Vanishing England

on of inns. Very soon, we may suppose, the "Black Boy" and the "Red Lion" and hosts of other old signs will have vanished, a

e the number of inns they will reduce drunkenness and make the English people a sober nation. This is not the place to discuss whether the destruction of inns tends to promote temperance. We may, perhaps, be permitted to doubt the truth of the legend, oft repeated on temperance platforms, of the working man, returning homewards from his toil, struggling past nineteen inns and succumbing to the syren charms of the twentieth. We may fear lest the gathering together of large numbers of men in a few public-houses may not increase rather than diminish their thirst and the love of good fellowship which in some mysterious way is stimulated by the imbib

historic inns, and to describe some of the fortunate survivors. Many of them are very old, and cannot long contend against the fiery eloquence of th

of St. Thomas of Canterbury or Our Lady at Walsingham; historic inns wherein some of the great events in the annals of England have occurred; inns associated with old romances or frequented by noto

s weary of the noise and confusion of it." His desire was fulfilled. He died at the old Bell Inn in Warwick Lane, London, an old galleried hostel which was not demolished until 1865. Dr. Johnson, when delighting in the comfort of the Shakespeare's Head Inn, between Worcester and Lichfield, exclaimed: "No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is provided as by a good tavern or inn."

ravelled life

s stages ma

think he sti

t welcome

lish inns even as early as the beginning of

meat; but let the master look to this point. Another gives the traveller his private chamber and kindles his fire, the third pulls off his boots and makes them clean; then the host or h

rights' Ar

ion, makes Flemming say: "He who has not been at a tavern knows not what a paradise it is. O holy tavern! O miraculous tavern! Holy, because no carking cares are there, nor weariness, nor pain; and miraculous, because of the spits which of themselves turned round and round." They appealed strongly to Washington Irving, who, when recording his visit to the shrine of Shakespeare, says: "To a homeless man, who has no spot on this wide world which he can truly call his own, there is a momentary feeling of something like independence and

the Reindeer

honest enjoyment-the kitchen of an English inn." It was of spacious dimensions, hung round with copper and tin vessels highly polished, and decorated here and there with Christmas green. Hams, tongues, and flitches of bacon were suspended from the ceiling; a smoke-jack made its ceaseless clanking beside the fire-place, and a clock ticked in one corner. A well-scoured deal table extended along one side of the kitchen, with a cold round of beef and other hearty viands up

ppetite. No wonder people loved an inn and wished to take their ease therein after the dangers and hardships of the day. Lord Beaconsfield, in his novel Tancred, vividly describes the busy scene at a country hostelry in the busy coaching days. The host, who is always "smiling," conveys the pleasing intelligence to the passengers: "'The coach stops here half an hour, gentlemen: dinner quite ready.' 'Tis a delightful sound. And what a dinner! What a profusion of substantial delicacies! What mighty and iris-tinted

of Mutton Inn

iced. A porch protects the door, and over it and up the walls are growing old-fashioned climbing rose trees. Morland loved to paint the exteriors of inns quite as much as he did to frequent their interiors, and has left us many a wondrous drawing of their beauties. The interior is no less picturesque, with its open ingle-nook, its high-backed settles, its brick floor, its pots a

h or saddle, but by poor players and mountebanks, who set up their stage for the entertainment of spectators who hung over the galleries or from their rooms watched the performance. The model of an inn-yard was the first germ of theatrical architecture. The "White Hart" in Southwark retained its galleries on the north and east side of its yard until 1889, though a modern tavern replaced the south and main portion of the building in 1865-6. This was a noted inn, bea

on the Hoop," and not from any beautiful girl "La Belle Sauvage," was a great coaching centre, and so were the "Swan with two Necks," Lad Lane, the "Spread Eagle" and "Cross Keys" in Gracechurch Street, the "White Horse," Fetter Lane, and the "Angel," behind St. Clements. As we do not propose to linger long in London, and prefer the country towns and villages where relics of old English life survive, we will hie to one of these noted hostelries, book our seats on a Phantom coach,

e of the best inns on English roads, and pleadingly invite a pleasant pilgrimage. We might follow in the wake of Dick Turpin, if his ride to York were not a myth. The real incident on which the story was founded occurred about the year 1676, long before Turpin was born. One Nicks robbed a gentleman on Gadshill at four o'clock in the morning, crossed the river with his bay mare as soon as he could get a ferry-boat at Gravesend, and then by Braintree, Huntingdon, and other places reached York that evening, went to the Bowling Green, pointedly asked the mayor the time, proved an alibi, and got off. This account was published as a broadside about the time

