Old Country Inns of England

by Henry Parr Maskell; Edward W. Gregory

Such few travellers as were benighted on the road, small merchants or pedlars going to a local fair, a knight or squire on his way to court, Kings’ messengers and officials, would naturally put up at the manor-house. Hospitality was so rarely called for that it was willingly afforded, just as it is at an Australian homestead in the backwoods. One more sleeping place on the rushes in the hall, another seat at the common table—above or below the salt according to the hosteller’s estimate of the guest’s condition in life—was no great matter. Doubtless each in his own degree made his present to the hosteller in the morning; the butler in a country house still expects his solatium from the parting guest.

By the middle of the fourteenth century the roads had become more frequented, and it was no longer the fashion for the lord to reside in the comparatively humble manor-house. The cost of living had seriously increased; the nobility were impoverished by attendance at court, the foreign wars, and their crowd of retainers. So the lord retired to his more secluded castle or country seat, leaving strangers to be entertained at the manor-house by a steward who afterwards was replaced by a regular innkeeper as tenant. Throughout these changes the family crest or arms remained on the front of the building. Or sometimes the manor-house was turned to other uses and an inn was built close by, and the coat of arms hung over the door in order to induce travellers to transfer their custom thither. Such is the origin of the official inn throughout feudal Europe, but in the Black Forest and the Tyrol the process was sometimes completely reversed. As the nobility became poorer they parted with their estates and turned innkeepers. One can still now and then make the surprising discovery that mine host is by birth a baron, actually entitled to bear the arms above his door, and that it is his ancestors who sleep under those magnificent marble tombs in the minster hard by.

Inns with heraldic emblems for their signs, or called the Norfolk Arms, Dorset Arms, Neville Arms, according to the local landowner, abound everywhere—the actual arms scarcely ever being emblazoned on account of the heavy tax on armorial bearings. But it is not easy to trace their connection with the manor-house. Manors have been alienated over and over again; with each change the sign on the inn has usually been repainted with the arms of the new owner. One of the few exceptions is the Tiger at Lindfield, which carries us back to the Michelbournes of the fourteenth century.

For a characteristic example of a manorial inn we must invite our readers to visit the sleepy town of Midhurst, venerable in its winding streets of projecting upper stories, deeply moulded eaves and gables; a town nestling among the gentler slopes of the South Downs, on the banks of that sweetest and most musical of trout streams, the Sussex Rother. Here is an old inn, far away from the great roads which no vandal has yet ventured to rebuild. The older portion dates from about 1430, and no doubt stands on the site of the original manor-house of the De Bohuns. It is an excellent example of an early timber-framed house of the better class, with massive old oak ceilings, ingle-nooks and “down” fires. The old fireplaces and recessed ovens are pronounced by experts to be genuine fourteenth-century work. A very large addition was made in 1650, when the stables were also built. This latter portion will not be regretted by the visitor who loves more comfort and cheery surroundings than is possible in a conscientiously preserved fourteenth-century hotel.

The Spread Eagle, Midhurst

In clearing away the paint from one of the panelled rooms at the Spread Eagle an inscription was discovered: “The Queen’s Room,” possibly referring to the much travelled Queen Elizabeth who was entertained “marvellously, nay rather excessively,” by Sir Anthony Browne, first Viscount Montagu, at Cowdray, in 1591. A melancholy interest attaches to the sign of the Spread Eagle. It was the crest of the Montagu family, which came to an end in 1793 with the drowning of the last Viscount Montagu at Schaffhausen, on the Rhine, in the very same week that his splendid mansion at Cowdray was destroyed by fire.

It is worth noting that the double-gabled house in the foreground of our first picture of the Spread Eagle (once also an inn, now a cosy temperance hotel) was built early in the seventeenth century by an ancestor of Richard Cobden.

On royal manors the crown was more frequently employed as a distinguishing mark of the manorial hall than the royal arms. Inns having for their signs the King’s Arms have usually assumed this title during the Reformation period when the royal arms were ordered to be set up in the churches. An exception is the King’s Arms Hotel at Godalming, which has every reason to claim to be the original inn of the royal manor. The present building is not much more than two centuries old, a fine substantial example of red-brick domestic architecture in the reign of good Queen Anne. An oak-panelled room is shown to visitors as that in which Peter the Great Czar of Russia slept during his visit to England. The landlord’s bill on this occasion is preserved as a curiosity in the Bodleian library. The items of the bill are as follows: Breakfast—half a sheep, a quarter of lamb, ten pullets, twelve chickens, three quarts of brandy, six quarts of mulled wine, seven dozen of eggs, with salad in proportion. At dinner the company had five ribs of beef weighing three stone, one sheep weighing fifty pound, three quarters of lamb, a shoulder and loin of veal boiled, eight pullets, eight rabbits, two-and-a-half dozen sack and one dozen of claret. The number of guests was twenty-one.