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 reference to the pegged tankards formerly passed
round for the loving cup, each guest being expected to drink down to the
next peg. “Pix and Housel,” in honour of the Blessed Sacrament, or the
Danish _Ave Maria_, and “Pige Washail” have also been suggested by the
learned. Mr. T. C. Croker, in his “Walk to Fulham,” attempted to derive
the _Goat in Boots_ at Fulham from _der Goden Boode_, the “Messenger of
the Gods,” or Mercury; the idea being that the house was originally a
posting inn. The _Pig and Whistle_ may possibly be a rustic corruption of
the _Bear and Ragged Staff_ on a somewhat faded signboard.
Animals masquerading in human attire or performing human actions were a
favourite conceit of the mediæval craftsman, as may be seen by the
carvings on the stalls of our old cathedrals. Most likely we owe these
humorous signs to the sign-painter himself. He was commissioned to design
an advertisement that would puzzle inquisitive people and so attract
customers.
The _Goat and Compasses_ is supposed to be a corruption of a motto set up
over inns during the period of puritan tyranny, “God encompasses us”; _Bag
of Nails_ of “Bacchanals.” In default of better explanations we must
accept these. Until recently a public house existed in St. James’ Street,
called the _Savoy Weepers_--a name which might open up an endless
mystification if we did not know that the house was previously occupied by
the _Savoir Vivre_ Club. The _Goose and Gridiron_ is, according to the
_Tatler_, a parody of the favourite trade-mark of early music houses, the
_Swan and Harp_; while the _Monster_ in Pimlico may have been the
monastery inn, built during the time that the monks of Westminster Abbey
farmed this estate.
_Why Not_, and _Dew Drop Inn_ are, of course, invitations to the wayfarer;
_Bird in Hand_ and _Last House_, or _Final_, suggestion that he should not
waste his opportunities to imbibe.
In the village of Sennen, Cornwall, is one of the best known inns, having
for its sign the _First and Last_, which is quite obviously not intended
as a limit to the drinker. It has reference, of course, to the fact that
if you should be journeying to the south-west the inn will be the _last_
one you will meet with before reaching the sea, whereas it will be the
_first_ should your journey be by ship coming eastward. As a matter of
actual experience, hundreds of ships which in the course of a year “pick
up” the light at Land’s End have not been in sight of a public-house for
months, during which they have been crossing thousands of miles of ocean.
So that in the case of sailors working these particular vessels the name
of the inn has a very appealing significance.
He would be a bold man who would venture to assert positively which is the
best-known inn in London; but if the map be consulted, the _Elephant and
Castle_ will be seen to occupy a position at the junction of several
great roads to the south, and if the volume of traffic which must daily go
past the doors is considered, it needs very little more to convince most
people that the _Elephant_ is probably better known by name at all events,
than any other public-house within the four-mile radius of Charing Cross.
In coaching times the inn was passed by every traveller bound for the
south-east, and some authorities have contended that when Shakespeare
recommended that “In the south suburbs at the _Elephant_ is best to
lodge,”[14] he had in his mind the celebrated hostelry of Newington Butts.
But this is probably a mistake, for the _Elephant and Castle_ did not come
into existence until long after Shakespeare’s time. In 1658, the ground
upon which it now stands was not built upon, but probably the first inn on
the site came into existence about twenty years later. In 1824, the inn
was rebuilt, and since then there have been many additions and alterations
which have got farther and farther away from the original building as it
was in the seventeenth century. The _Elephant and Castle_, as far as the
antiquarian is concerned, is now merely a curious name. Another extremely
rare sign in London is the _Sieve_, which as late as 1890 stood in the
Minories. In 1669 there was a _Sieve_ in Aldermanbury, but more is known
of the one in the Minories. It was referred to in the “Vade Mecum for Malt
Worms,” 1715, and was then considered one of the oldest and most noted
public-houses of London. It adjoined Holy Trinity Church. Underneath were
crypt-like cellars which may originally have had connection with the
adjoining convent of the nuns of St. Clare. In the records of the Parish
of Holy Trinity, which was all included within the ancient precincts of
the convent, there is mention of the appointment of a “vitler to the
parish.” On February 13th, 1705, is a record of a vestry meeting at the
_Sieve_ “about agreeing to pull down the churchyard wall.” On this
occasion so serious was the discussion that as much as six shillings was
spent in refreshments before the matter was settled. A good deal of
speculation on the origin of the name of this old inn has been indulged
in, one solution being that the chalk foundations in the crypt may have
suggested the sign. The Metropolitan Railway Company acquired the
property, and closed the house in 1886, before its final disappearance
four years later.
