| LIST of ILLUSTRATIONS |
| 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] |
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.