Old Country Inns of England

by Henry Parr Maskell; Edward W. Gregory

Of all the devotional pilgrimages none could stand in comparison with Our Lady of Walsingham. It may be regarded as illustrative of the English character that this shrine grew into notoriety, without any startling miracle, from simple and homely beginnings. A pious Norfolk lady caused a little wooden house to be built in imitation of the Holy House at Nazareth and invited her neighbours to join with her there in meditation on the mystery of the Immaculate Conception. With time and a great concourse of pilgrims came an elaboration of legend and a variety of foreign accessories, maybe exaggerated in the half satirical description given by Erasmus. But when the true unvarnished story of Walsingham comes to be written it will show that to the very end a degree of sober good sense controlled the authorities there.

In the fourteenth century pilgrimages had become the fashion for all classes. With kings and nobles they were a ceremonial duty. The sick man went to regain his health and discovered it, maybe, on the breezy heath or sunny downs long before he reached the Shrine. The simple devout soul, no doubt, found in the restful minster the religious consolation he came in search of. More worldly people enjoyed an inexpensive holiday. Merchants went on pilgrimages to avoid their creditors. During their absence an uncomfortable “slump” in business could be tided over. Chaucer half conveys a sly suggestion that this was the motive underlying the presence of the merchant in the “Canterbury Tales”:

“There wiste no wight that he was in debt.”

Workmen weary of a thankless task found a pretext in a pilgrimage for going off on the quest of a new master. An idle apprentice had an excuse ready at hand for exchanging the dull city workshop for a week in the Kentish orchards. A villein might succeed in reaching some distant town where he could live unbeknown by his lord for the necessary year and a day which meant permanent freedom. Statutes were passed over and over again to restrain these abuses, but they were all evaded. The pilgrimage was an institution hallowed from time immemorial, and none could gainsay the right of every Christian man to take in hand his scrip and staff.

Imagine the motley procession almost ceaseless from morn till eve on the Roman roads to the North through St. Albans, Eastward to Canterbury, or Westward by Reading or Salisbury towards the favoured resort. Ladies of rank in their horse-litters or rich tapestried carriages; peasants in their springless two-wheeled dog-carts. Then a company of middle-class people on horseback, all of them, men and women alike, well able to manage their steeds. The very poor travelled on foot, and many better class trod barefoot some portion of the Walsingham green way as a penitential exercise. Lame, halt and blind negotiated their journey as best they could. The pilgrim roads were fairly good; Watling Street ran almost straight as an arrow as it was set out by the Roman engineers from Deptford to Canterbury. All roads were said to lead to Walsingham, and that through Ware and Newmarket, if not Roman, was nearly as direct. Pilgrims on horseback from the West of England might utilize the so-called “Pilgrims’ Way” to Canterbury, but by the fourteenth century the Kentish portion had been broken up into a series of feeders to the Watling Street. A similar bridle path ran from Newmarket towards Fakenham on the Walsingham route.

When night fell these wayfarers would tax all available resources for their shelter and sustenance. At the manor-house they were very unwelcome; the lord had good cause to detest the idea of poor people going on pilgrimage. The monastery could only receive a small proportion. Many needed nursing as well as rest. And so a special form of lodging-house—half inn, half charitable institution had to be devised. The great Hospice at Jerusalem, which provided for fully a thousand visitors at one time, was regarded as the model, but the idea is much older. At Cebrero, in Northern Spain, there is a Hospicio Real, founded in 836 by King Alphonso II, for pilgrims crossing the pass of Piedrafita on the way from Segovia to St. James of Compostella. St. John’s Hospital at Winchester claims to have been originally founded by St. Brinstan about the year 930 for sick and poor pilgrims to St. Swithin.

For the Canterbury pilgrims there were many of these hospices. That at Rochester, a private benefaction, we have already mentioned. The George Inn, which still can show a fine Early English crypt, may also be described as a pilgrims’ inn, though, perhaps, like that at St. Albans, for the better class of people. There was a pilgrims’ resting house at Bapchild, near Sittingbourne. Ospringe, near Faversham, takes its name not from the spring which used to babble so pleasantly along the water lane, but from the great hospice founded by Henry III. By a similar “derangement of epitaphs” the hospice at Colnbrook has developed into the Ostrich Inn. A considerable portion of the hospice at Ospringe survives to this day in half-timbered buildings around the Crown Inn, and the chapel is said to form the foundations of the Ship Inn on the opposite side of the road. It is more likely that this inn stands on the site of the separate establishment provided for lepers. This hospice must have been of great extent and provided accommodation for rich and poor alike. A master and three regular brethren of the Order of the Holy Cross were to superintend the work of hospitality and nursing. Owing to an outbreak of the plague in the reign of Edward IV the brethren forsook the place in a panic and died without taking care to choose their successors. The property escheated to the Crown; hence the presence of the Crown Inn.

Canterbury abounded in hospices of various kinds, some specially reserved for the poorer clergy. The fourteenth century façade and vaulted lower storey of one of these still survives in the High Street. Originally established by St. Thomas himself, it was rebuilt by Archbishop Stratford, whose regulations provided that every pilgrim in health should have one night’s lodging to the cost of fourpence (about five shillings in modern money); the weak and infirm were to be preferred to the hale, and women upwards of forty years were to attend to the bedding and administer medicaments to the sick.

At Maidstone, there was a large hospice for pilgrims travelling to Canterbury by Malling and Charing. St. Peter’s Church was formerly the Chapel of this institution. At Reading the hospice was founded by Abbot Hugh about 1180 and dedicated to St. John the Baptist. A sisterhood of eight widows ministered to the wants of the pilgrims. We may mention also the hospitals of St. Giles and St. Ethelbert at Hereford, both of very ancient date. At the latter alms were distributed to a hundred poor people daily.

Under the sign of the George Inn we can often detect the successor to a pilgrims’ hostel dedicated to St. George of the Dragon. The George, at Glastonbury, the very finest existing example of an inn built in stone during the Perpendicular period, was founded by Abbot Selwood in 1489, and provided board and lodging to pilgrims free of charge for two days. The George at St. Albans, is more suggestive in its present state of a cosy well-ordered coaching inn of the Georgian period, with nothing visible of antiquity except its panelled staircase and beautiful old furniture. But its records carry us back to 1401, and in 1448 it received a licence from the Abbot for the celebration of low mass in the private chapel on account of the many noble and worthy personages who resorted thither when on pilgrimage to the Cathedral. At another George and Dragon hospice at Wymondham, the Saint has succumbed to the reptile, and the Green Dragon presides alone on the signboard.