[Illustration: Sign of Fox and Hounds, Barley]
The _Adam and Eve_, another common London sign, is, we have reason to
believe, frequently a repainting of the Zodiacal sign of the _Twins_, the
city having according to astrologers, its ascendant in Gemini, the House
of Mercury, who rules merchandise and all ingenious arts.
An odd sign to find in the heart of Essex is the _Whalebone_, and in the
same county at Great Leighs, there is a _Saint Anna’s Castle_, which is
supposed to stand on the site of a hermitage made sacred by the presence
of some local saint.
Dean Swift was once asked by the village barber of Co. Meath, by whom he
was regularly shaved, to assist him in the invention of an inscription
for the sign of the _Jolly Barber_, a house which it was intended to
conduct as an inn and a barber’s shop combined. Swift at once composed the
following couplet, which remained under the painted sign depicting a
barber with a razor in one hand and a full pot in the other, for many
years:
“Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here
Where nought excels the shaving but--the beer.”
_The Three Loggerheads_, generally in the form of two silly looking faces
and the motto:
“We three
Loggerheads be,”
is an attempt to take a mean advantage of the unwary spectator. Sometimes
two asses appear on the signboard with the inscription “When shall we
three meet again?” and this sign is alluded to by Shakespeare in “Twelfth
Night.” At Mabelthorpe is a unique sign called the _Book in Hand_. It is
not so much on account of its name that it is curious, for this might have
occurred to anyone, particularly in days when the ability to read was not
so conspicuously common as it is to-day. But the sign itself is so odd. A
rudely shaped hand and forearm sticks out straight from the brick wall and
in the hand is an open book with three Latin crosses on the right page
and one on the left. The origin of the sign is lost, but it seems
obviously to have had at one time some ecclesiastical connection.
Many names of inns have arisen from the puns on the landlord or locality.
The _Black Swan_ in Bartholomew Lane, once a resort for musical
celebrities was kept by Owen Swan, parish clerk of St. Michael’s Cornhill.
The _Brace_ Tavern, in Queen’s Bench Prison, was opened by two brothers of
the name of Partridge. _Hat and Tun_ was the sign of a public-house in
Hatton Garden, and the _Warbolt in Tun_ of the little inn at Warbleton, in
Sussex. At least one _Three Pigeons_ began business with a worthy surnamed
Pigeon for landlord, although this sign is usually derived from a coat of
arms charged with three martlets. According to a correspondent, the _Bell
Inn_ of a village not far from Oxford was formerly kept by John Good, who
set up this inscription under a gigantic representation of a bell:
“My name, likewise my ale, is good,
Walk in, and taste my own home-brewed,
For all that know John Good can tell
That, like my sign, it bears the Bell.”
Ben Jonson in the “Alchymist” satirised this kind of wit:
“He shall have _a bell_ that’s Abel,
And by it standing one whose name is _Dee_
In a rug gown, there’s _D_ and _Rug_, that’s Drug;
And right anenst him a dog snarling _err_,
There’s _Drugger_, Abel Drugger. That’s his sign.”
The last _Honest Lawyer_ in London has just ceased to exist, but there is
still an _Honest Miller_ at Withersden, near Wye, in Kent. It is
approached by devious ways and difficult to find. Hence perhaps the name.
