Two modern artistic signs in Cheshire owe their existence to a lady. These are the effective pictures of the “Smoker” inn at Plumbley and the “Windmill,” Tabley. They are from the brush of Miss Leighton, a niece of the late Lord de Tabley. The “Smoker” by no means indicates a place devoted with more than usual thoroughness to smoking, but is named after a once-famous race-horse belonging to the family in the early years of the nineteenth century. On one side of the sign is a portrait of the horse, the reverse displaying the arms of the De Tableys, supported by two ferocious-looking cockatrices.
The sign of the “Windmill” explains itself: it is Don Quixote, tilting at one of his imaginary enemies.
THE “FERRY” INN, ROSNEATH.
In 1897 the Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll, designed and painted a pictorial sign for the “Ferry” inn at Rosneath. It is only remarkable as being the work of a Royal Princess. The three-masted ancient ship, or galleon, is the heraldic charge known as a “lymphad,” borne by many Scottish families, among them the Campbells, Dukes of Argyll.
Some three years later Mr. Walter Crane enriched the little Hampshire village of Grayshott with a pictorial sign for the “Fox and Pelican,” a converted inn conducted on the principles of one of the feather-brained nostrums of the age.
THE “FERRY” INN, ROSNEATH.
The name of the house commemorates Fox, the great Bishop of Winchester, whose device was “A Pelican in her Piety.” It represents a pelican guarding a nest of three young birds, and feeding them with blood from her breast. The device is painted on one side of the board, and the name of the house is inscribed on a scroll on the other.
