How far one of the old-fashioned hay and straw weighing-machines, once common in East Anglia, but now growing scarce, may be reckoned a curiosity must be left to individual taste and fancy; but there can be no difference of opinion as to the picturesque nature of these antique contrivances. The example illustrated here gives an additionally pictorial quality to the “Bell” inn and to the view down the long street at Woodbridge. Cartloads of hay and straw, driven under these machines, were lifted bodily by means of the chains attached to them, and weighed by means of the lever with the sliding weight, seen projecting over the road. The innate artistry of the old craftsmen in wrought-iron is noticeable even here, in this business-like contrivance; for you see clearly how the man who wrought the projecting arm was not content to fashion it merely to a commonplace end, but must needs, to satisfy his own æsthetic feeling, finish it off with little quirks and twirls that still, coming boldly as they do against the sky-line, gladden the heart of the illustrator.
THE “RED LION,” MARTLESHAM.
There was, until recent years, a similar machine attached to the “King’s Head” inn, at the entrance to Great Yarmouth, and there still exists one at King’s Lynn and another at Soham.
A rustic East Anglian inn that is alike beautiful in itself and in its tree-enshrouded setting, is the “Red Lion,” Martlesham. It possesses the additional claim to notice of its red lion sign being no less interesting a relic than the figurehead of one of the Hollanders’ ships that took part in the battle of Sole Bay, fought between Dutch and English, March 28th, 1672, off Southwold. He is a lion of a semi-heraldic type supporting a shield, and maintained carefully in a vermilion post-office hue.
That well-known commercial hotel at Burton-on-Trent, styled nowadays the “Queen’s Hotel,” but formerly the “Three Queens,” from an earlier house on the site having been visited at different times by Queen Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Adelaide, still displays in its hall the cloak worn by the Queen of Scots’ coachman, probably during the time of her captivity at Tutbury Castle, near by. Why he should have left it behind is not stated; but as the garment—an Inverness cape of very thin material—is figured all over with the particularly vivid and variegated Stuart tartan—all scarlet, blue, and green—the conjecture may be hazarded that he was ashamed any longer to wear such a strikingly conspicuous article of attire in a country where it probably attracted the undesirable attentions of rude boys and other people who, most likely, took him for some mountebank, and wanted to know when the performance began.
“DEAN SWIFT’S CHAIR,” TOWCESTER.
The Holyhead Road, rich in memories of Dean Swift travelling to and from Ireland, has, in the “Talbot” inn at Towcester, a house associated with him. The “Talbot,” the property of the Sponne Charity since 1440, was sold about 1895 to a firm of brewers, and a chair, traditionally said to have been used by the Dean, was at the same time removed to the Town Hall, where, in the offices of the solicitor to the feoffees of the Charity, it remains. It will be observed that the chair was of a considerable age, even in Swift’s time. An ancient fragment of coloured glass, displaying the arms of William Sponne, remains in one of the windows of the “Talbot,” and on a pane of another may be seen scratched the words “Gilbert Gurney,” presumably the handiwork of Theodore Hook.
The “Bear,” at Esher, properly the “Black Bear,” is an old coaching- and posting-house. Still you see, on the parapet, the effigies of two bears, squatting on their rumps and stroking their stomachs in a manner strongly suggestive of repletion or indigestion. Sometimes the pilgrim of the roads finds them painted white, and on other occasions—in defiance of natural history—they have become pink; all according to the taste and fancy of the landlord for the time being. Whoever, that was not suffering from delirium tremens, saw such a thing as a pink bear?