In the village of Sennen, Cornwall, is one of the best known inns, having for its sign the First and Last, which is quite obviously not intended as a limit to the drinker. It has reference, of course, to the fact that if you should be journeying to the south-west the inn will be the last one you will meet with before reaching the sea, whereas it will be the first should your journey be by ship coming eastward. As a matter of actual experience, hundreds of ships which in the course of a year “pick up” the light at Land’s End have not been in sight of a public-house for months, during which they have been crossing thousands of miles of ocean. So that in the case of sailors working these particular vessels the name of the inn has a very appealing significance.
He would be a bold man who would venture to assert positively which is the best-known inn in London; but if the map be consulted, the Elephant and Castle will be seen to occupy a position at the junction of several great roads to the south, and if the volume of traffic which must daily go past the doors is considered, it needs very little more to convince most people that the Elephant is probably better known by name at all events, than any other public-house within the four-mile radius of Charing Cross. In coaching times the inn was passed by every traveller bound for the south-east, and some authorities have contended that when Shakespeare recommended that “In the south suburbs at the Elephant is best to lodge,”[14] he had in his mind the celebrated hostelry of Newington Butts. But this is probably a mistake, for the Elephant and Castle did not come into existence until long after Shakespeare’s time. In 1658, the ground upon which it now stands was not built upon, but probably the first inn on the site came into existence about twenty years later. In 1824, the inn was rebuilt, and since then there have been many additions and alterations which have got farther and farther away from the original building as it was in the seventeenth century. The Elephant and Castle, as far as the antiquarian is concerned, is now merely a curious name. Another extremely rare sign in London is the Sieve, which as late as 1890 stood in the Minories. In 1669 there was a Sieve in Aldermanbury, but more is known of the one in the Minories. It was referred to in the “Vade Mecum for Malt Worms,” 1715, and was then considered one of the oldest and most noted public-houses of London. It adjoined Holy Trinity Church. Underneath were crypt-like cellars which may originally have had connection with the adjoining convent of the nuns of St. Clare. In the records of the Parish of Holy Trinity, which was all included within the ancient precincts of the convent, there is mention of the appointment of a “vitler to the parish.” On February 13th, 1705, is a record of a vestry meeting at the Sieve “about agreeing to pull down the churchyard wall.” On this occasion so serious was the discussion that as much as six shillings was spent in refreshments before the matter was settled. A good deal of speculation on the origin of the name of this old inn has been indulged in, one solution being that the chalk foundations in the crypt may have suggested the sign. The Metropolitan Railway Company acquired the property, and closed the house in 1886, before its final disappearance four years later.
Sign of Fox and Hounds, Barley
The Adam and Eve, another common London sign, is, we have reason to believe, frequently a repainting of the Zodiacal sign of the Twins, the city having according to astrologers, its ascendant in Gemini, the House of Mercury, who rules merchandise and all ingenious arts.
An odd sign to find in the heart of Essex is the Whalebone, and in the same county at Great Leighs, there is a Saint Anna’s Castle, which is supposed to stand on the site of a hermitage made sacred by the presence of some local saint.
Dean Swift was once asked by the village barber of Co. Meath, by whom he was regularly shaved, to assist him in the invention of an inscription for the sign of the Jolly Barber, a house which it was intended to conduct as an inn and a barber’s shop combined. Swift at once composed the following couplet, which remained under the painted sign depicting a barber with a razor in one hand and a full pot in the other, for many years:
“Rove not from pole to pole, but step in here
Where nought excels the shaving but—the beer.”
The Three Loggerheads, generally in the form of two silly looking faces and the motto:
“We three
Loggerheads be,”