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 Fenland Highway.
The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road: Sport and History on an
East Anglian Turnpike.
The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: The Ready Way to South
Wales. Two Vols.
The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.
The Hastings Road and the “Happy Springs of Tunbridge.”
Cycle Rides Round London.
A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.
Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols. The Ingoldsby Country:
Literary Landmarks of “The Ingoldsby Legends.”
The Hardy Country: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.
The Dorset Coast.
The South Devon Coast. [_In the Press._
[Illustration: THE ROADSIDE INN.]
THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND
_A PICTURESQUE ACCOUNT OF THE
ANCIENT AND STORIED HOSTELRIES
OF OUR OWN COUNTRY_
VOL. I
BY CHARLES G. HARPER
[Illustration]
_Illustrated chiefly by the Author, and from Prints
and Photographs_
LONDON:
CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED
1906
_All rights reserved_
PRINTED AND BOUND BY
HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
LONDON AND AYLESBURY.
[Illustration: PREFACE]
_It is somewhat singular that no book has hitherto been published dealing
either largely or exclusively with Old Inns and their story. I suppose
that is because there are so many difficulties in the way of one who would
write an account of them. The chief of these is that of arrangement and
classification; the next is that of selection; the last that of coming to
a conclusion. I would ask those who read these pages, and have perhaps
some favourite inn they do not find mentioned or illustrated here, to
remember that the merely picturesque inns that have no story, or anything
beyond their own picturesqueness to render them remarkable, are--let us be
thankful for it!--still with us in great numbers, and that to have
illustrated or mentioned even a tithe of them would have been impossible.
I can think of no literary and artistic work more delightful than the
quest of queer old rustic inns, but two stout volumes will probably be
found to contain as much on the subject as most people wish to know--and
it is always open to anyone who does not find his own especial favourite
here to condemn the author for his ignorance, or, worse, for his perverted
taste._
_As for methods, those are of the simplest. You start by knowing, ten
years beforehand, what you intend to produce; and incidentally, in the
course of a busy literary life, collect, note, sketch, and make extracts
from Heaven only knows how many musty literary dustbins and sloughs of
despond. Then, having reached the psychological moment when you must come
to grips with the work, you sort that accumulation, and, mapping out
England into tours, with inns strung like beads upon your itinerary, bring
the book, after some five thousand miles of travel, at last into being._
_It should be added that very many inns are incidentally illustrated or
referred to in the series of books on great roads by the present writer;
but as those works dealing with Roads, another treating of the History of
Coaching, and the present volumes are all part of one comprehensive plan
dealing with the History of Travel in general, the allusions to inns in
the various road-books have but rarely been repeated; while it will be
found that if, in order to secure a representative number of inns, it has
been, in some cases, found unavoidable to retrace old footsteps, new
illustrations and new matter have, as a rule, been brought to bear._
_The Old Inns of London have not been touched upon very largely, for most
of them are, unhappily, gone. Only the few existing ones have been
treated, and then merely in association with others in the country. To
write an account of the Old Inns of London would now be to discourse, in
the manner of an antiquary, on things that have ceased to be._
CHARLES G. HARPER.
PETERSHAM, SURREY.
_September, 1906._
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I. INTRODUCTORY 1
II. THE ANCIENT HISTORY OF INNS 13
III. GENERAL HISTORY OF INNS 28
IV. THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY 42
V. LATTER DAYS 57
VI. PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS 76
VII. PILGRIMS’ INNS AND MONASTIC HOSTELS (_continued_) 117
VIII. HISTORIC INNS 144
IX. INNS OF OLD ROMANCE 188
X. PICKWICKIAN INNS 210
XI. DICKENSIAN INNS 265
XII. HIGHWAYMEN’S INNS 303
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
[Illustration]
SEPARATE PLATES
THE ROADSIDE INN _Frontispiece_
FACING PAGE
THE LAST OF THE OLD GALLERIED INNS OF LONDON: THE “GEORGE,”
SOUTHWARK. (_Photo by T. W. Tyrrell_) 32
THE KITCHEN OF A COUNTRY INN, 1797: SHOWING THE TURNSPIT
DOG. (_From the engraving after Rowlandson_) 48
WESTGATE, CANTERBURY, AND THE “FALSTAFF” INN 86
CHARING CROSS, ABOUT 1829, SHOWING THE “GOLDEN CROSS” INN.
