THE “FOUR SWANS,” WALTHAM CROSS.
The “Greyhound” at Croydon owned a similar sign until 1890, when, on the High Street being widened and the house itself rebuilt, it was disestablished, the square foot of ground on which the supporting post stood, on the opposite side of the street, costing the Improvements Committee £350, in purchase of freehold and in compensation to the proprietor of the “Greyhound,” for loss of advertisement.
At Little Stonham, on the Norwich Road, the sign of the “Pie”[5]—i.e. the Magpie—spans the road, while at Waltham Cross, on the way to Cambridge, that queer, rambling old coaching inn, the “Four Swans,” still keeps its sign, whereon the four swans themselves, in silhouette against the sky, form a very striking picture, in conjunction with the old Eleanor Cross standing at the cross-roads.
An equally effective sign is that of the rustic little “Fox and Hounds” inn at Barley, where the hunt, consisting of the fox, five hounds and two huntsmen, is shown crossing the beam, the fox about to enter a little kennel-like contrivance in the thatched roof.
THE “FOX AND HOUNDS,” BARLEY.
One of the most prominent and familiar of gallows signs is that of the great, ducal-looking “George” Hotel at Stamford, on the Great North Road. It spans the famous highway, and is the sole advertisement of any description the house permits itself. There is nothing to inform the wayfarer what brewer’s “Fine Ales and Stouts” are dispensed within, nor what distiller’s or wine-merchant’s wines and spirits; and were it not for that sign, I declare you would take the “George” to be the ducal mansion already suggested, or, if not that, a bank at the very least of it. There is an awful, and an almost uncanny, dignity about the “George” that makes you feel it is very kind and condescending to allow you to enter Stamford at all. I have seen dusty and tired, but still hilarious, cyclists come into Stamford from the direction of London and, seeing the “George” at the very front door of the town, they have instantly felt themselves to be worms. Their instant thought is to disappear down the first drain-opening; but, finding that impossible, they have crept by, abashed, only hoping, like Paul Pry, they “don’t intrude.” Even the haughty (and dusty) occupants of six-cylindered, two-thousand-guinea motor-cars with weird foreign names, begin to look reverent when they draw up to the frontage. The “George,” in short, is to all other inns what the Athenæum Club is to other clubs. I should not be surprised if it were incumbent upon visitors entering those austere portals to remove their foot-gear, as customary in mosques, nor would it astonish to hear that the head waiter was the performer of awful rites, the chambermaids priestesses, and to stay in the house itself a sacrament.
THE “GEORGE,” STAMFORD.