distinguished travellers were entertained. King John is said to have held his court here in 1213, and the old inn witnessed the passage of the body of Eleanor, the beloved queen of Edward I, as it was borne to its last resting-place at Westminster. One of the seven Eleanor crosses stood at Grantham on St. Peter's Hill, but it shared the fate of many other crosses and was destroyed by the troopers of Cromwell during the Civil War. The first floor of the "Angel" was occupied by one long room, wherein royal courts were held. It is now divided into three separate rooms. In this room Richard III condemned to execution the Duke of Buckingham, and probably here stayed Cromwell in the early days of his military career and wrote his letter concerning the first action that made him famous. We can imagine the silent troopers assembling in

cting his new pupils through Grantham to Dotheboys Hall, and how after leaving the inn the luckless travellers "wrapped themselves more closely in their coats and cloaks ... and prepared with many half-suppressed moans again to encounter the piercing blasts which swept across the open country." At the "Saracen's Head" in Westgate Isaac Newton used to stay, and there are many other inns, the majority of which rejoice in signs that are blue. We see a Blue

r, this wondro

ou hast viewed

w two rariti

ple and a "L

Charing Cross, the "Bull" at Rochester, the "Belle Sauvage" (now demolished) near Ludgate Hill, the "Angel" at Bury St. Edmunds, the "Great White Horse" at Ipswich, the

le. The Bell

amous cheeses were sold and hence called Stilton, though they were made in distant farmsteads and villages. It is quite a modern-looking inn as compared with the "Bell." You can see a date inscribed on one of the gables, 1649, but this can only mean that the inn was restored then, as the style of architecture of "this dream in stone" shows that it must date

liament from Southwell "that it made them feel like men in a dream." The "Martyr-King" entered this inn as a sovereign; he left it a prisoner under the guard of his Lothian escort. Here he slept his last night of liberty, and as he passed under the archway of the "Saracen's Head" he sta

e accommodation of visitors to Buxton. King George IV was so pleased with it that he gave the Duke a perpetual licence, with which no Brewster Sessions can interfere. Near Buxton is the second

l Inn,

s. This oak-panelled room recalls memories of the Orfords, Walpoles, Howards, Wodehouses, and other distinguished guests whose names live in England's annals. The old inn was once known as the Murtel or Molde Fish, and some have tried to connect the change of name with the visit of Queen Elizabeth; unfortunately for the conjecture, the inn was known as the Maid's Head long before the days of Queen Bess. It was built on the site of an old bishop's palace, and in the cellars may be seen some traces of Norman masonry. One of the most fruitful sour

seek out the old "Briton's Arms," in the same city, a thatched building of venerable appearance with its

he resided, now known as the Dolphin Inn, still stands, and is an interesting building with its picturesque bays and mullioned windows and ingeniously devised porch. It has actually been proposed to pull down, or improve out of existence, this magn

on's Arms

he staircase newel is a fine piece of Gothic carving with an embattled moulding, a poppy-head and heraldic lion. P

Inn, Heigh

dern "Crown" that supplants a venerable inn where Henry VIII first beheld Anne of Cleves; the "White Hart"; and the "George," where pilgrims stayed; and so on to Canterbury, a city of memories, which happily retains many features of old English life that have not altogether vanished. Its grand cathedral, its churches, St. Augustine's College, its quaint streets, like Butchery Lane, with their houses bending forward in a friendly manner

on doorway of the

Dolphin Inn. From Old O

lodgings. At Gloucester we find ourselves in the midst of memories of Roman, Saxon, and monastic days. Here too are some famous inns, especially the quaint "New Inn," in Northgate Street, a somewhat peculiar sign for a hostelry built (so it is said) for the use of pilgrims frequenting the shrine of Edward II in the cathedral. It retains all its ancient medieval picturesqueness. Here the old gallery which surrou

aff Inn,

Norman room, once the Prior's Lodge of the Benedictine Abbey. Behind many a modern front there exist curious carvings and quaintly panelled rooms and elaborate ceilings. There is an interesting carved-panel room in the Tudor House, Westgate Street. The panels are of the linen-fold pattern, a

ient lights, and even the interior is not much altered. Here too is the "Bell," under the shadow of the abbey tower. It is the original of Phineas Fletcher's house in the novel John Halifax, Gentleman. The "Bear and the Ragg