(_From the engraving after T. Hosmer Shepherd_) 218
THE “GOLDEN CROSS,” SUCCESSOR OF THE PICKWICKIAN INN, AS
REBUILT 1828 220
ROCHESTER IN PICKWICKIAN DAYS, SHOWING THE OLD BRIDGE AND
“WRIGHT’S” 224
THE “BELLE SAUVAGE.” (_From a drawing by T. Hosmer Shepherd_) 228
THE DICKENS ROOM, “LEATHER BOTTLE,” COBHAM 230
THE “BULL INN,” WHITECHAPEL. (_From the water-colour drawing
by P. Palfrey_) 246
THE “WHITE HART,” BATH 252
THE “BUSH,” BRISTOL 256
THE “COACH AND HORSES,” ISLEWORTH 276
THE “LION,” SHREWSBURY, SHOWING THE ANNEXE ADJOINING, WHERE
DICKENS STAYED 298
THE “GREEN MAN,” HATTON 318
THE HIGHWAYMAN’S HIDING-HOLE 318
ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT
Vignette, The Old-time Innkeeper _Title-page_
PAGE
Preface v
List of Illustrations xi
The Old Inns of Old England, The “Black Bear,” Sandbach 1
The Oldest Inhabited House in England: The “Fighting Cocks,”
St. Albans 5
The “Dick Whittington,” Cloth Fair 6
“Ye Olde Rover’s Return,” Manchester 7
The Oldest Licensed House in Great Britain: The “Seven Stars,”
Manchester 11
An Ale-stake. (_From the Louterell Psalter_) 15
Elynor Rummyng 21
The “Running Horse,” Leatherhead 25
Facsimile of an Account rendered to John Palmer in 1787 54
The Last Days of the “Swan with Two Necks” 55
Crypt at the “George,” Rochester 83
Sign of the “Falstaff,” Canterbury 88
House formerly a Pilgrims’ Hostel, Compton 91
The “Star,” Alfriston 93
Carving at the “Star,” Alfriston 95
The “Green Dragon,” Wymondham 96
The Pilgrims’ Hostel, Battle 97
The “New Inn,” Gloucester 99
Courtyard, “New Inn,” Gloucester 103
The “George,” Glastonbury 109
High Street, Glastonbury, in the Eighteenth Century (_From
the etching by Rowlandson_) 115
The “George,” St. Albans 119
The “Angel,” Grantham 121
The “George,” Norton St. Philip 125
Yard of the “George,” Norton St. Philip 131
Yard of the “George,” Winchcombe 135
The “Lord Crewe Arms,” Blanchland 139
The “Old King’s Head,” Aylesbury 141
The “Reindeer,” Banbury 145
Yard of the “Reindeer,” Banbury 149
The Globe Room, “Reindeer” Inn, Banbury 153
The “Music House,” Norwich 157
The “Dolphin,” Potter Heigham 159
The “Nag’s Head,” Thame 161
Yard of the “Greyhound,” Thame 163
The “Crown and Treaty,” Uxbridge 165
The “Treaty Room,” “Crown and Treaty,” Uxbridge 167
The “Three Crowns,” Chagford 169
The “Red Lion,” Hillingdon 170
Yard of the “Saracen’s Head,” Southwell 173
King Charles’ Bedroom, “Saracen’s Head,” Southwell 177
The “Cock and Pymat” 181
Porch of the “Red Lion,” High Wycombe 184
The “White Hart,” Somerton 186
The “Ostrich,” Colnbrook 191
Yard of the “Ostrich,” Colnbrook 199
“Piff’s Elm” 203
The “Golden Cross,” in Pickwickian Days 215
The “Bull,” Rochester 223
The “Swan,” Town Malling: Identified with the “Blue Lion,”
Muggleton 226
Sign of the “Bull and Mouth” 227
The “Leather Bottle,” Cobham 229
The “Waggon and Horses,” Beckhampton 233
“Shepherd’s Shore” 235
“Beckhampton Inn” 239
The “Angel,” Bury St. Edmunds 241
The “George the Fourth Tavern,” Clare Market 243
Doorway of the “Great White Horse,” Ipswich 247
The “Great White Horse,” Ipswich 250
Sign of the “White Hart,” Bath 255
“The Bell,” Berkeley Heath 257
The “Hop-pole,” Tewkesbury 259
The “Pomfret Arms,” Towcester: formerly the “Saracen’s Head” 260
The Yard of the “Pomfret Arms” 261
“Osborne’s Hotel, Adelphi” 263
The “White Horse,” Eaton Socon 267
The “George,” Greta Bridge 269
The “Coach and Horses,” near Petersfield 271
“Bottom” Inn 273
The “King’s Head,” Chigwell, the “Maypole” of _Barnaby Rudge_ 279
The “Green Dragon,” Alderbury 283
The “George,” Amesbury 285
Interior of the “Green Dragon,” Alderbury 287
Sign of the “Black Bull,” Holborn 289
The “Crispin and Crispianus,” Strood 293
The “Ship and Lobster” 297
“Jack Straw’s Castle” 301
The “Three Houses Inn,” Sandal 308
The “Crown” Inn, Hempstead 309