Like the _Silent Woman_, the honest lawyer was represented with his head
cut off. A very famous signboard, said to have been painted by Hogarth,
was _The Man loaded with Mischief_, in Oxford Street. The man was carrying
a woman, glass in hand, a magpie, and a monkey. Underneath was the rhyme:
“A monkey, a magpie, and a wife
Is the true emblem of strife.”
At Grantham, an eccentric lord of the manor about a century ago insisted
on having all the signs of public-houses on his estate painted with the
political colour which he favoured. Thus the town possessed, in 1830, the
following: _Blue Boat_, _Blue Sheep_, _Blue Bull_, _Blue Ram_, _Blue
Lion_, _Blue Bell_, _Blue Cow_, _Blue Boar_, _Blue Horse_, and _Blue Inn_.
By way of retaliation, a neighbouring landowner and political opponent
actually named one of his houses the _Blue Ass_. Grantham also can boast
of the original _Beehive Inn_ with the motto:
“Stop! Traveller, this wondrous sign explore,
And say when thou hast viewed it o’er,
Grantham, now, two rarities are thine,
A lofty steeple, and a living sign.”
On Gallows Tree Heath, near Reading, there stands a _Reformation Inn_,
somewhat grim and tantalizing in its greeting to the unfortunate wretches
who were led past it to execution, and had lost the opportunity to profit
by the advice. A cynical humour of the same description must have
suggested the _Half Brick_ for the sign of an inn at Worthing. It is said
that the aborigines of some towns in England invariably welcome a stranger
by “heaving half a brick at him.”
The original _Hole in the Wall_ is believed to have been either (1) a
highwayman’s retreat, such as the _Hole in the Wall_ in Chandos Street,
where Claude Duval was captured, or (2) an aperture made in the wall of a
debtor’s prison through which charitable people might offer gifts of money
or victuals to the unfortunate inmates. At the _Hole in the Wall_ in the
Borough there is a museum of curiosities worth a visit, and another under
the railway arches of Waterloo Station is a noted depot for Petersfield
ales, much frequented by railway men and various odd characters. There is
to this day a very suggestive hole in the wall at _Turpin’s Cave_, a
small inn near High Beech, Epping Forest. In this hole it is commonly
believed that the celebrated highwayman hid himself on many occasions when
hard pressed by the police. The story can very easily be believed by
anyone with a spark of imagination, for the inn lies in a secluded nook
which even to-day is not at all easy to find, in spite of a signboard
stuck up in the gorse bushes some little distance from the road. The hole
itself is a kind of arched ruin, bricked over, and might at a pinch have
held Black Bess and her famous rider.
[Illustration: Sign of Black’s Head, Ashbourne]
Almost gone are the heavy frames and beams which once stretched across the
highways and effectually proclaimed the name and style under which the
innkeeper carried on his business. On these beams a group of swans
disported in effigy before the _Four Swans_ at Waltham Cross. A fine
magpie dangled from the centre at Stonham, Suffolk, while elsewhere a fox
was represented crossing the beam and followed by a bevy of hounds. There
is still remaining such a beam, from the centre of which a bell is
suspended outside the _Bell_ at Edenbridge. Another is still in use at
Ashbourne, Derbyshire, where the _Green Man and Black’s Head_, an old
Georgian posting house, announces its existence by a long beam stretched
across the street, supported at one end by a pole, the other end running
into the red brick wall of the building, immediately over the typical
archway leading to the inn yard. The black’s head is an effigy in carved
and painted wood, planted firmly in the centre of the beam and looking for
all the world as if it had only lately been cut off and put there to warn
other blacks of a similar awful fate, if ever they should chance to come
to Ashbourne. Under the head, suspended from the beam is a big framed
picture, and a small secondary beam on each side has recently been placed
to carry those two terribly modern words, “garage” and “petrol.” One can
fancy the old driver of the four-in-hand, could he come to life again,
scratching his head in perplexity over the hidden mysteries of these
literary innovations to the familiar sign. Ashbourne, it may be remarked
in passing, whilst perhaps not glorying in “one man one public-house,” is
certainly as close to that condition of things as any town in England. To
a stranger visiting Ashbourne in the middle of the week and feeling the
charm of its quiet old-world streets with but few people walking about, it
is a matter for wonder as to how all the licensed houses keep going. But
go there on market days and note the waggons and farmers’ carts standing
in rows outside every hostelry and the matter becomes much more easily
understood. Ashbourne, like one or two other towns of the North Derbyshire
and Staffordshire moors, has until quite recently been cut off from the
run of the country’s traffic, and is still a market centre for a very
extensive agricultural district. Within the last year or two a road motor
service has placed it in rapid and frequent communication with the county
town, so that this comparative isolation is likely to last very little
longer.