74, when one of the preachers, a bachelor of divinity, on his way to the church was stabbed three times by the dagger of a Manchester man; and of the execution of three popish priests, whose heads were afterwards exposed from the tower of the church. Then there is the story of the famous siege in 1642, when the King's forces tried to take the town and were repulsed by the townsfolk, who were staunch Roundheads. "A great and furious skirmish did ensue," and the "Seven Stars" was in the centre of the fighting. Sir Thomas Fairfax made Manchester his head-quarters in 1643, and the walls of the "Seven Stars" echoed with the carousals of the Roundheads. When Fairfax marched from Manchester to relieve Nantwich, some dragoons had to leave hurriedly, and secreted their mess plate in the walls of the old inn, where it was discovered only a few years ago, and may now be seen in the parlour of this interesting hostel. In 1745 it furnished accommodation for the soldiers of

Ragged Staff

the River Ver, claims to be the oldest inhabited house in England. It probably formed part of th

dge, in Wensleydale, which has had its licence since 144

eorge Inn, Norton S

s of the Gunpowder Plot met to devise their scheme for blowing up the Houses of Parliament. The George Inn at Norton St. Philip, Somerset, took part in the Monmouth rebellion. There the Duke stayed, and there was much excitement in the inn when he informed his officers that it wa

ent, who vainly tried to arrange a peace in 1645; and at the "Bear," Hungerford, William of Orange recei

nest of poor houses, seems to tell by it

slow. Part of the inn was built by the Earl of Rochester in 1663, and many were the great feasts and civic banquets that took place within its hospitable doors. The "King's Head" dates from the middle of the fifteenth century and is a good specimen of the domestic architecture of the Tudor period. It former

gon Inn, Wymo

d rogues of every description, and if they reached this inn-door they were safe. There is a record of a horse-thief named Birrel in the days of Henry VIII seeking refuge here for a crime committed at Lydd, in Kent. It was intended originally as a house for the refreshment of mendicant friars. The house is very quaint with its curious carvings, including a great red lion that guards the side, the figure-head of a wrecked Dutch vessel lost in Cuckmen Haven. Alfriston was noted as a great nest of smugglers, and the "Star" was o

nn, Afrist

e ending of the coaching age made unnecessary. The Castle Inn at Marlborough, once one of the finest in England, is now part of a great public school. The house has a noted history. It was once a nobleman's mansion, being the home of Frances Countess of Hereford, the patron of Thomson, and then of the Duke of Northumberland, who leased it to Mr. Cotterell for the purpose of an inn. Crowds of distinguished folk have thronged its rooms and corridors, including the great Lord Chatham, who was laid up here with an attack of gout for seven weeks in 1762 and made all the inn-servants wear his livery. Mr. S

at which princes and statesmen have stayed, and to which Louis Philippe and his Queen resorted. The "Star and Garter" has figured in the romances of some of our greatest novelists. One comes across it in Meredith and Thack

motors, making for those resorts higher up the river which are filling the place in the economy of the London Sunday and week-end which Richmond occupied in times when travelling was more difficult. These changes are inevitable. The "Ship" at Greenwich has gone, and Cabinet Ministers

of inns, of which the most noted is the "Bear," still a thriving hostel, once

eorge Inn, Norton

die of old age. Others will fall a prey to licensing committees. Some have been left high and dry, deserted by the stream of guests that flowed to them in the old coaching days. Motor-cars have resuscitated some and brought prosperity and life to the old guest-haunted cha

all" [th

r all" [th

r all" [the

or all" [t

r all" [t

oughfare, but the quaint device must have been extensively copied by country sign-painters. There is a "Mischief" at Wallingford, and a "Load of Mischief" at Norwich, and another at Blewbury. The inn on the Madingley road exhibits the sign in its original form. Though the colours are much faded from exposure to the weather, traces

antern" Inn

shed painters Mr. George Leslie, R.A., and Mr. Broughton, R.A., who, when staying at the inn, kindly painted the sign, which is hung carefully within doors that it may not be exposed to the mists and rains of the Thames valley. St. George is sallying forth to slay the dragon on the one side, and on the reverse he is refreshing himself with a tankard of ale after his labours. Not a few artists in the early stages of their career have pa

llowing rather remarkable one was seen by our ar

also kept to do all the barking. Our prize-fighter and chucker-out has won seventy-five prize-fights and has n

nto a semblance of their old life. The cars disdain the smaller establishments, and run such long distances that only a few houses along the road derive much ben

arquis of Granb