“Turpin’s Cave,” near Chingford 311
The “Green Dragon,” Welton 312
The “Three Magpies,” Sipson Green 313
The “Old Magpies” 315
The “Green Man,” Putney 321
The “Spaniards,” Hampstead Heath 323
[Illustration: The Old Inns of Old England]
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, there are happily
still remaining to us a large number of the genuine old cosy haunts where
the traveller, stained with the marks of travel, may enter and take his
ease without being ashamed of his travel-stains or put out of countenance
by the modish visitors of this complicated age, who dress usually as if
going to a ball, and whose patronage has rung the death-knell of many an
inn once quaint and curious, but now merely “replete with every modern
convenience.”
I thank Heaven--and it is no small matter, for surely one may be thankful
for a good inn--that there yet remain many old inns in this Old England of
ours, and that it is not yet quite (although nearly) a misdemeanour for
the wayfarer to drink a tankard of ale and eat a modest lunch of bread and
cheese in a stone-flagged, sanded rustic parlour; or even, having come at
the close of day to his halting-place, to indulge in the mild dissipation
and local gossip in the bar of an old-time hostelry.
This is one of the last surviving joys of travel in these strange times
when you journey from great towns for sake of change and find at every
resort that the town has come down before you, in the shape of an hotel
more or less palatial, wherein you are expected to dine largely off
polished marble surroundings and Turkey carpets, and where every trace of
local colour is effaced. A barrier is raised there between yourself and
the place. You are in it, but not of it or among it; but something alien,
like the German or Swiss waiters themselves, the manager, and the very
directors and shareholders of the big concern.
At the old-fashioned inn, on the other hand, the whole establishment is
eloquent of the place, and while you certainly get less show and glitter,
you do, at any rate, find real comfort, and early realise that you have
found that change for which you have come.
But, as far as mere name goes, most inns are “hotels” nowadays. It is as
though innkeepers were labouring under the illusion that “inn” connotes
something inferior, and “hotel” a superior order of things. Even along the
roads, in rustic situations, the mere word “inn”--an ancient and entirely
honourable title--is become little used or understood, and, generally
speaking, if you ask a rustic for the next “inn” he stares vacantly before
his mind grasps the fact that you mean what he calls a “pub,” or, in some
districts oftener still, a “house.” Just a “house.” Some employment for
the speculative mind is offered by the fact that in rural England an inn
is “a house” and the workhouse “_the_ House.” Both bulk largely in the
bucolic scheme of existence, and, as a temperance lecturer might point
out, constant attendance at the one leads inevitably to the other. At all
events, both are great institutions, and prominent among the landmarks of
Old England.
Which is the oldest, and which the most picturesque, inn this England of
ours can show? That is a double-barrelled question whose first part no man
can answer, and the reply to whose second half depends so entirely upon
individual likings and preferences that one naturally hesitates before
being drawn into the contention that would surely arise on any particular
one being singled out for that supreme honour. Equally with the morning
newspapers--and the evening--each claiming the “largest circulation,” and,
like the several Banbury Cake shops, each the “original,” there are
several “oldest licensed” inns, and very many arrogating the reputation of
the “most picturesque.”
