THE "COCK," THWAITE.
Stoke Ash, or "Aish," as Suffolkers pronounce it, like many another village, makes no sign from the road. Its church tower seen to the right, dimly, amid a hilltop screen of trees, a square, box-like red-brick chapel by the way, and that pretty inn, "Stoke White Horse," are the only other evidences of its being. The remaining six miles to the Norfolk border lead through Yaxley and Brome: Yaxley, where a branch railway runs under the road, on its way to Eye, and narrowly misses the old church: Brome, where the "Swan" stands for all the village to those who look to neither side of the road; church and houses skulking down a by-road on the way to Hoxne. There, down that pretty road, where the thatched cottages nestle under tall trees and the blue wood-smoke from rustic hearths curls upwards into the boughs and makes the sparrows cough and sneeze—there is the Rectory, approached in lordly fashion past a fine brick entrance and exquisite avenue, and, at a little greater distance the old black flint, round-towered church, restored and titivated out of all antiquity of tone: the stone sand-papered, and the flints polished with a handkerchief. The only thing missing—and, under the circumstances, it is missed—is a glass case, so that no damp, nor lichen, nor any effects of weather may come to spoil the housewifely neatness.
It was along this road to Hoxne that those who sought the revered head of St Edmund, King and Martyr, in the miraculous legend, were led to it by the voice calling, "Here, here, here;" at length finding the sainted relic in charge of a wolf, who allowed it to be taken from between his paws. But the voice thus calling was probably a much less supernatural manifestation, and was doubtless the hooting of owls in the woods. They still mock the belated traveller, only, to ears untuned to the miraculous, they simply seem to ask, "Who, who, who?" Ingenuity, however, vainly seeks the basis in nature of the wolf incident.
XXXIV
Now, crossing the River Waveney, winding with tree-fringed banks through a flat country, the road enters Norfolk at Scole. Coming over the little bridge, the village is seen huddled together on either side of a narrow rising road; village and church alike wholly dominated by a great building of mellow red brick whose panelled chimney-stacks and long row of beautiful gables give the impression of an historic mansion having by some strange chance been taken from its park and set down beside the highway. This, however, was at no time a private residence, but was built as an inn; and an inn it remains, after the passing of nearly two centuries and a half. Scole, or "Schoale," as the name was often spelled in old times (when, indeed, the village was not called by its alias of Osmundeston), was by reason of this inn quite a celebrated place in the days of long ago. Every traveller in Eastern England had then either seen or heard of "Scole White Hart" and its famous sign that stretched completely across the road, and as a great many coaches halted here for changing teams, passengers had plenty of time for examining what Sir Thomas Browne thought to be "the noblest sighne-post in England." Both house and sign were built in 1655, for James Peck, described as a "Norwich merchant," whose initials, together with the date, are yet to be seen on the centre gable. The elaborate sign alone cost £1057. It was of gigantic size and loaded with twenty-five carved figures of classic deities and others. Chaste Diana, with bow and arrow and two hounds, had a place on the cross-beam, in company with Time in the act of devouring an infant, Actæon and his dogs, a huntsman, and a White Hart couchant. On a pediment above the White Hart, supported by Justice and Temperance, was the effigy of an astronomer "seated on a Circumferenter," who by "some Chymical Preparation is so Affected that in fine Weather He faces the North and against bad Weather He faces that Quarter from whence it is about to come." On either side of the dizzy height occupied by the astronomer were figures of Fortitude and Prudence, a position suitable enough for the first-named of those two virtues, but certainly too perilous for the last.
Further suggestions of Olympus, with references to Hades and Biblical history, adorned the other portions of this extraordinary work. Cerberus clawed one side of the supporting post, while Charon dragged a witch to Hell on the other; and Neptune bestriding a dolphin, and Bacchic figures seated across casks alternated with the arms of twelve East Anglian noble and landed families. Two angels supported respectively the arms of Mr Peck and his lady and two lions those of Norwich and Yarmouth. On the side nearest the inn appeared a huge carving of Jonah coming out of the whale's mouth, while, suspended in mid-air, and surrounded by a wreath, was another White Hart.
Although, as we have seen, Sir Thomas Browne was impressed with this work, an early nineteenth-century tourist (so early indeed as 1801) curtly dismisses it as "a pompous sign, with ridiculous ornaments," and shortly after that it seems to have been taken down, for the reason that it cost the landlord more to keep it in repair than the trade of the house permitted. Together with this, the once celebrated Great Bed of the White Hart has also disappeared. It was a round bed capable of holding twenty couples, and was therefore a good deal larger than the famous Great Bed of Ware. Perhaps it was because guests did not relish this co-operative method of seeking repose, or maybe because sheets, blankets and coverlets of sufficient size were unobtainable, that the Scole Great Bed was chopped up for firewood; but did anyone ever suppose beds of this wholesale capacity would be desirable?
The accompanying old view of the gigantic sign shows one of the peculiar basket coaches of the second half of the eighteenth century, on its way to London.
THE OLD SIGN OF SCOLE WHITE HART.