“The King’s Head,” Loughton, Essex
At Alfriston, in Sussex, is the Star Inn, small in size, but of the highest interest. On brackets on each side of the doorway are mitred figures of St. Giles with a hind and St. Julian, the patrons of weary wayfarers. A beam in the parlour is ornamented with a shield and the sacred monogram, and all kinds of curious carvings abound in the building. In the dining-room upstairs, suggestive of an old ship’s cabin, the solid construction of the fine old roof may be studied. For four centuries it has borne its coverings of thick Horsham stone slabs without shifting, and seems sound enough to resist time for a long period to come. Antiquarians have supposed this inn to have been erected as a pilgrim’s hostel, but it seems scarcely probable that voyagers, even if they landed at Seaford, would take this route either to Canterbury or Chichester. It belonged to the Abbey of Battle, and the many ecclesiastical carvings may be ascribed to the monkish craftsmen. Just above a facetious, smiling lion thickly bedaubed with red paint, and evidently the figure-head of a ship stranded on this dangerous coast, is the carver’s mark showing the date of the building. A rude heraldic design on the angle bracket, represents a coronetted ragged staff supported by a bear and a lion with a twisted tail. In 1495, Edmund Dudley married Elizabeth Grey, last heiress of Warwick the “King-maker.” The union of the Green Lion with the Bear and Ragged Staff was a great event for the Sussex people. Edmund Dudley was brought up at Lewes Priory, and the hillfolk were proud of his success in becoming the chief minister of his time.
The Maid’s Head at Norwich, so far as the older part of this excellent house is concerned, is chiefly Elizabethan and early Jacobean; thanks to the careful restoration and the valuable collection of old furniture introduced by Mr. Walter Rye, much of the interior helps us to realise what an old inn looked like two or three centuries ago. But the Maid’s Head has a more ancient history, and can boast of a Norman cellar (a relic of the Bishop’s Palace), while in the drawing-room, a real fifteenth-century fireplace, discovered in the thickness of the wall, has been opened up and correctly fitted with dogs and hood. The panelled billiard-room, cosy Jacobean bar, and the music gallery in the assembly room (like the “Elevated Den” in the Bull at Rochester), are all delightful. The only fault we can find at the Maid’s Head is that the old inn-yard, now converted into a lounge, has been roofed in with glass at too low a level. A much better effect would have been attained by introducing the glazed protection high above the galleries, as has been done in the yard of the Rose and Crown at Sudbury.
Sun Inn, Feering
Another Elizabethan inn of note is the Star at Great Yarmouth, built by a local merchant, William Crowe, at the end of the sixteenth century. Here the Nelson Room, so called from a famous portrait of Lord Nelson, is beautifully panelled in dark oak. When the match-boarding was torn down for repairs about forty years ago the original fireplace and chimney-piece were discovered and restored. Over the mantel are the arms of the Merchant Adventurers who received their charters from Queen Elizabeth.
The exact date of the Feathers at Ludlow is not very easy to determine, but it must have existed before 1609, when Rees Jones took a lease of the premises; and the initials “R. I.” on the lockplate probably refer to him. The splendid carved front with a gallery of spiral balusters, the studded door, elaborate ceilings, fireplaces and panelling are, of course, well known to all students, and illustrated in every collection. In 1616, there was a celebration in Ludlow of “The Love of Wales to their Sovereign Prince”; and from this event the inn must have received its name. It is the finest of all the Magpie half-timbered inns of Cheshire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire. By the time these lines are in print the famous “Globe Room” at the Reindeer at Banbury will have been exported to America, but a replica in all respects is to be erected in its place. A copy of the ceiling is already at the South Kensington Museum.
Many of the great coaching inns of the Queen Anne and Georgian eras are not lacking in good proportion and correct classic detail. But they lack the individuality of the very old inns, and a long description of them would interest only the purely architectural student. The artist will find effects of colour and lighting in the mouldering brick cornices at Godalming or Sittingbourne. The old ballrooms in county towns, now deserted for the modern Town Hall, and made to do duty as store rooms, are always worth peeping into; and little survivals of our forefathers’ habits of life are to be detected in the broad staircases and deep easy window seats. Hotel architecture continued to follow the fashion, and even the Greek revival early in the last century and the later Italian revival had their influence.
Some very curious examples of the Sir Charles Barry period are to be noted in the neighbourhood of the Crystal Palace. Fifty years of wear might make us forgive some of their eccentricities. Among these, one of the best from the architectural point of view, is the little Goat House Hotel in South Norwood, so named from a famous goat-breeding establishment which existed on an island of the Croydon Canal. The portico, cluster of narrow round-headed windows and slender Lombardic tower of this building are not bad, albeit hopelessly exotic. At least they show an attempt at artistic purpose during the years when public-house design was generally mechanical and sordid.
For the very queerest adaptation by a local builder of the style in vogue during the Greek revival, a visit must be paid to the Lisle Castle, on the Dover Road, about three miles beyond Gravesend.