The “Fighting Cocks” inn at St. Albans, down by the river Ver, below the
Abbey, claims to be--not the oldest inn--but the oldest inhabited house,
in the kingdom: a pretension that does not appear to be based on anything
more than sheer impudence; unless, indeed, we take the claim to be a joke,
to which an inscription,
The Old Round House,
Rebuilt after the Flood,
formerly gave the clue. But that has disappeared. The Flood, in this case,
seeing that the building lies low, by the river Ver, does not necessarily
mean the Deluge.
This curious little octagonal building is, however, of a very great age,
for it was once, as “St. Germain’s Gate,” the water-gate of the monastery.
The more ancient embattled upper part disappeared six hundred years ago,
and the present brick-and-timber storey takes its place.
[Illustration: THE OLDEST INHABITED HOUSE IN ENGLAND: THE “FIGHTING
COCKS,” ST. ALBANS.]
The City of London’s oldest licensed inn is, by its own claiming, the
“Dick Whittington,” in Cloth Fair, Smithfield, but it only claims to have
been licensed in the fifteenth century, when it might reasonably--without
much fear of contradiction--have made it a century earlier. This is an
unusual modesty, fully deserving mention. It is only an “inn” by courtesy,
for, however interesting and picturesque the grimy, tottering old
lath-and-plaster house may be to the stranger, imagination does not
picture any one staying either in the house or in Cloth Fair itself while
other houses and other neighbourhoods remain to choose from; and, indeed,
the “Dick Whittington” does not pretend to be anything else than a
public-house. The quaint little figure at the angle, in the gloom of the
overhanging upper storey, is one of the queer, unconventional imaginings
of our remote forefathers, and will repay examination.
[Illustration: THE “DICK WHITTINGTON,” CLOTH FAIR.]
Our next claimant in the way of antiquity is the “Seven Stars” inn at
Manchester, a place little dreamt of, in such a connection, by most
people; for, although Manchester is an ancient city, it is so modernised
in general appearance that it is a place wherein the connoisseur of
old-world inns would scarce think of looking for examples. Yet it contains
three remarkably picturesque old taverns, and the neighbouring town of
Salford, nearly as much a part of Manchester as Southwark is of London,
possesses another. To take the merely picturesque, unstoried houses
first: these are the “Bull’s Head,” Greengate, Salford; the “Wellington”
inn, in the Market-place, Manchester; the tottering, crazy-looking tavern
called “Ye Olde Rover’s Return,” on Shude Hill, claiming to be the “oldest
beer-house in the city,” and additionally said once to have been an old
farmhouse “where the Cow was kept that supplied Milk to The Men who built
the ‘Seven Stars,’” and lastly--but most important--the famous “Seven
Stars” itself, in Withy Grove, proudly bearing on its front the statement
that it has been licensed over 560 years, and is the oldest licensed house
in Great Britain.
[Illustration: “YE OLDE ROVER’S RETURN,” MANCHESTER.]
The “Seven Stars” is of the same peculiar old-world construction as the
other houses just enumerated, and is just a humble survival of the ancient
rural method of building in this district: with a stout framing of oaken
timbers and a filling of rag-stone, brick, and plaster. Doubtless all
Manchester, of the period to which these survivals belong, was of like
architecture. It was a method of construction in essence identical with
the building of modern steel-framed houses and offices in England and in
America: modern construction being only on a larger scale. In either
period, the framework of wood or of metal is set up first and then clothed
with its architectural features, whether of stone, brick, or plaster.
The “Seven Stars,” however, is no skyscraper. So far from soaring, it is
of only two floors, and, placed as it is--sandwiched as it is, one might
say--between grim, towering blocks of warehouses, looks peculiarly
insignificant.
We may suppose the existing house to have been built somewhere about 1500,
although there is nothing in its rude walls and rough axe-hewn timbers to
fix the period to a century more or less. At any rate, it is not the
original “Seven Stars” on this spot, known to have been first licensed in
1356, three years after inns and alehouses were inquired into and
regulated, under Edward the Third; by virtue of which record, duly
attested by the archives of the County Palatine of Lancaster, the present
building claims to be the “oldest Licensed House in Great Britain.”
