THE INGLE-NOOK, “CROWN” INN, CHIDDINGFOLD.
CHAPTER XIII
INNKEEPERS’ EPITAPHS
In the long, long pages of the large collections of curious epitaphs that have been printed from time to time, we find innkeepers celebrated, no less than those of other trades and professions. The irreverent wags who made light of all ills, and turned every calling into a jest had, it may well be supposed, a fine subject to their hands in the landlords of the village ale-houses.
To Richard Philpots (appropriate name!) of the “Bell” inn, Bell End, who died in 1766, we find an elaborate stone in the churchyard of Belbroughton, near Kidderminster, with these verses:
To tell a merry or a wonderous tale
Over a chearful glass of nappy Ale,
In harmless mirth, was his supreme delight,
To please his Guests or Friends by Day or Night;
But no fine tale, how well soever told,
Could make the tyrant Death his stroak withold;
That fatal Stroak has laid him here in dust,
To rise again once more with Joy, we trust.
On the upper portion of this Christian monument are carved, in high relief, a punch-bowl and a flagon: emblems, presumably, of those pots that Mr. Philpots delighted to fill. The inscription is fast becoming obliterated, but the fine old “Bell” inn stands as well as ever it did, on the coach-road between Stourbridge and Bromsgrove, with the sign of a bell hanging picturesquely from it.
Collectors of epitaphs are, however, a credulous and uncritical race, and are content to collect from irresponsible sources. All is fish that comes to their net, and, so only the thing be in some way unusual, it finds a place in their note-books, without their having taken the trouble to search on the spot and verify. Thus, at Upton-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, is supposed to be the following: