Old Country Inns of England

by Henry Parr Maskell; Edward W. Gregory

Quite a small thing will turn a lady traveller against a wayside inn. Those horrible, narrow swing doors, which are only too common, are quite enough to make a woman decide against the inn which is so unfortunate as to have them barring the only entrance. No man ever pushed through such doors with dignity, and a woman feels instinctively that to struggle with them involves almost a loss of self-respect. A woman likes to enter a house. She does not like to slip in furtively, and she feels, perhaps unconsciously, that there is a hint of the surreptitious in these doors in the way they open just wide enough on pressure and close again immediately as if to hide a misdemeanour. No woman, either, will stand and drink even the mildest of non-alcoholic liquors if she can possibly help it. She prefers to sit down. The ordinary bar, therefore, has no attractions for her. Even in a railway refreshment room, where hurry excuses most things, a woman will only stand under compulsion. It is not that she really wants to sit down through weariness, for she may have been sitting for hours in a railway carriage. But she has an instinct for propriety and conduct. If tea shops, which are so largely patronized by women, had a high bar like public-houses, with as little sitting accommodation, as is often to be found in licensed establishments, they could not possibly keep open. Why it should be customary to stand up to drink a glass of beer and sit down to take a cup of tea is a mystery.

Let us admit and welcome the efforts of the old Georgian coaching inns to keep abreast of the times. Let us cheerfully accept the attempts of mine host to put life into an old musty coffee-room and bar parlour. Conservatism is not without value at the inn with a history, and the landlord for his own sake must step warily. Let no iconoclast interfere too violently with the worm-eaten glories of old oak and mahogany or seek to disparage the solid virtues of the great round of beef, or the appetising ingredients of the game pie. Tradition in such things is well worth preserving.

But it is the licensed house which never had much of a history, which has nothing interesting to preserve, whose justification for existence is solely on account of its use to the community as a house of call, that so often requires alteration. The new inn, moreover, the building itself, erected here in the twentieth century for the accommodation of modern people, must be as suitable for its purpose as the old coaching-house was for the stiff, befuddled travellers who, a hundred years ago, alighted from the “Royal Mail” or “Eclipse” for a much-needed night’s repose on their journey to London. It is plain that people use the roads to-day quite as much for pleasure as business. The railway takes the business man from one end of England to the other, faster, cheaper, and more comfortably than even the motor-car has yet achieved on the turnpike. Relaxation from work means for many thousands a journey by road, and it is in making suitable preparation for those who take their pleasure in this way that the new inn should devote at least half of its energies. The time may not be ripe in England for the adoption of the café system of the Continent. Perhaps the climate is somewhat against it. But some improvements, which a study of the French and German methods would suggest, might easily be taken in hand. The argument of the old teetotaller, not always expressed, perhaps, but certainly present, was that the more uncomfortable and disreputable the public-house the less temptation there would be to go into it. One can understand the point of view as with an effort one can realise the horror of the Puritans for anything in the form of an image in a Church. But people do not want nowadays to use the inn as a place in which to get drunk; a drunken man, to say nothing of a drunken woman, is a universal object of pity and scorn. What is demanded is a wholesome, clean and pleasant place in which to have something to eat and drink without being told by anyone, publican or teetotaller, what form the refreshment shall take.

Herein is one of the reasons for the movement in favour of reformed public-houses. The People’s Refreshment House Association, Ltd., which has now over seventy public-houses under its management in different parts of the country has shown how licensed premises may be improved and made to pay at the same time. Proof of this is to be found in the balance-sheet of the Association which has shown a regular annual payment of its maximum dividend of five per cent. since 1899, with over £1,000 placed to reserve. Of course, the Association is frankly a temperance body, but it would be just as well if those people who shy at the idea of public-houses becoming controlled by bigotry would consult the dictionary and discover for themselves the real meaning of the word temperance. Having done so, they will, perhaps, realise that in pursuit of moderation there is no reason whatever why the interests of “the trade,” the reformer, and the public should not be identical, for all these prefer the temperate man to the drunkard. The fact that about 80 per cent. of the licensed houses of England are tied to brewers should not stand in the way of improvement; indeed, in some cases, particularly in the provision and upkeep of suitable premises, brewers have done more than could possibly be undertaken by private owners or the public-house Trusts of which, by the way, there is one now in nearly every county. Without going into the many vexed questions, most of which are matters for the trade alone, surrounding the tied house, it may not unreasonably be hoped that the brewer will see more and more in the future how his duty to the public and his interests alike demand a broader and more enlightened policy than the crude idea of monopoly of sale.

