“As customers come, and I do trust them,
I lose my money, likewise my custom;
Though chalk is cheap, say what you will,
Chalk won’t pay the brewer’s bill;
So I must try to keep a decent tap,
For ready-money and no strap.”
The Theydon Oak at Theydon Garnon until last year bore upon one side of its sign-board a very good representation of the fine old oak from which it takes its name, and close to which it stands. The King’s Oak at High Beech is a sign which is probably quite distinct from the Royal Oak. The author of Nooks and Corners in Essex says that the house takes its name “from an old stump near thereto, formerly called Harold’s Oak.” This, however, is probably an error, as the large old oak which stands on the green before the house has long been known as the “King’s Oak.” Local tradition says that Henry VIII., while hunting in the forest on the day on which Ann Boleyn was beheaded, rested under this tree while waiting to hear the gun, fired from the Tower, which announced the death of the Queen. Other localities also claim the oak under which the king listened, but this is as likely as any other to be the right one. The King’s Oak is marked on Cary’s Map of Fifteen Miles round London (1786), and also on Andrew and Drury’s Map of Essex (1777). There was formerly an Oaks in Stifford. It now serves as three cottages, standing opposite the school. At it, in the beginning of last century, the churchwardens treated themselves to costly dinners. In 1712, for instance, the records in the parish chest inform us that the “vestory stood adjourned” to the Oaks. A Tree occurs upon the farthing token of “W. Spiltimber of Hatfild Broad Oake,” doubtless in allusion both to the name of the issuer and to the old oak, commonly called the “Doodle Oak,” from which the village takes its name. At the same place a beer-house is still known as the Doodle Oak.
A public-house on Shenfield Common has, for at least forty years, borne the sign of the Artichoke. This is one of the very last productions of the vegetable kingdom which one would expect to find represented upon a sign-board; but Larwood and Hotten, who think it originally found a place there when first introduced, say that “it used to be a great favourite, and still gives name to some public-houses.” Another very extraordinary sign, unnoticed in the History of Sign-boards, is the Cauliflower, which appears at Great Ilford. Unless due merely to a landlord’s caprice, it is difficult to suggest any possible origin for it. The present landlord, in whose family the house has been for 120 years, can give no information about the matter, further than that the existing house was built forty-eight years ago, the old inn having been pulled down to make room for the railway. There is also a beer-house so called at Rainham. Of the Bush, which, according to Larwood and Hotten (p. 4), “must certainly be counted amongst the most ancient and popular of signs,” Essex does not appear to have a single example. The same authorities elsewhere (p. 233) declare it to be “the oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom,” and state that it came originally from the Romans, together with the common saying, “Good wine needs no bush.” As late as the reign of James I. many inns used it as their sign. At Bardfield, and probably other towns in the county, houses specially licensed for the sale of liquor at fair time still fasten branches of oak and other trees to their fronts as a sign, a custom which is not unknown in other parts of the country. It is without doubt a modern form of the ancient sign of the Bush. It appears, too, in every way probable that the curious besom-like ornaments so often to be seen upon the ends of old sign-irons are also conventional representations of the same venerable device. Examples are to be seen in the drawings of the sign-irons of the Six Bells at Dunmow (p. 168), and the Sugar Loaves at Sible Hedingham (p. 39). At Theydon Garnon there is a beer-house called the Garnon Bushes, so named doubtless after a part of Epping Forest, which goes by that name. At Hornchurch there is a beer-shop known as the Furze, probable a unique sign. The Tulip at Springfield appears to be also unique. Possibly the landlord who adopted the sign was a cultivator of tulips.
The Barley Mow, meaning a barley stack, is an ancient sign which still occurs at Stanstead and at *Colchester. Doubtless it was first put up as a sign in honour of John Barleycorn, just as the Vine, which occurs at Great Bardfield and Black Notley (beer-house), and the Grapes, which occurs at Colchester (the latter being still the recognized sign of a vintner), both undoubtedly found a place on the sign-board because they helped to supply the wherewithal for the worship of Bacchus. Forty years since there was another Vine Inn at Thaxted. The Hop-pole, which is a sign occurring at Good Easter, and the Hop-poles, which is another occurring at Great Hallingbury, both obviously found their place on the sign-board for the same reason. There are also beer-houses with the sign of the Hop-poles at Little Hallingbury and Roydon, although the cultivation of hops has now ceased at those places. Hop-growing once flourished extensively in Essex, and these two signs are relics of the now almost relinquished industry. At the beginning of this century they were grown at the Hedinghams, the Maplesteads, the Colnes, Halstead, Wethersfield, Finchingfield, Great Bardfield, and Shalford, as well as at Moulsham, Good Easter, Roxwell, Chignal St. James, and other places round Chelmsford. Fifty years earlier the cultivation of hops in the county was spread over a wider area, though the number of acres grown was about the same. At the present time the cultivation is all but discontinued. Until the year 1883 there was a hop-ground adjoining Skreen’s Park, Roxwell, but it is now devoted to other purposes. Round the Hedinghams, however, hops are still grown, their cultivation having been introduced by a former Mr. Majendie in 1792. Daniel Defoe says, in his Tour through Great Britain, that in 1724, hops were brought direct from Chelmsford for sale at the great Stourbridge Hop Fair.