There is a great deal of very fine, unreliable “history” about the “Seven
Stars,” and some others, but it is quite true that the inn is older than
Manchester Cathedral, for that--originally the Collegiate Church--was not
founded until 1422; and topers with consciences remaining to them may lay
the flattering unction to their souls that, if they pour libations here,
in the Temple of Bacchus, rather than praying in the Cathedral, they do,
at any rate (if there be any virtue in that), frequent a place of greater
antiquity.
And antiquity is cultivated with care and considerable success at the
“Seven Stars,” as a business asset. The house issues a set of seven
picture-postcards, showing its various “historic” nooks and corners, and
the leaded window-casements have even been artfully painted, in an effort
to make the small panes look smaller than they really are; while the
unwary visitor in the low-ceilinged rooms falls over and trips up against
all manner of unexpected steps up and steps down.
It is, of course, not to be supposed that a house with so long a past
should be without its legends, and in the cellars the credulous and
uncritical stranger is shown an archway that, he is told, led to old
Ordsall Hall and the Collegiate Church! What thirsty and secret souls they
must have been in that old establishment! But the secret passage is
blocked up now. Here we may profitably meditate awhile on those “secret
passages” that have no secrets and afford no passage; and may at the same
time stop to admire the open conduct of that clergyman who, despising such
underhand and underground things, was accustomed in 1571, according to the
records of the Court Leet, to step publicly across the way in his
surplice, in sermon-time, for a refreshing drink.
“What stories this old Inn could recount if it had the power of language!”
exclaims the leaflet sold at the “Seven Stars” itself. The reflection is
sufficiently trite and obvious. What stories could not any building tell,
if it were so gifted? But fortunately, although walls metaphorically have
ears, they have not--even in literary imagery--got tongues, and so cannot
blab. And well too, for if they could and did, what a cloud of witness
there would be, to be sure. Not an one of us would get a hearing, and not
a soul be safe.
But what stories, in more than one sense, Harrison Ainsworth told! He told
a tale of Guy Fawkes, in which that hero of the mask, the dark-lantern and
the powder-barrel escaped, and made his way to the “Seven Stars,” to be
concealed in a room now called “Ye Guy Fawkes Chamber.” Ye gods!
[Illustration: THE OLDEST LICENSED HOUSE IN GREAT BRITAIN: THE “SEVEN
STARS,” MANCHESTER.]
We know perfectly well that he did not escape, and so was not concealed in
a house to which he could not come, but--well, there! Such fantastic
tales, adopted by the house, naturally bring suspicion upon all else; and
the story of the horse-shoe upon one of its wooden posts is therefore,
rightly or wrongly, suspect. This is a legend that tells how, in 1805,
when we were at war with Napoleon, the Press Gang was billeted at the
“Seven Stars,” and seized a farmer’s servant who was leading a horse with
a cast shoe along Withy Grove. The Press Gang could not legally press a
farm-servant, but that probably mattered little, and he was led away; but,
before he went, he nailed the cast horse-shoe to a post, exclaiming, “Let
this stay till I come from the wars to claim it!” He never returned, and
the horse-shoe remains in its place to this day.
The room adjoining the Bar parlour is called nowadays the “Vestry.” It
was, according to legends, the meeting-place of the Watch, in the old days
before the era of police; and there they not only met, but stayed, the
captain ever and again rising, with the words, “Now we will have another
glass, and then go our rounds”; upon which, emptying their glasses, they
all would walk round the tables and then re-seat themselves.
A great deal of old Jacobean and other furniture has been collected, to
fill the rooms of the “Seven Stars,” and in the “Vestry” is the “cupboard
that has never been opened” within the memory of living man. It is
evidently not suspected of holding untold gold. Relics from the New Bailey
Prison, demolished in 1872, are housed here, including the doors of the
condemned cell, and sundry leg-irons; and genuine Carolean and Cromwellian
tables are shown. The poet who wrote of some marvellously omniscient
personage--
And still the wonder grew
That one small head could carry all he knew,
would have rejoiced to know the “Seven Stars,” and might have been moved
to write a similar couplet, on how much so small a house could be made to
hold.