The Millstone may be seen at Stockport and Macclesfield.
The Windmill itself is a very old sign. It was a tavern in Lothbury, Old Jewry, frequented by fast men in the reigns of Elizabeth, James, and Charles I. Wellbred, in “Every Man in his Humour,” (a play by Ben Jonson,) dates his letter to Edward Knowell from this house:—
“Why, Ned, I beseech thee, hast thou forsworn all thy friends in the Old Jewry, or doest thou think us all Jews that inhabit there,” &c.
It is named amongst the list of inns “viewed” previous to the visit of Charles V. in 1522.
“Hugh Clapton, Mercer, mayor, in 1492, dwelt in this house and kept his Mayoralty there; it is now a tavern, and has to sign a Windmill. And thus much for this house, sometime a Jew’s synagogue [in 1262,] since a house of friars, [fratres de penitentia Jesu or de Sacca, 1275,] then a nobleman’s house, [Robert Fitz Walter, 1305,] after that a merchant’s house, wherein Mayoralties have been kept, and now a wine taverne.”—Stow.
The Peel, i.e., the wooden shovel with a long handle used by bakers to place bread in the oven, was the sign of John Alder, in Leadenhall Street, 1668. Next comes the basket or Panyer, to bring bread round, which gave its name to “a passage out of Paternoster Row—called of such a sign Panyer Alley.”[508] This is the highest spot in the City of London, as we are informed from an inscription under a stone figure of a boy sitting on a pannier, eating a very questionable bunch of grapes:
“When you have sought the City round,
Yet still this is the highest ground.
Aug. 26, 1688.”
The Pannier was not an uncommon trade emblem. The Baker and Basket is the sign of a public-house in Leman Street, and another in Worship Street. The claims to superior usefulness of the Baker and Brewer are held forth triumphantly to the advantage of the latter in some signs of this name. One, in Wash Lane, Birmingham, gives a pictorial representation of it; the baker’s hand is resting on what is usually called the “Staff of Life,”—namely, a loaf of very respectable dimensions; the brewer exhibits “with artful pride,” a foaming tankard, when the following dialogue ensues:—
“The Baker says, I’ve the Staff of Life,
And you’re a silly elf;
The Brewer replied, with artful pride,
Why, this is life itself.”