CHAPTER XIV
INNS WITH ODD PRIVILEGES
Here and there, scattered in the byways of the country, rather than situated in towns, inns may be found that have some attribute out of the common, in the way of privileges conferred or usurped. Thus, the licence of the “White Hart” inn at Adwalton, near Drighlington, Yorkshire, has, or had, the unusual privilege of holding the charter for the local fair, granted by Queen Elizabeth in 1576 to John Brookes, the then landlord, who under that charter held the exclusive right to levy tolls and direct the entire conduct of the gathering.
This royal grant recalls a once-celebrated inn on a road in Derbyshire greatly travelled in the coaching age. In a now lonely position on that very bleak and elevated highway, the road between Ashbourne and Buxton, stands the inn known as “Newhaven House.” A haven of some sort was sorely wanted there in coaching days, and accordingly this great building was ordained by the Duke of Rutland, one of those two overawing noble landlords of the district, who had merely to say, in their off-hand manner, “Let it be done,” for almost anything to be done, forthwith.
It was in the flamboyant days of George the Fourth that the “Newhaven” inn arose, and his Majesty himself stayed one night “under its roof,” as the guide-books carefully say, lest perhaps we might suspect him of sleeping on the tiles. Those were the days when travelling Majesties still did picturesque things, more or less in the manner of the Caliphs in the Arabian Nights; and the great George, by some mysterious exercise of kingly prerogative, granted the house a perpetual licence, by way of signifying his content with the entertainment provided. That perpetual licence must once have been a very valuable asset of the Manners family, for the house was, in the merry days of the road, one of the best-appointed and most thriving posting and coaching establishments of the age; but in these times it is very quiet and very empty, save for the great Newhaven horse- and cattle-fairs, in spring and autumn, now the two red-letter days of the year for the once-busy hostelry.
From a perpetual licence to a licence for one day in every year is a curious extreme, afforded by the village of King’s Cliffe, Northants, where any householder, under the terms of a charter granted in the reign of King John, may, if he so pleases, on the day of the annual autumn fair, sell beer; provided that a branch of a tree is suspended over the doorway, after the manner of the “bush” anciently displayed by the ale-stakes.
Among London suburban inns demolished in recent times and rebuilt is the “White Hart,” on Hackney Marshes: that sometime desolate and remote place of footpads and swamps. To-day “Hackney Marshes” is merely a name. Little in the actual appearance of the place, unless it be in midst of some particularly mild and wet winter, suggests a marsh, and the broad level stretch of grass is, in fact, in process of becoming a conventional London park. Through the midst of the Marsh flows the river Lea, and the several “cuts” that have been at different times made for commercial purposes divide up the surrounding wastes with foul, canal-like reaches.
“NEWHAVEN” INN.
A very ancient cut indeed, and one now little better than a ditch, is that of the Temple stream, made for the purpose of the Temple Mills, so called from the manor having anciently belonged to the Knights Templars. The site of the mills is still pointed out by the “White Hart.” The old inn was said to have been built in 1514, and in after years was a reputed haunt of Dick Turpin, that phenomenally ubiquitous highwayman who, if all those legends were true, must have been no single person, but a syndicate, and a large one at that. The house, which bore no evidence of sixteenth-century antiquity on its whitewashed, brick-built face, was a favourite resort of holiday-making East Enders, and, with its long, white front and cheerful old red-tiled roof, seemed a natural part of the scenery, just as the still-extant “White House” or “Old Ferry House” inn, half a mile distant, does to this day. It was, however, wantonly rebuilt in 1900, and replaced by a dull, evil-looking public-house that looks very much down on its luck. The appearance of the old house suggested festivity in the open-air tea and watercresses style; the new is suggestive only of drinking across a bar.