Just as most cathedrals, and many ancient churches, are in these days unconsciously looked upon by antiquaries rather as museums than as places of worship, so many ancient inns attract the tourist and the artist less as places for rest and refreshment than subjects for the pencil, the brush, or the camera; or as houses where relics, curious or beautiful, remain, of bygone people, or other times. Happy the traveller, with a warm corner in his heart for such things, who comes at the close of day to a house historic or well stored with such links that connect us with the past.
There are, indeed, even in these days, when many a house has been ransacked of its interesting features, to furnish museums and private collections, still a goodly number of inns containing curious relics, old panelling, and ancient furniture. Still, for example, at the “Green Dragon,” Combe St. Nicholas, two miles from Chard, the fifteenth-century carved oak settle of pronounced ecclesiastical character remains in the tap-room, and beery rustics continue to this day to use it, even as did their remote ancestors, the Colin Clouts of over four hundred years ago; while at Ipswich, in the “Neptune” inn that was once a private mansion before it entered public life, the fine Tudor dresser, or sideboard, with elaborately carved Renaissance canopy and “linen-fold” panelling, is yet left, despite the persuasions and the long purses of would-be purchasers.
There are two evil fates constantly threatening the artistic work of our forbears: the one the unappreciative neglect that threatens its very existence, and the other the appreciation that, only too appreciative, tears it from its accustomed place, to be the apple of some collector’s jealous eye. To filch from old inn or manor-house, down on its luck, the carved overmantels or panelling built into the place is as mean and despicable a thing as to sneak the coppers out of a blind beggar’s tin mug—nay, almost as sacrilegious as to purloin the contents of the offertory-bag; but it is not commonly so regarded. For example, the “Tankard” tavern at Ipswich, once the town mansion of no less a person than Sir Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Guard to Henry the Eighth, possessed a grandly panelled room with a highly elaborate chimney-piece representing the Judgment of Paris; but in 1843 the whole was taken down and re-erected at the country house of the Cobbolds.
Still, fortunately, at the “Trevelyan Arms,” Barnstaple, the fine old plaster fireplace remains, together with a good example at the “Three Tuns,” Bideford; while doubtless numerous other instances will be borne in mind by readers of these pages.
A “FENNY POPPER.”
We deal, however, more largely here with relics of a more easily removable kind, such, for example, as those odd pieces of miniature ordnance, the “Fenny Poppers,” formerly kept at the “Bull,” Fenny Stratford, but now withdrawn within the last year from active service, to be found reclining, in company with the churchyard grass-mower and a gas-meter, in a cupboard within the tower of the church. The “Fenny Poppers,” six in number, closely resemble in size and shape so many old-fashioned jugs or tankards. They are of cast-iron, about ten inches in length, and furnished with handles, and were presented to the town of Fenny Stratford in 1726 by Browne Willis, a once-noted antiquary, who rebuilt the church and dedicated it to St. Martin, in memory of his father, who was born in St. Martin’s Lane and died on St. Martin’s Day. These “cannon” were to be fired annually on that day, and to be followed by morning service in the church and evening festivities at the “Bull”—a custom still duly honoured, with the difference that this ancient park of artillery has recently been replaced by two small cannon, kept at the vicarage.
THE “BELL,” WOODBRIDGE.