YARD OF “THE GEORGE,” HUNTINGDON.
Interesting in a less rural—and indeed a very urban way—is the “Cock” inn, at Stony Stratford, on the Holyhead Road, with its fine red brick frontage to the busy high road, its imposing wrought-iron sign, and, in especial, its noble late seventeenth-century ornately carved and highly enriched oak doorway, brought, it would appear, from the neighbouring mansion of Battlesden Park. As may be gathered from the illustration, this exquisite work of art very closely resembles, in general character, the carved interior doorways of Wren’s City of London churches, often ascribed to Grinling Gibbons.
In this posy of old hostelries we must at least mention that fine old anglers’ inn, the “Three Cocks” in Breconshire, which, like the “Craven Arms,” between Ludlow and Church Stretton, and those more familiar and vulgar examples in London, the “Bricklayers’ Arms” and the “Elephant and Castle,” has conferred its name upon a railway-station. And mention must be made of the cosy, white-faced “Wellington,” at Broadstairs, occupying a kind of midway place between the old coaching inn and the modern huge barrack hotel, and, with its lawn looking upon the sea and the beach, select and quiet in the very midst of the summer crowds of that miniature holiday resort.
In any competition as to which old inn had the ugliest frontage, the “Red Horse” at Stratford-on-Avon, and the “George” at Huntingdon would probably tie for first place; but the courtyard of the “George” makes amends, and is one of the finest anywhere in existence, as the illustration serves to show.
A fine old house, with a still finer old sign, is that old coaching hostelry, the “Bell,” at Stilton, formerly one of the largest and most important of the many great and indispensable inns that once ministered to the needs of travellers along the Great North Road. The “Bell” was the original inn of Stilton, and the “Angel,” opposite, is a mere modern upstart of Queen Anne’s time. Queen Anne is a monarch of yesterday when you think of the old “Bell”; which is, indeed, older than it looks, for, prying closely into the architecture of its golden, yellow-brown structure of sandstone, it will be seen that the house is really a Late Gothic building distressingly modernised. Modernised, that is to say, in a very necessary reservation, considerably over a century ago. That is the last note of modernity at the “Bell.” The windows, it will be noticed, were once all stone-mullioned, and portions of the ancient stonework not cut away to receive commonplace Georgian wooden sashes, are still distinctly visible. Looking at the competitive “Angel” opposite, now and for long since, like the “Bell” itself, sadly reduced in circumstances since that era of mail- and stage-coaching and expensive posting in chaise and four, you perceive at once the reason for that alteration in the “Bell.” It was an effort to become, as an auctioneer might say, “replete with every modern convenience.”
THE “BELL,” STILTON.