The description of the Maypole at Chigwell, given by Dickens in Barnaby Rudge, will occur to every one. It runs as follows:—
“In the year 1775, there stood upon the Borders of Epping Forest, at a distance of about twelve miles from London—measuring from the standard in Cornhill, or rather from the spot on or near to which the standard used to be in days of yore—a house of public entertainment called the Maypole; which fact was demonstrated to all such travellers as could neither read nor write (and sixty-six years ago a vast number, both of travellers and stay-at-homes, were in this condition) by the emblem reared on the roadside over against the house, which, if not of those goodly proportions that maypoles were wont to present in olden times, was a fair young ash, thirty feet in height, and as straight as any arrow that ever English yeoman drew.
“The Maypole—by which term henceforth is meant the house and not its sign—the Maypole was an old building, with more gable ends than a lazy man would care to count on a sunny day; huge zig-zag chimneys, out of which it seemed as though even smoke could not choose but come in more than naturally fantastic shapes, imparted to it in its tortuous progress; and vast stables, gloomy, ruinous, and empty. The place was said to have been built in the days of King Henry the Eighth; and there was a legend not only that Queen Elizabeth had slept there one night while upon a hunting excursion, to wit in a certain oak panelled room with a deep bay-window, but that next morning, while standing on a mounting-block before the door with one foot in the stirrup, the virgin monarch had then and there boxed and cuffed an unlucky page for some neglect of duty. The matter-of-fact and doubtful folks, of whom there were a few among the Maypole customers, as unluckily there always are in every little community, were inclined to look upon this tradition as rather apocryphal; but, whenever the landlord of that ancient hostelry appealed to the mounting-block itself as evidence, and triumphantly pointed out that there it stood in the same place to that very day, the doubters never failed to be put down by a large majority, and all true believers exulted, as in a victory.
“Whether these, and many other stories of the like nature, were true or untrue, the Maypole was really an old house, a very old house, perhaps as old as it claimed to be, and perhaps older, which will sometimes happen with houses of an uncertain, as with ladies of a certain, age. Its windows were all diamond-pane lattices, its floors were sunken and uneven, its ceilings blackened by the hand of time and heavy with massive beams. Over the doorway was an ancient porch, quaintly and grotesquely carved; and here on summer evenings the more favoured customers smoked and drank—ay, and sang many a good song too, sometimes—reposing on two grim-looking high-backed settles, which, like the twin dragons of some fairy tale, guarded the entrance to the mansion.
“In the chimneys of the disused rooms, swallows had built their nests for many a long year, and from earliest spring to latest autumn whole colonies of sparrows chirped and twittered in the eaves. There were more pigeons about the dreary stable-yard and outbuildings than anybody but the landlord could reckon up. The wheeling and circling flights of runts, fantails, tumblers, and pouters, were perhaps not quite consistent with the grave and sober character of the building, but the monotonous cooing, which never ceased to be raised by some among them all day long, suited it exactly, and seemed to lull it to rest. With its overhanging storys, drowsy little panes of glass, and front bulging out and projecting over the pathway, the old house looked as if it were nodding in its sleep. Indeed it needed no very great stretch of fancy to detect in it other resemblances to humanity. The bricks of which it was built had originally been a deep dark red, but had grown yellow and discoloured like an old man’s skin; the sturdy timbers had decayed like teeth; and here and there the ivy, like a warm garment to comfort it in its age, wrapped its green leaves closely round the time-worn walls.
“It was a hale and hearty age, though, still; and in the summer or autumn evenings, when the glow of the setting sun fell upon the oak and chestnut trees of the adjacent forest, the old house, partaking of its lustre, seemed their fit companion, and to have many good years of life in him yet.”