The _White Hart_ at Scole, in Norfolk, once had the most expensive and
elaborate sign of this character ever produced. High above the road it
stretched, on one side attached to the house, and resting on a brick pier
at the opposite end across the way. In the centre was a noble White Hart,
carved in a stately wreath, while on each side were no less than
twenty-four allegorical figures in compartments. The whole was designed by
John Fairchild, in 1655, and cost £1,057. An engraving was published by
Martin in 1740. By the way, this inn also possessed “a very large round
bed big enough to hold fifteen or twenty couples in imitation of the
great bed at Ware.”
[Illustration: Sign of White Hart, Witham]
Of existing signs, the most remarkable is the _Red Lion_ of Martlesham
outside an inn which is itself both old and curious. This monster, a
byword all over Suffolk, was probably at one time the figure-head of a
ship, and local tradition ascribes it to one of the Dutch warships
destroyed in the battle of Sole Bay, fought off Southwold in 1672. Outside
the _Bear_ at Wantage stands a lifelike carved bear on a high pedestal; at
the _Bear_ at Chelsham, in Surrey, a large white bear lurks amongst the
shrubs of the front garden in a way very startling to timid passers-by,
especially at dusk. The _Swan_ at Great Shefford, in Bucks, has a most
effective sign, in the form of a large vane representing a swan; while the
_White Horse_ at Ipswich, as in Mr. Pickwick’s time, “is rendered the more
conspicuous by a stone statue of some rapacious animal with flowing mane
and tail distantly resembling an insane cart-horse, which is elevated
above the principal door.”
The disused _Sun Inn_ at Saffron Walden, built about 1625, has for its
sign a noble piece of plaster work in the tympanum representing the Sun
supported by two giants. A curious old piece of carving which displays a
white swan chained to a tree flanked by the arms of England and France
forms the sign of the _Swan Inn_ at Clare, and probably is intended to
commemorate some triumph of the House of Clarence over the Lancastrians.
Another beautiful little inn, now disused and sadly neglected, the _Angel_
at Theale, has angel heads introduced over each of its dainty oriels.
[Illustration: Angel Inn, Theale]
Many of the _White Hart_ inns retain painted signboards of quite passable
quality. At Chelmsford, the animal is carved and rests on a projecting
bracket. More prominent, though not conceived in a very artistic spirit,
is the _White Hart_ at Witham, cut out and painted on a huge piece of
sheet copper. This is widely known as the most conspicuous and telling
sign on the road from London to Ipswich.
The _White Hart_ in the Borough, now converted into a club in honour of
Sam Weller, possessed anciently the largest signboard in London. Perhaps
this is why Jack Cade selected it in 1450 for his headquarters. Of
existing signboards the most elaborate is the _Five Alls_ at Marlborough,
once a very common subject for the tavern picture. The first compartment
portrays the Queen with the label, “I rule all.” In the second is a
Bishop, “I pray for all.” Next comes a lawyer, “I plead for all,” followed
by a truculent soldier, “I fight for all.” The last figure is the
taxpayer, “I pay for all.” Some facetious innkeepers added a sixth, the
Devil with the motto, “I take all!” This sign with local modifications is
not unknown outside the drinking shops in Holland, and, according to
Larbert, a characteristic example may be seen swinging under the blue sky
in the sunny street of Valetta in Malta. The largest sign we have ever
come across is the tile painting on the front of the _Kentish Drovers_ in
the old Kent Road.
