[11] A large hotel was also built outside Slough Station, eighteen miles from Paddington, for weary and hungry travellers. Such were the quaint ideas of the early railway directors, who could not forget the necessities, the usages and customs of the coaching age, when inns at short stages were indispensable. The hotel at Slough was from the first a failure, and the building has long been an orphanage.
[12] Another landlord of the “Tabard”—William Rutter, represented East Grinstead in Parliament, 1529-1536.
[13] Vol. II., p. 348.
[14] For example, the Rev. Dr. Thackeray, late Chaplain of the Hackney Union, licensee and active publican of the “Fish and Eels” at Roydon.
[15] Cf. a lengthy description of the origin of the place-name “Shepherd’s Bush” in the West of London: The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road, vol. i. pp. 55-57. Also compare the still-existent “shepherd’s-bush” thorn-trees on West Winch Common, Norfolk.
[16] For further particulars respecting the “Bull,” see The Norwich Road, pp. 19-28, and Stage-coach and Mail in Days of Yore, vol. i., p. 324; vol. ii., pp. 227, 232-5, 343.
[17] A newer extension, built in recent years, makes a fourth.
[18] The Dickens Country. By F. G. Kitton, p. 167.
[19] Within the last few months the lower part of the house has been converted into a dairy, but the part described by Dickens remains unaltered.