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THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND
THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Portsmouth Road , and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. The Exeter Road : The Story of the West of England Highway. The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway. The Holyhead Road : The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road : The Great Fenlan
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTORY The Old Inns of Old England!—how alluring and how inexhaustible a theme! When you set out to reckon up the number of those old inns that demand a mention, how vast a subject it is! For although the Vandal—identified here with the brewer and the ground-landlord—has been busy in London and the great centres of population, destroying many of those famous old hostelries our grandfathers knew and appreciated, and building in their stead “hotels” of the most grandiose and palatial kind, t
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF INNS Inns, hotels, public-houses of all kinds, have a very ancient lineage, but we need not in this place go very deeply into their family history, or stodge ourselves with fossilised facts at the outset. So far as we are concerned, inns begin with the Roman Conquest of Britain, for it is absurd to suppose that the Britons, whom Julius Cæsar conquered, drank beer or required hotel accommodation. The colonising Romans themselves, of course, were used to inns, and when they
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
GENERAL HISTORY OF INNS The mediæval hostelries, generally planned in the manner of the old galleried inns that finally went out of fashion with the end of the coaching age, consisting of a building enclosing a courtyard, and entered only by a low and narrow archway, which in its turn was closed at nightfall by strong, bolt-studded doors, are often said to owe their form to the oriental “caravanserai,” a type of building familiar to Englishmen taking part in the Crusades. But it is surely not ne
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY The inns of old time, serving as they did the varied functions of clubs and assembly-rooms and places of general resort, in addition to that of hotel, were often, at times when controversies ran high, very turbulent places. The manners and customs prevailing in the beginning of the eighteenth century may be imagined from an affray which befell at the “Raven,” Shrewsbury, in 1716, when two officers of the Dragoons insisted in the public room of the inn, upon a Mr. Andrew Sw
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
LATTER DAYS A host of writers have written in praise—and rightly in praise—of that fine flower of many centuries of innkeeping evolution, the Coaching Inn of the early and mid-nineteenth century. Hazlitt, Washington Irving, De Quincey, are all among the prophets; De Quincey, ceasing for the while his mystical apocalyptic style, mournfully lamenting the beginnings of the end that came even so long ago as his day, which, after all, ended not so very long ago, for although he seems so ancient, he d
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS Inns, or guest-houses for the proper lodging and entertainment of travellers bent on pilgrimage, were among the earliest forms of hostelries; and those great bournes of religious pilgrimage in mediæval times—the shrine of St. Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, the tomb of Edward the Second in Gloucester Cathedral, the relics of St. Dunstan at Glastonbury, and the more or less holy objects of superstitious reverence at Walsingham, St. Albans, and indeed, in most of
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS ( continued ) At St. Albans we have still something in the way of a pilgrim’s inn. St. Albans was, of course, the home of the wonder-working shrine of St. Alban, the proto-martyr of Britain, and by direct consequence a place of great pilgrimage and a town of many inns. Here is the “George,” one of the pleasantest of the old inns remaining in the place, with an old, but scarce picturesque frontage, relieved from lack of interest by a quaint sundial, inscribed H
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
HISTORIC INNS It can be no matter for surprise that many inns have historic associations. Indeed, when we consider that in olden times the hostelries of town and country touched life at every point, and were once the centre of local life, it becomes rather surprising that not more tragic events, more treaties and conferences, and more plots and conspiracies are associated with such places of public resort. Strange, mysterious plotters, highwaymen, and great nobles resorted to them, and, coming t
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
INNS OF OLD ROMANCE Romance, as we have already seen, was enacted in many ways in the inns of long ago. Love and hatred, comedy and tragedy, and all the varied moods by which human beings are swayed, have had their part beneath the roofs of the older hostelries; as how could they fail to do in those times when the inn was so essential and intimate a part of the national life? The romantic incidents in which old inns have their part are in two great divisions: that of old folklore, and the other
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
PICKWICKIAN INNS What visions of Early Victorian good-fellowship and conviviality, of the roast-beef and rum-punch kind, are called up by the title! The Pickwickian Inn was, in the ’30’s of the nineteenth century, the last word in hospitable comfort, and its kitchen achieved the topmost pinnacle of culinary refinement demanded by an age that was robust rather than refined, whose appetites were gross rather than discriminating, and whose requirements seem to ourselves, of a more sybarite and exac
