Forty years ago there existed at Colchester a Maltster’s Inn, a Mariner’s Inn, and a Neptune; at Stratford a Chinaman, and at Tendring a Crown and Blacksmith, the latter being, perhaps, an impaled sign signifying that the landlord of the Crown was also a blacksmith.
It will be most convenient to treat of the sign of the Angel, which occurs eleven times in Essex, among Human Signs, although an angel is commonly accounted to be something more than human. An Angel occurs on the seventeenth-century tokens of “Francis Aleyn at the Angell in Brentwood,” of “Georg Silke at the Angell in Rvmford,” of Francis Dilke, also of Rumford, of William Hartley of Colchester, and of George Taylor of Ilford in 1665. As the sign still exists at the two last-named places, the probabilities are that the two houses bearing it are identical with those from which the tokens were issued a couple of centuries ago. The Angel at Ilford was formerly a posting-house of great importance; but, like its neighbour, the Red Lion, and all the other once-busy inns on this great highway from London into the Eastern counties, it is now sadly decayed from its old importance, though still a house of high standing. Its massive sign-post and ornamental sign-iron date from at least a century ago. Probably it was at this house that, on August 18, 1662, Pepys, “while dinner was getting ready, practised measuring of the tables and other things, till [as he says] I did understand measure of timber and board very well.” This he did that he might know how to detect fraud on the part of those who bought timber for the navy. Taylor (see p. 28) in 1636 mentions Angels at Romford and Brentwood, which do not now exist. The *Angel in the High Street at Colchester is, perhaps, the modern representative of the Angel mentioned in one of the Corporation records (see p. 62) as being an “auncyent inne” in 1603. There are beer-houses with the same sign at Braintree, Bocking, and elsewhere. In the Corporation records of Saffron Walden for the year 1645 it appears that the sum of 6s. 2d. was expended upon “a pottle of sack, 3 qts. of claret and white wine burnt, for the committee, when they sat at the Angel.” This is probably the same house which continued to exist in Gould Street up to about fifty years ago, when it was kept by one Butterfield, who was also a barber, and who displayed the following rhyme upon his sign-board:
“Rove not from pole to pole, but call in here,
Where nought exceeds the shaving, but the beer.”
The pole referred to is, of course, the barber’s pole. The couplet was, however, not original. The Angel, which still continues to exist at Kelvedon, is referred to in an advertisement in the Chelmsford Chronicle for December 29, 1786. It is also stated in the Bufton MSS.[88] that on the 20th of October, 1692, King William III. “stayed and dined at the Angell,” at Kelvedon. Doubtless he was on his way to Holland, viâ Harwich. Larwood and Hotten say (p. 266) that this sign “was derived from the Salutation; for, that it originally represented the Angel appearing to the Holy Virgin at the Salutation or Annunciation, is evident from the fact that, even as late as the seventeenth century, on nearly all the trades-tokens of houses with this sign, the Angel is represented with a scroll in his hands; and this scroll we know, from the evidence of paintings and prints, to contain the words addressed by the Angel to the Holy Virgin: ‘Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum.’ Probably at the Reformation it was considered too Catholic a sign, and so the Holy Virgin was left out, and the Angel only retained.” The supporters of the arms of Richard II. were also two angels, blowing trumpets. The Angel and Harp at Church End, Dunmow, is a strange sign which does not appear to be noticed by the authors so often quoted. Probably it is a modern, though by no means inappropriate, impalement, as it appears in the list of sixty years ago simply as the *Harp.
The sign of the Black Boy occurs seven times in the county, namely, at Chelmsford, Wrabness, Bocking, Weeley, *Coggeshall, Wivenhoe, and Great Bromley. At the latter place it seems to have existed since 1786, as a sale is advertised to take place at the Black Boy in Great Bromley, in the Chelmsford Chronicle for March 3rd in that year. There is also a beer-house of this name at Danbury, and the large brick house in the High Street at Epping, lately occupied by that eminent naturalist, Henry Doubleday, was an inn with this sign before the Doubleday family acquired it about 1770. The Black Boy now existing at Chelmsford is not the same house that went under that name during the last and previous centuries, though standing on the same site. The old inn ranked as a coaching-inn of the first importance. It was pulled down in 1857, having been fairly run off the road by the opening of the railway in 1843. Two wooden bosses, taken from the ceiling of one of the rooms, and now to be seen in the Chelmsford Museum, are carved, respectively, with the Blue Boar of the De Veres (to which family the house probably once belonged), and the red and white rose combined. Mr. John Adey Repton, F.S.A., formerly of Springfield, writing to the Gentleman’s Magazine in May, 1840, sends sketches of these two bosses, which were duly inserted. He says:
“There is a tradition that Richard III. was hunting in the forest, and being missed by his courtiers was afterwards found at this house.... The beam is massive, being not less than 16 inches wide. The room, although only 9½ feet high, was originally a hall 28½ feet long, but subsequently reduced to 18½ feet by a partition, leaving a passage to the inn. Yet this partition, from the style and character of the panels, appears to have been added so early as the reign of Henry VIII. The doors to the buttery-hatch, &c., may still be traced on the wall of the passage.”
Writing again to the same Magazine in December, 1845, Mr. Repton says:
“I send you a sketch of a Chambermaid. The figure is now at the White Hart, Chelmsford, having been recently removed thither from the Black Boy. It was formerly the custom in ancient family mansions to introduce a painting which represents a housemaid holding a broom in her hands, which was cut out of a board, and generally placed in a passage or at the top of the stairs. The earliest specimens I have seen are of the date of Charles I., or the early part of Charles II.... The enclosed specimen is of a later period, having the Fontaine head-dress which prevailed about the time of William III. or Queen Anne.... Sometimes the figure of a soldier, like a sentry, was exhibited in like manner.... Such a figure is on the staircase of the Bull at Dartford. Another, of which I send you a sketch [see p. 129], is at the Black Boy in Chelmsford.”
Mr. Chancellor of Chelmsford writes that—