[#] This chapter is based on ancient and modern histories of London; on works treating of special localities; on essays in periodical publications; on the Transactions of Antiquarian and other Societies, and as it is not a product of imagination, but of research, nothing new to the student, but a great deal new to the general reader, may be expected; though the stones are old, the house is new.
London abounded in taverns. A folio volume might be filled with accounts of the more important of them, but as we have only a limited number of pages at our command, we shall confine ourselves to the description of one peculiarly characteristic sort of them, namely, the taverns with galleried courtyards, and, in consequence of their great number, our notice of each will have to be brief.
These old taverns, very few of which are now left standing, formed, architecturally, squares, the buildings surrounding a yard, furnished on three sides with outer galleries to the floors above; and the reason why this form of construction was adopted was because then the yards were rendered suitable for theatrical representations, which, before the erection of regular theatres, were usually given in inn-yards. Access to these yards was obtained either through the part of the tavern facing the street, or through the gateway, through which coaches, carts and waggons entered the yard. The stage was erected, in a primitive and temporary manner, behind the front portion of the square, and faced the galleries at the back and sides of it. The yard itself then formed the pit, and the galleries the boxes of the theatre. A yard so surrounded by galleries, with their banisters or open panels, often of elegant design, looked very picturesque; but did this style of construction contribute to the comfort of the guests? Scarcely. The ground-floors of the inn-buildings, on the level of the yard, were given up to stables, coach-houses, store-rooms, etc. Access to the galleries was obtained by staircases, often steep, twisted and narrow; along the galleries were the bedrooms, the doors, and frequently the windows, of which opened on to them, and there were no other means of reaching these rooms. Now, consider that these galleries were open, exposed to all the changes of the weather, to wind, rain, hail, sleet and snow, which must have been very trying, especially at night, when the bedrooms had to be entered by the light of a candle, difficult to keep burning, whilst the wind was driving rain or snow into the gallery. Remember also that the roughly paved yard and the stables surrounding it were full of noises, not only during the day, but all the night through. There were the horses kicking, coaches and waggons constantly coming in through the gateway, or going out, stablemen, coachmen, carters shouting, horses being harnessed to carts, and other vehicles starting early in the morning on their journeys, and the rest of the sleepers in the bedrooms along the galleries must have been sadly interfered with. Nor can the smell arising from the stables and from the manure heap, all confined within the well formed by the surrounding buildings, have added to the comfort of the guests staying at the inn. As the bar of the inn frequently was in the yard, the noises made by its visitors, and the quarrels they occasionally indulged in, and which often would be settled by a fight in the yard, were not calculated to promote sound sleep. But our ancestors were not so particular in these matters; even aristocratic quarters of London were given up to dirt and rowdyism. In St. James's Square offal, cinders, dead cats and dogs were shot under the very windows of the gilded saloons in which the first magnates of the land—Norfolks, Ormonds, Kents and Pembrokes—gave banquets and balls. Lord Macaulay quotes the condition of Lincoln's Inn Fields as a striking example of the indifference felt by the most polite and splendid members of society in a former age to what would now be deemed the common decencies of life. But the poorest cottage and the meanest galleried inn-yard look well in a picture. Be glad that you have not to live in either. But a few generations ago, as we have pointed out, tastes and habits were different, and even now there are old fogeys so wedded to ancient customs that they still patronize the dark boxes yet found in some antiquated taverns, which afford room for four or six customers, who have to sit upright against the perpendicular backs of the boxes, lest they slide off the twelve-inch-wide shelves on which they have to perch and disappear under the table. Strange were the customs of the days referred to. The people seemed to live in taverns, physicians met their patients and apothecaries there, lawyers their clients, business men their customers, people of fashion their acquaintances. 'Even men of fortune,' says Macaulay, 'who might in their own mansions have enjoyed every luxury, were often in the habit of passing their evenings in the parlour of some neighbouring house of public entertainment,' in the company of ill-bred, loud talking, roisterous and spittoon-patronizing smokers. Johnson declared that the tavern chair was the throne of human felicity. To him it was, because there he found his toadies, whom he could bully to his heart's content. But the man who could say
'My mind to me a kingdom is'
did not care to sit on such a throne.
