For a model wayside inn of the smaller class, where the internal treatment shows good taste with the utmost simplicity commend us to the White Hart at West Wickham. It replaces a very ancient wooden house which had proved past repair, and is probably unique amongst modern inns in that it is designed for the convenient drawing of all the malt liquors direct from the wood. Another more ambitious house by the same architects (Messrs. Berney & Son) at Elmers End, with an elaborate half-timbered front, recalling Black Forest architecture, has anticipated the requirements of the Children’s Act. The well-proportioned tea room is approached by a colonnade at the side of the building and isolated from the bars.
Among brewers who have had the foresight to erect inns of better accommodation and more pleasing design than most of those put up during the latter part of last century are Messrs. Godsell & Co., of Stroud, an example of whose houses we illustrate in the Greyhound Inn; and the Stroud Brewery Co., whose Prince Albert at Rodborough, Gloucestershire, and the Clothiers’ Arms, are excellent specimens of the modern country inn. These three were from the designs of Mr. P. Morley Horder. Good taste is by no means lacking in some of the many houses owned by Messrs. Nalder & Collyer, Ltd., in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This firm have also restored the old-fashioned type of signboards.
Other inns of recent date and of distinctive design are the Red Lion, King’s Heath, Worcestershire, by Messrs. Bateman & Bateman; the Wentworth Arms, Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, by Mr. C. F. A. Voysey; the George, Hayes, Kent, by Mr. Ernest Newton; the Duck-in-the-Pond, Harrow Weald, by Mr. R. A. Briggs; the Maynard Arms, Bagworth, Leicester, by Messrs. Everard & Pick; the remodelled White Hart at Sonning-on-Thames, by Mr. W. Campbell Jones; the Dog and Doublet, Sandon; the Hundred House, Purslow, Shropshire (a modern reconstruction); the Green Man, Tunstall, Suffolk; the Old White House and the Elm Tree at Oxford, by Mr. Henry T. Hare; and various temperance inns, amongst which are the Ossington Coffee House, Newark, by Messrs. Ernest George & Yeates; the Bridge Inn, Port Sunlight, by Messrs. Grayson & Ould (now fully licensed); and the Bournville Estate public-house, by Mr. W. Alexander Harvey. In London two finely designed interiors are the Coal Hole, in the Strand, by Mr. W. Colcutt, and the Copt Hall, in Copthall Avenue, by Mr. P. Morley Horder.
CHAPTER XVII
INN FURNITURE
It will not come as any surprise to readers who have so far dipped with us into the pages of the past, to learn that mediæval inns, and indeed those of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, have very little to show in the way of furniture. Our ancestors had far less done for them when they put up for the night than we are accustomed to to-day in the most primitive districts. Travellers did not even expect a bed. They were thankful enough if they could get some sort of rough bedstead on which to lay their own bed which they brought with them. Of course, these were people of some means. Whenever Royalty travelled the train of waggons required to convey furnishing equipment frequently extended to formidable dimensions. On the other hand, the accumulation of wealth in the sixteenth century soon began to raise the standard of furnishing at the inn, and a diary kept by a Dutch physician named Levinus Lemnius, who made an adventure into England during Elizabeth’s reign, is worth quoting as an indication of the rapid improvement which was taking place. The good doctor evidently had not been used to luxuries, for he says: “The neate cleanliness, the exquisite fineness, the pleasaunte and delightful furniture in every poynt for the household, wonderfully rejoyced me, their nosegayes, finely entermingled with sundry sortes of fragreunte flowers in their bedchambers and privy roomes with comfortable smell cheered mee up and entirely delyghted all my sences.” He probably stayed at the best hostelries which could be found, and it would be unwise to conclude that all inns of the period had so many charms as those to which he refers.
One feature of the furnishing of old inns which adds not a little to the picturesqueness of the interiors is the high-backed settle, with wings or arms. This is universal all over England. It varies considerably in different localities, for the local handicraftsman has worked according to tradition, and he has also in most cases made the settle for a particular place and to serve a special purpose. Of course, the original reason for its design was to keep out draughts from the constantly opening door, and this purpose is still strong enough to make the settle a very convenient, not to say necessary, fixture in most inns, in spite of all sorts of modern draught-excluding devices. It scarcely seems likely that the high-backed settle will ever be entirely superseded. It is not particularly comfortable according to present-day ideas of comfort in seats, which seem to revolve round upholstery. But it is very clean. It will not harbour dust, and if well made it will stand the assaults of time for centuries. The old Elizabethan and Jacobean settles were extremely heavy. It was evident in those days that sturdiness was inseparable from strength, and considering the possible rough usage to which seats in the inn might well on occasion be put, the heavy timbers of which they were constructed seem to have been well advised. They very often had fine carving, and were constructed with the seat forming a lid to the boxed-in lower part. It was in the eighteenth century that settles became of little account, and they were then plainly made by carpenters simply to serve a useful purpose. There is a good example of a carved settle in the Union Inn, Flyford Flavel, Worcestershire; and in many an old inn in Berkshire, a county which has retained its ancient character perhaps more than any other, are heavy old oak settles guarding the warm fireside. In the tap-room of the Green Dragon, Combe St. Nicholas, near Chard, is a settle finely carved of fifteenth-century origin. Judging by its character it must at one time have been in some ecclesiastical building. The Green Dragon was monastic. The settle after a time developed into the fixed partition, its back stretched up to the ceiling, and a door was placed at the end, the partition being continued beyond to the opposite wall. Considerations of light sometimes prevented this being carried out entirely but a modern compromise was effected by glazing the screen above the high settle back and putting glass panels in the door. The development of the ingle-nook came about through chimney-corner and settle being combined in one feature.