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
DICKENSIAN INNS The knowledge Dickens possessed of inns, old and new, was, as already said, remarkable. His education in this sort began early. From his early years in London, at the blacking factory, when he sampled the “genuine stunning” at the “Red Lion,” Parliament Street, through his experiences as a reporter of election speeches in the provinces, when long coach journeys presented a constant succession of inns and posting-houses, circumstances made him familiar with every variety of house
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
HIGHWAYMEN’S INNS There is no doubt that, in a certain sense, all inns were anciently hand-in-glove with the highwaymen. No hostelry so respectable that it could safely give warranty for its ostlers without-doors and its servants within. Mine host might be above suspicion, but not all his dependants; and the gentlemen of the high toby commonly learnt from the staffs of the inns what manner of guests lay there, what their saddle-bags or valises held, and whither they were bound. No wealthy travel
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THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND
THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND
WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR The Portsmouth Road , and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old. The Dover Road : Annals of an Ancient Turnpike. The Bath Road : History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway. The Exeter Road : The Story of the West of England Highway. The Great North Road : The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols. The Norwich Road : An East Anglian Highway. The Holyhead Road : The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols. The Cambridge, Ely, and King’s Lynn Road : The Great Fenlan
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CHAPTER I
CHAPTER I
A POSY OF OLD INNS “Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?” In dealing with the Old Inns of England, one is first met with the great difficulty of classification, and lastly with the greater of coming to a conclusion. There are—let us be thankful for it—so many fine old inns. Some of the finest lend themselves to no ready method of classifying. Although they have existed through historic times, they are not historic, and they have no literary associations: they are simply beautiful and comforta
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CHAPTER II
CHAPTER II
THE OLD INNS OF CHESHIRE Cheshire, that great fertile plain devoted almost exclusively to dairy-farming, is without doubt the county richest in old inns: inns for the most part built in the traditional Cheshire style—of timber and plaster: the style variously called “half-timbered,” “magpie,” or “black and white.” Of these the “Old Hall” at Sandbach is the finest and most important, having been built originally as the manor-house, about the time of Queen Elizabeth, the inscription, “16 T.B. 56”
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CHAPTER III
CHAPTER III
INNS RETIRED FROM BUSINESS That striking feature of the last few years, the voluntary or the compulsory extinction of licences, with its attendant compensation, has created not a little stir among people with short memories, or no knowledge of their country, who cherish the notion, “once an inn, always an inn,” and forget the wholesale ruin that befell inns all over the land upon the introduction of railways, causing hundreds of hostelries to close their doors. The traveller with an eye for such
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CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER IV
INNS WITH RELICS AND CURIOSITIES Just as most cathedrals, and many ancient churches, are in these days unconsciously looked upon by antiquaries rather as museums than as places of worship, so many ancient inns attract the tourist and the artist less as places for rest and refreshment than subjects for the pencil, the brush, or the camera; or as houses where relics, curious or beautiful, remain, of bygone people, or other times. Happy the traveller, with a warm corner in his heart for such things
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CHAPTER V
CHAPTER V
TAVERN RHYMES AND INSCRIPTIONS Beer has inspired many poets, and “jolly good ale and old” is part of a rousing rhyme; but much of the verse associated with inns runs to the hateful burden of “No Trust.” Thus, along one of the backwaters in Norwich city there stands the “Gate House” inn, displaying the following: The sun shone bright in the glorious sky, When I found that my barrels were perfectly dry. They were emptied by Trust; but he’s dead and gone home, And I’ve used all my chalk to erect hi
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CHAPTER VI
CHAPTER VI
THE HIGHEST INNS IN ENGLAND As there are many inns claiming, each one of them, to be the “oldest,” so there are many others disputing the point which is the highest situated. I must confess the subject—for myself, at least—lacks charm. I know—how can you help knowing it?—that to reach those eyries you must use incredible efforts, scaling preposterous heights and faring over roads that are, as a rule, infernally rough. And when you are come, in summer hot, in winter searched through and through b
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CHAPTER VII
CHAPTER VII
