Bricklayers’ Arms, Caxton
It was anciently the custom for workmen to be paid at the nearest inn, and out of this, during the bad period at the beginning of the nineteenth century grew a very serious abuse. Those to whom was entrusted the duty of engaging and paying various forms of precarious and unskilled labour, such as coal whippers and porters, found it profitable to become owners of public-houses where the unfortunate men were kept waiting for a job which was generally awarded to the individual whose score was the largest. When the men returned from their work they were expected to spend a considerable portion of their earnings for the good of the house. The Truck Act of 1843 put an end to this heartless scandal.
Golden Fleece, South Weald
The Woolpack and Fleece were, of course, the signs of inns frequented by the merchants who came to buy wool. At Guildford all the alehouses were at one time required to exhibit a Woolpack as a token of the leading commodity in the town. There is a very fine old Golden Fleece Inn at South Weald in Essex, broad-fronted and roomy, Jacobean in style, but fallen sadly from its old estate since the coach traffic ceased on the Ipswich road.
The Three Kings was anciently the sign of the mercers, because in the Middle Ages linen thread materials brought from Cologne had the highest reputation, and were probably stamped either with the figures of the three wise men, or with three crowns. But the Three Crowns are asserted to be more commonly emblematic of the three kingdoms of England, Scotland and Ireland. The Golden Ball was another mercers’ sign, from the arms of Constantinople, which was formerly the centre of the silk trade. The Elephant and Castle was the crest of the Cutlers’ Company. However, the Elephant and Castle, at the corner of Newington Causeway, has a quite different origin. The skeleton of an elephant was discovered while digging a gravel-pit near this spot in 1714. Elephants in mediæval heraldry were invariably represented as carrying a solidly-built castle, a traveller’s exaggeration of the Indian palanquin. The Lion and Castle indicated a dealer in Spanish wines, because sherry casks were stamped with the brand of the Spanish arms.
Foresters resorted for company to the Green Man, and the survival of many old taverns of that name reminds us that there were numerous forests in the neighbourhood of London. The Northwood, or Norwood, extended from near the Green Man at Dulwich to Croydon, where there is another Green Man Inn. The Green Man at Leytonstone stands on the verge of Epping Forest. Wherever a painted sign exists on one of these houses it generally represents either an archer or a forester clad in Lincoln green.
The Two Brewers does not denote that the ale of the two rival tradesmen is on sale, but the manner in which beer was anciently carried about before the invention of brewers’ drays. Two porters are shown bearing the precious barrel slung between them on a pole.
Last of all to be mentioned among the inns which remind us of disappearing occupations are those found usually where the ancient green ways join the main roads to London. The drover and his herd of tired wild-eyed cattle is no longer a feature on the roadside. It is cheaper and more convenient to send oxen to market by cattle-train. But the long green lanes, touching here and there a market town, extend through the Eastern and Midland counties, right up to the North of England. Lonely and deserted, practicable only by the pedestrian or the rider of a sure-footed pony, scarcely ever used except by the county officials, whose duty it is to maintain the right of way, they remain as an ideal hunting ground for the naturalist. When the explorer, tired and hungry after many miles of rough journeying, finds shelter at the Drover’s Call, Butcher’s Arms, or Jolly Drovers, the purpose of these old half-forgotten by-roads is made clear to him, and he can meditate during his hour of rest on the changes which fifty years have made in the methods of transport.