But we have insensibly strayed into side-openings; let us return to the main avenue of galleried taverns. We shall have to mention so many, that we see no better means of preventing our getting confused and losing our way altogether than to arrange them alphabetically according to the signs they were known by.
The first inn thus on our list is the Angel, at Islington. Its establishment dates back two hundred years. Originally it presented the usual features of a large country inn, having a long front, with an overhanging tiled roof; the principal entrance was beneath a projection, which extended along a portion of the front, and had a wooden gallery at top. The inn-yard, approached by a gateway in the centre, was nearly a quadrangle, having double galleries supported by plain columns and carved pilasters, with caryatides and other figures. This courtyard, as it was more than a hundred years, was preserved by Hogarth in his print of a 'Stage Coach.' There is also a view of it in Pinks's 'History of Clerkenwell.' In olden days the inn was a great halting-place for travellers from London, and from the northern and western counties. On the King's birthday the royal mail coaches used to meet there, as shown in an engraving of 1812, in the Crace collection in the British Museum. In 1819 the old house was pulled down, and the present ordinary-looking building erected in its stead, a grand opportunity, afforded by its commanding position, ninety-nine feet above the Trinity high water-mark, at the meeting of so many important roads, being thus stupidly lost.
There was another Angel inn, in St. Clement's, Strand, 'behind St. Clement Kirk.' To this also was attached a galleried yard, but, according to the woodcut in Diprose's 'St. Clement Danes,' there were galleries to the first and second floors on one side of the yard only. And from this house also seven or eight mail-coaches were despatched nightly, and from here also the royal mails used to start on the King's birthday for the West of England. Concerning the public conveyances of those days, the following curious announcement reads amusing: 'On Monday the 5th April, 1762, will set out from the Angel Inn, behind St. Clement's Church, a neat flying machine, carrying four passengers, on steel springs, and sets out at four o'clock in the morning and goes to Salisbury the same evening, and returns from Salisbury the next morning at the same hour; and will continue going from London every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, and return every Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday. Performed by the proprietors of the stage coach, Thomas Massey, Anthony Coack. Each passenger to pay twenty-three shillings for their fare, and to be allowed fourteen pounds' weight baggage; all above to pay for one penny a pound. Outside passengers and children in lap to pay half fare. N.B.—The masters of the machine will not be accountable for plate, watches, money, jewels, bank-notes, or writings, unless booked as such, and paid for accordingly.' Why the proprietors should have called their coach a 'machine' is a riddle, and as it took a whole day, from four in the morning till the evening, to get over the eighty-four miles between London and Salisbury, its rate of progress could hardly be called a 'flying' one.
The Angel inn was of very ancient origin, being mentioned in a correspondence dated 1503. In the Public Advertiser of March 28, 1769, appeared the following advertisement: 'To be sold a Black Girl, the property of J.B., eleven years of age, who is extremely handy, works at her needle tolerably, and speaks English perfectly well; is of an excellent temper and willing disposition. Inquire of Mr. Owen, at the Angel Inn, behind St. Clement's Church.' The inn was closed in 1853, the freehold fetching £6,800, and on its site the legal chambers known as Danes Inn were erected.
In Philip Lane, London Wall, anciently stood the Ape, an inn with a galleried yard; all that now remains of this ancient hostelry is a stone carving of a monkey squatted on its haunches and eating an apple; under it is the date 1670 and the initial B. It is fixed on the house numbered 14. The courtyard, where the coaches and waggons used to arrive and depart, is now an open space, round which houses are built. A view of the Ape and Cock taverns as they appeared in 1851 is in the Crace collection.