A FOURTEENTH-CENTURY DOORWAY.
Writing of the subject of inn gardens, I remember seeing somewhere on the way boldly displayed on the front of an inn the simple legend "Lovely Garden." I am glad to note that innkeepers are becoming aware of the attraction of a garden and so proclaim it: a garden where guests may escape from walled rooms into the fresh air, there to loiter at ease retired from the street and the crowd; to secure a bedroom looking over those gardens is a further attraction to me.
It may be that special good-fortune attended me, but during the whole of my journey never once at my inn where I stopped for the night did I fail to find entertainment, either from host or from guest. I think I have said so before. Now here at "The Swan" was still another landlord both willing to gossip and wishful to entertain a lone wanderer in the smoke-room of his comfortable hostel. He brought me a time-yellowed paper of the seventeenth century having an advertisement of his inn, to show how long it had been in existence. In the same paper, I think it was, my eye caught the following announcement: "June 19th, 1684. The post will go every day, to and from, betwixt London and Epsom during the season for drinking the waters." Then Epsom was a fashionable Spa. Also he showed me an old posting bill of the house that was of some interest, for it was a bill paid by the Rev. Gilbert White for a postchaise from "The Swan" to Meon Stoke and back, when White was on a visit to a friend at that place; and thus the bill runs:—
Harrow.
Hampshire—Alton.
Swan.
Neat Post-Chaises.
| £ | s. | d. | ||||||
| August 1st. | Chaise to Meon Stoke | 13 | 6 | |||||
| Duty | 3 | 0 | ||||||
| August 6th. | Chaise from Meon Stoke to Alton | 13 | 6 | |||||
| Duty | 3 | 0 | ||||||
| £1 | 13 | 0 | ||||||