The “White Horse” Inn, Stetchworth, Newmarket

Improvements, however, cannot be entered upon with much hope of success without the sympathy of the licensing justices, and it is as much to be desired that they should recognize that the public interest lies in the direction of the reformed public-house as that the brewer should realise that licensed premises are not solely to be run as drinking shops. The restrictions in very many parts of England which have been put in the way of improvements and extensions are absurd. Wherever specially free facilities have been granted for the sale of intoxicating liquor—as at the White City in 1908—nothing has resulted which in any way caused the authorities to regret having trusted the public not to make beasts of themselves. The Bill introduced by Lord Lamington in the House of Lords crystallised the views of reformers, who desire to make the public-house more attractive. It provided that licensing justices should not interfere with the provision of accommodation for the supply of tea, coffee, cocoa, or food; with the substitution of chairs and tables for bars; with the provision of games, newspapers, music, or gardens, or any other means of reasonable recreation. It also asked that the Licensing Bench should allow the improvements of premises in the direction of making them more open and airy than at present and more healthy generally. There are numerous cases in which the action of justices in refusing to grant facilities for improvement has been almost incomprehensible, and amply justified the implied rebuke contained in the Bill. In London the continental café—or rather an English adaptation of the idea—has been established with success, and though the metropolis is commonly judged by other standards than those of the countryside, the way in which the café has been received seems to indicate not only the desire for freer and more enlightened management, but also the possession by the public of sufficient moral fibre to make use of the increased facilities temperately and in reason.

New inns have been erected in recent years—not many of them it is true—with the object of supplying the wants of to-day in a liberal and broad-minded way. Occasionally the assistance of architects of acknowledged position has been enlisted in making the buildings themselves more attractive and less vulgar than has been only too common, and if the effect of environment upon morality and behaviour counts for anything these new inns should be an improvement in every way upon the bulk of those built at any rate during the Victorian period. The inn at Sandon, on Lord Harrowby’s estate, may be mentioned as a case in point. The Fox and Pelican at Haslemere, the architects of which were Messrs. Read and Macdonald, is another, which has, by the way, a sign painted by Mr. Walter Crane. There is the Skittles Inn at Letchworth, designed by Messrs. R. Barry Parker, and Raymond Unwin. In this last instance the conditions under which the building was erected were much easier than those which commonly obtain in older settled districts, where many interests have to be considered. At Garden City the question regarding the sale of alcoholic liquors is one on which there is considerable divergence of view. About the necessity for providing a well-designed and conducted house for the general refreshment of travellers and as a centre for social intercourse there would appear, however, to have been no doubt whatever. The Skittles is referred to here simply as a nicely-planned building of very attractive appearance which seems to embody most of the improvements one would wish to see in the design of modern inns. The architects have contrived cleverly to combine the idea of the continental café and the English country inn. The rooms are large and airy, there is plenty of seating accommodation, and a billiard-room is one of the attractions. There is an entire absence of ornamental decoration, a form of embellishment which still continues to appear in nine out of every ten newly equipped public-houses, in the country as well as in towns. Of course, it is perfectly plain that with a new house of refreshment which is not to hold a licence, anything may be done. Directly an architect is commissioned to design a fully-licensed inn his difficulties commence. He is hedged about by all sorts of restrictions. It is inconceivable, however, that the cause of true temperance can be injured by the provision of a good, convenient building for a licensed victualler’s trade, instead of the vulgar atrocity which is so common.

It is not at all certain that the classification of compartments such as saloon bar, private bar, public bar, tap-room, bar parlour, and so on, is not out of harmony with modern requirements. No doubt this division has its conveniences, in the same way that the three classes of compartments, which some railway companies still keep up is found on the whole of benefit. But, to take the café again as an illustration, there appears to be no necessity there for such rigid distinctions, and many of the greater railway companies have found no ill results from the total elimination of at least second class. Some of the new tube railways have only one class, and if one form of public convenience is found to answer without class distinction, why not another?

Some of the new inns which have architectural character have been disfigured by flaring advertisements. The licensed trade should know whether publicity of this kind given to particular brands of ale and spirits, on the whole contributes to the good of the house on which the announcements are displayed; but there can be little doubt that one result is to vulgarize the building. In cases where the landlord of the property sets his face against advertising of this kind, the inn seems by contrast to proclaim its respectability and on that account must attract some custom, at all events. A very good building, as yet not spoilt by advertisements, is the Bell, on the high road between the Wake Arms and Epping, and another is the White Horse, Stetchworth, Newmarket, which Mr. C. F. A. Voysey designed for Lord Ellesmere. The Wheatsheaf, Loughton, is a new inn designed by Mr. Horace White, which is as yet free from objectionable signboards, and is a very good type of building for the smaller country public. There are also various good inns designed by Mr. P. Morley Horder, in Gloucestershire, and The George and Dragon, Castleton, erected some sixteen years ago, is a licensed house of excellent design, by Mr. W. Edgar Wood.