But the number of these quaint and comical signs is diminishing every
year. The innkeeper plies his trade under more difficult conditions and is
glad to accept the tempting cash offers made to him by collectors. In
place of the old carved figures or painting, last survival of the days
when every building in a town was distinguished by some badge or device,
the name of a public-house now generally appears written in gilt letters
on the signboard. Even this is frequently lost amid the flaring
advertisements of the brewer, and of the various brands of whiskey
retailed in the establishment. In fact, the frequenters of such a house of
entertainment, especially in the London district, are sometimes ignorant
of its ancient designation, and refer to it either by the name of the
landlord, or of the wholesale dealer, “Mooney’s” or “Guests,” for whose
business it serves as a local branch.
Landlords of inns near London are not usually very original in their views
of life, and rarely advertise any spark of humour. Perhaps they take
their duties to the public too seriously. Occasionally, however, one comes
across evidence that the keeper of an inn is sufficiently detached in mind
as to admit within the walls of his house of business a jest or two in
print. These are usually framed and hung up in the bar, and as they have
never been seen quite new, but are frequently fly-blown and yellow with
age, it would seem to follow that the race of facetious landlords has come
to an end. In the _Duke of Wellington Inn_, near High Beech, Epping
Forest, the following rules hang in the bar. They are probably from their
phraseology American in origin, and the second was evidently designed as a
sarcastic if not effectual check upon manners and customs in business
houses of the States.
NOTICE
1. A man is kept engaged in the yard to do all the CURSING and
SWEARING at this establishment.
2. A Dog is kept to do all the BARKING.
3. Our Potman or “Chucker Out” has won seventy-five prizes, and is an
excellent shot with a Revolver.
4. The UNDERTAKER calls every morning FOR ORDERS.
5. The Lord helps those who help themselves; but the Lord help those
that are caught helping themselves here.
This notice hangs in an old frame over the door. On an adjoining wall is
the following:
OFFICE RULES
1. Gentlemen upon entering will leave the door open or apologise.
2. Those having no business should remain as long as possible, take a
chair and lean against the wall; it will preserve the wall and prevent
it falling upon us.
3. Gentlemen are requested to smoke, especially during office hours;
tobacco and segars of the finest brands will be supplied gratis.
4. Spit on the floor, as the spittoons are only for ornaments.
5. TALK LOUD or WHISTLE, especially when we are engaged. If this has
not the desired effect, SING.
6. If we are in business conversation with anyone, gentlemen are
requested not to wait until we are disengaged, but join us, as we are
particularly fond of speaking to half a dozen or more at one time.
7. Profane language is expected at all times, especially if ladies are
present.
8. Put your feet on the table, or lean against the desk. It will be of
great assistance to those who are writing.
9. Persons having no business to transact will call often or excuse
themselves.
10. Should anyone desire to borrow money do not fail to ask for it, as
we do not require it for business purposes, but merely for the sake of
lending.
We copied the following from a placard either in the _Windmill_ at
Hollingbourne, or the _Ten Bells_ at Leeds, in Kent:
GOOD ADVICE
Call Frequently,
Drink Moderately,
Pay Honourably,
Be Good Company,
Part Friendly,
Go Home Quietly.
Let these lines be no man’s sorrow, pay to-day and trust to-morrow.
In the _General Wolfe_ at Westerham:
THE LANDLORD’S PUZZLE
More Shall Trust
Score I Sent
for what I
my And Have
Do Beer If
Pay Clerk Brewers
I May So
Must Their My
And at Groombridge:
My ale is good, my measure just,
And yet--my friends, I cannot trust.