains. One influence alone was formidable enough to modify and soften the crude tyranny of the feudal system—that of the Monasterie

THE HOSPICES Mention of the Knights Hospitallers brings us by an easy stage to pilgrimages; it was the original purpose of this order to keep open the route to the Holy Places and to assist the sick and needy pilgrims on their journey. Some pious merchants of Amalfi obtained permission to found a refuge for destitute pilgrims to the Holy Sepulchre at Jerusalem, about the middle of the eleventh century. At first the brethren of St. John were content with nursing the sick and relieving the hungry

THE RISE OF THE TOWNS Every high road leads sooner or later to a market town, and in that town the tourist may be sure of finding a White Hart Inn . The White Hart is the commonest of signs all through England. Half-timbered and rambling, with the marks of decrepit old age and long service writ large all over it, this inn is in evidence near the market-place, often in a street of the same name, to remind us of its importance in the days gone by. Sometimes, as at Guildford and Brentwood, the old

THE CRAFT GUILDS AND TRADERS’ INNS Of the writing of books about the mediæval guilds there seems to be no end, and each new contribution serves to mystify rather than to throw light on the difficulties of the subject. From the earliest times, it was an inherent tendency of the Teutonic races to combine and form guilds. There were guilds for the building of bridges, for the relief of poor pilgrims, and for almost every imaginable purpose, ranging from the organisation of a municipality to the Sax

CHURCH INNS AND CHURCH ALES We had occasion a year or two ago to visit a small country town where several public-houses were scheduled previous to being closed under the Licensing Act. It was impossible to defend the continuance of the licences. The high road which ran through the lower part of the town was well provided with inns for the passing traveller. These condemned inns, nine or ten in number, were all in a side street leading to the church at the top of the hill. We inquired of a local

COACHING INNS A hundred years ago, everybody who had occasion for inland travelling was perforce obliged to use the road; that is, unless he preferred a canal boat or barge, and navigable waters lay in the desired direction. Rich people travelled in their private carriage with four horses which were changed every few miles at the posting-houses. Those without means had to content themselves with carriers’ carts or the stage broad-wheeled waggons; a few resorted to dog-carts, then a tiny four-whe

WAYSIDE INNS AND ALEHOUSES We have shown in previous chapters how the old English inn grew up almost always under some local authority—either the lord of the manor, the monastery, or the parish—and its conduct was regulated by legal enactments from the reign of Henry II onwards. The alehouse, on the contrary, might conduct its business as its owner pleased, subject only to the natural laws of supply and demand. Every householder was free to brew either for his own consumption or for sale, the on

HISTORIC SIGNS AND HISTORIC INNS “The Greeks honoured their great men and successful commanders by erecting statues to them,” remarks Jacob Larwood; “modern nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve as signs for public-houses.” [12] Certainly it would be possible to make the signboards on the inns serve as texts for a complete history of England. There was once even a Cæsar’s Head in Great Palace Yard; and King Alfred and Canute are still commemorated at Wantage and at Southampton; w

SPORTS AND PASTIMES Many of the inn signs to be met with in the old provincial trading centres recall the sports of our ancestors. Too often these were of a brutal and barbarous character, suited only to an age which took its pleasures strenuously and knew nothing of squeamishness and delicate nerves. Not that we of the twentieth century are at heart one whit more humane. The cockney who would faint at the bloodshed and slaughter in a bull-ring, devours greedily in his Sunday newspaper all the d

THE INNS OF LITERATURE AND ART John Ball, shut up in the Archbishop’s prison at Canterbury, fell a’longing for “the green fields and the whitethorn bushes, and the lark singing over the corn, and the talk of good fellows round the alehouse bench.” The same craving for the real things of life comes to every creative genius fretting against class restrictions. Sir Walter Scott, when staying with Wordsworth at Grassmere, usually managed to give his host the slip in order to spend an hour or two in

FANCIFUL SIGNS AND CURIOUS SIGNBOARDS The antiquarian magazines of the last century are full of correspondence and ingenious explanations of such signs as the Pig and Whistle , Cat and Fiddle , or Goat in Boots . Many of the suggestions offered are far more whimsical in character than the devices they profess to explain. “Cat and Fiddle” is supposed to be a corruption of Caton Fidèle , a certain incorruptible Governor of Calais. Pig and Whistle has been traced to “Peg and Wassail,” with referenc

HAUNTED INNS Why is it that haunted inns are so scarce and difficult to find? We have sought for them far and wide. During thirty years of wanderings among the old inns, we have retired for the night full oft into blackened oak-lined chambers with secret sliding panels in the walls, or traps in the ceiling, that offered golden opportunities for any ghost of enterprise; rooms where heavy tie-beams and dark recesses cast eerie shadows in the moonlight; vast churchlike dormitories with springy floo

OLD INNS AND THEIR ARCHITECTURE Although many of our country inns must in their structural substance date from the reigns of Edward III and Richard II, and some, like the Red Lion at Wingham, and the White Hart at Newark, possess features that are without doubt fourteenth-century work, the earliest examples worthy of extended description and classification date from the middle of the fifteenth century. The enormous development of trade, and the wealth of the towns at this period, occasioned the

THE COMMERCIAL TRAVELLER The genuine traveller is really the man who is on business. Even the tourist can scarcely lay confident claim to the title. Is he not on pleasure bent? Is he not going from place to place merely for the fun of the thing? Is he not really a stay-at-home who has ventured out merely to stretch his legs? Ask the keeper of a commercial hotel in a country town who his customers are. He will tell you that they are commercial travellers and coffee-room visitors . The two classes

THE NEW INN AND ITS POSSIBILITIES Whatever developments may be in store in the future will depend almost entirely as to how far the licensing authorities and the various bodies formed for the purpose of furthering the cause of temperance, to say nothing of trade protection societies, can sink their differences and come to some sort of understanding as to the best type of inn for public convenience. Some temperance reformers have dreamt of a land without public-houses, and even to-day it is not a

INN FURNITURE It will not come as any surprise to readers who have so far dipped with us into the pages of the past, to learn that mediæval inns, and indeed those of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, have very little to show in the way of furniture. Our ancestors had far less done for them when they put up for the night than we are accustomed to to-day in the most primitive districts. Travellers did not even expect a bed. They were thankful enough if they could get some sort of rough

THE INNKEEPER “A seemly man our Hosté was withal. For to have been a marshall in a hall. A largé man he was with eyen stepe, A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe; Bold of his speech and wise, and well-y-taught And of manhood him lackedé right naught. Like thereto he was right a merry man.” A model to all innkeepers was Our Hosté of the Tabard ; a born leader of men, quick to understand each man’s individualities, and full of kindly sympathy for all. Ready of wit, he was ever careful to remove

PUBLIC-HOUSE REFORM “Nothing suits worse with vice than want of sense,” remarked Sir Harry Wilding in the “Constant Couple.” For vice we might read benevolence and find the maxim equally appropriate. Good judgment is especially needful in that kind of philanthropy so much in vogue at the present time, wherein one class of the community interests itself in improving the condition of another class with which it is imperfectly acquainted. Take, for instance, the housing of the working classes. A co