GALLOWS SIGNS It is an ominous name, but the signs that straddle across the road, something after the fashion of football goals, have none other. The day of the gallows sign is done. It flourished most abundantly in the middle of the eighteenth century, when travellers progressed, as it would appear from old prints, under a constant succession of them; but examples are so few nowadays that they are remarkable by reason of their very scarcity, instead of, as formerly, by their number, their size,
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CHAPTER VIII
CHAPTER VIII
SIGNS PAINTED BY ARTISTS In the “good old days,” when an artist was supposed to be drunken and dissolute in proportion to his genius, and when a very large number of them accordingly lived up to that supposition, either in self-defence or out of their own natural depravity, it was no uncommon thing to see the wayside ale-house sporting a sign that to the eye of instructed travellers displayed merits of draughtsmanship and colour of an order entirely different from those commonly associated with
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CHAPTER IX
CHAPTER IX
QUEER SIGNS IN QUAINT PLACES Thus did Horace Walpole moralise over the fickleness of sign-board favour: “I was yesterday out of town, and the very signs, as I passed through the villages, made me make very quaint reflections on the mortality of fame and popularity. I observed how the ‘Duke’s Head’ had succeeded almost universally to ‘Admiral Vernon’s,’ as his had left but few traces of the ‘Duke of Ormonde’s.’ I pondered these things in my breast, and said to myself, ‘Surely all glory is but as
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CHAPTER X
CHAPTER X
RURAL INNS Of first importance to the tourist who flits day by day to fresh woods and pastures new are the rural inns that afford so hospitable and unconventionally comfortable a welcome at the close of the day’s journey. Unwise is he who concludes the day at populous town or busy city, where modern hotels, pervaded by waiters and chambermaids, remind the Londoner of the metropolis he has just left. Your old and seasoned tourist, afoot or on a cycle, by himself or with one trusty, quarrel-proof
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CHAPTER XI
CHAPTER XI
THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY INN It was called simply the “Bear” inn, and had no idea of styling itself “hotel.” Embowered in trees, it stood well back from the road, for it was modest and shy. A besom was placed outside the door, and on it the yokels who were the inn’s chief customers scraped off the sticky clay of the ploughlands they had been tramping all day. The entrance-passage was floored with great stone flags. On one side you saw the tap, its floor sprinkled with sawdust, and on the other
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CHAPTER XII
CHAPTER XII
INGLE-NOOKS The chimney-corners of the old rustic inns, in which the gossips lingered late on bitter winter nights, have ever formed an attraction for writers of the historic novel. There is no more romantic opening possible than that of the village inn, with the spiced ale warming on the hearth, and the rustics toasting their toes in the ingle-nook, what time the wind howls without, roars in the trees, like the roaring of an angry sea, and takes hold of the casements and shakes and rattles them
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CHAPTER XIII
CHAPTER XIII
INNKEEPERS’ EPITAPHS In the long, long pages of the large collections of curious epitaphs that have been printed from time to time, we find innkeepers celebrated, no less than those of other trades and professions. The irreverent wags who made light of all ills, and turned every calling into a jest had, it may well be supposed, a fine subject to their hands in the landlords of the village ale-houses. To Richard Philpots (appropriate name!) of the “Bell” inn, Bell End, who died in 1766, we find a
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CHAPTER XIV
CHAPTER XIV
INNS WITH ODD PRIVILEGES Here and there, scattered in the byways of the country, rather than situated in towns, inns may be found that have some attribute out of the common, in the way of privileges conferred or usurped. Thus, the licence of the “White Hart” inn at Adwalton, near Drighlington, Yorkshire, has, or had, the unusual privilege of holding the charter for the local fair, granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1576 to John Brookes, the then landlord, who under that charter held the exclusive rig
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CHAPTER XV
CHAPTER XV
INNS IN LITERATURE Inns occupy a very large and prominent place in the literature of all ages. A great deal of Shakespeare is concerned with inns, most prominent among them the “Boar’s Head,” in Eastcheap, scene of many of Falstaff’s revels; while at the “Garter,” at Windsor, Falstaff had “his chamber, his house, his castle, his standing bed and truckle-bed,” and his chamber was “painted about with the Story of the Prodigal, fresh and new.” It is difficult to see what the old dramatists could ha
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CHAPTER XVI
CHAPTER XVI
VISITORS’ BOOKS The Visitors’ Book is no new thing. In 1466, when a distinguished Bohemian traveller, one Baron Leo von Rozmital, dined with the Knights of Windsor, his hosts, after dinner, produced what they called their “missal,” and asked for his autograph “in memoriam” of him. A little daunted, perhaps, by so ill-omened an expression, but still courteous, the Baron complied with the request, and wrote, “Lwyk z Rozmitala a z Blatnie.” This uncouth autograph was not unnaturally looked upon wit
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