The Punch Bowl, High Easter
In the absence of documents it is not easy to discriminate between the Church Inn and the Church House. Old inns near the church bearing ecclesiastical names may be of either origin, or may have served for both. The Bell is very common all over England. It is always found near the church, and the sign is of the highest antiquity. Chaucer tells us that the Tabard in Southwark was “juste by the Belle.” The Bell at Finedon, in Northamptonshire, puts in a claim to be one of the very oldest in the country, and the old Bell Tavern which formerly stood in King Street, Westminster, is mentioned in the expenses of Sir John Howard, Jockey of Norfolk, in 1466. At the Bell, in Warwick Lane, died the good Archbishop Leighton in 1684. “He often used to say that if he were to choose a place to die in, it should be an inn; it looks like a pilgrim’s going home, to whom this world was all as an inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion in it.... And he obtained what he desired.”[8]
Not unusual in this situation is a Lamb Inn. The Lamb at Eastbourne has a small but well-proportioned crypt, vaulted and groined. There is a Lamb and Flag near the old parish church at Brighton, Sudbury, and at Swindon; and a Lamb and Anchor in Bristol. These owe their origin to a carving of the Agnus Dei, but may sometimes point to a house of the Knights Templars, for the Agnus Dei appeared on their coat of arms. The Bleeding Heart is an emblem of the five sorrowful mysteries of the Rosary, and the Heart, generally found as the Golden Heart, is in honour of the Blessed Virgin. The Anchor is suggestive of a church inn, but we have not been able to trace a house bearing this sign to any very remote period. At Hartfield, there is an Anchor Inn close to the church, evidently ancient, and having a delightful old-fashioned garden. It was formerly occupied by a church institution where the poor were fed and housed in return for such labour as their age and skill would permit, founded by the Rev. Richard Randes, a rector of the parish some two hundred and fifty years ago. The house contains evidence of having existed long before this date.
At least one church has, by the vicissitudes of time, become an inn; the George Hotel at Huntingdon, itself very old and picturesque, enshrines in its cellars and lower walls all that is left of St. George’s Church. The stones of St. Benedict’s Church in the same town were used two centuries ago in building the Barley Mow Inn at Hartford, and some figures and panelling may be seen in the tap-room of the Queen’s Head, close by where this church stood. At the Old Red House, about four miles north of Newmarket on the road to Brandon, the bar-counter is formed out of the rood-screen turned out of the neighbouring church at a “Restoration” about five-and-twenty years ago.
In a corner of Romford churchyard a fifteenth-century chantry-house, founded by Avery Comburgh, Squire of the Body to Henry VI, and Under-Treasurer to Henry VII, became after the Reformation the Cock and Bell Inn. Through the kindness of Messrs. Ind, Coope & Co., the present Bishop of Colchester was enabled to regain possession for religious uses, and after three hundred and sixty years of alienation this building, still possessing its original oak ceiling beams and panelling has been converted into a Church House for the parish, and a hall for meetings, corresponding in style, has now been added from the design of Sir Charles Nicholson, Bart.
Among the pleasantest memories of a pilgrimage to Walsingham, is that of a Sunday spent at a little Suffolk village, where after service Pastor and flock alike adjourned to our inn for a half an hour’s gossip. The old custom would be difficult to restore nowadays, but much of the social influence of the Church over the labouring classes was lost when rectors left off occupying, at least once a week, the chair in the village inn parlour. For it is not without good reason that church and inn stand so frequently side by side. Each ministers alike to the natural and common needs of man, and each in its own way has its lesson to teach us in the gospel of the larger life. They have stood together through the ages as a protest against the wayward theories of man-made puritanism; for they belong to the Commandment which is “exceeding broad.”
CHAPTER VII
COACHING INNS