The following interesting list of inns in the Epping Division in September, 1789, has been kindly contributed by Mr. G. Creed of Epping:—
Chingford: King’s Head, Bull. Epping: White Lion, Bell, Cock, Swan, Black Lion, Epping Place, Cock and Magpie, Green Man, Globe, George, Rose and Crown, Thatched House, White Hart, Harp, White Horse, Sun, Chequers. Nazing: Chequer, Sun, Coach and Horses, Crown, King Harold’s Head. Roydon: Fish and Eels, Black Swan, New Inn, White Hart, Green Man. Waltham Abbey: Owl, Green Man, Harp, Greyhound, Ship, Cock, Chequer, Angel, Rose and Crown, Red Lion, Bull’s Head, Three Tons (sic), Sun, Cock, New Inn, Green Dragon, White Horse, Compasses, White Lion, King’s Arms. Chigwell: Three Jolly Wheelers, Roebuck, King’s Head, Maypole, Bald Hind, Fox and Hounds, Bald Stag. Loughton: Reindeer, Crown, King’s Head, Plume of Feathers. Moreton: Nag’s Head, Green Man, White Hart. North Weald: Rainbow, King’s Head. Stanford Rivers: White Bear, Green Man. Theydon Bois: White Hart. Theydon Garnon: Merry Fiddlers. Great Hallingbury: George. Latton: Sun and Whalebone, Bush Fair House. Fyfield: Black Bull, Queen’s Head. Lambourne: White Hart, Blue Boar. High Laver: Chequer. Little Laver: Leather Bottle. Magdalen Laver: Green Man. Chipping Ongar: White Horse, King’s Head, Anchor, Crown, Red Lion, Bull, Cock. High Ongar: Red Lion, White Horse, Two Brewers. Harlow: King’s Head, Black Bull, George, Green Man, White Horse, Horns and Horseshoes, Queen’s Head, Black Lion, Marquis of Granby. Hatfield Broad Oak: Plume of Feathers, White Horse, Cock, Duke’s Head, Bald-Faced Stag, Red Lion, Crown. Sheering: Crown, Cock. Netteswell: White Horse, Chequer. Great Parndon: Cock, Three Horse Shoes.
In the last edition of the London Directory, 82 firms are still described as “sign-painters,” and in the Essex Directory, 10; but it is certain that most of these follow also some other trade than sign-painting. In some cases artists of eminence have been known to paint signs for inns, but there does not appear to have been any notable instances of this in Essex. As a rule our pictorial sign-boards are not works of art. That this is a common failing elsewhere, is shown by the fact that the French say of a bad portrait or picture, “qu’il n’est bon qu’à faire une enseigne à bière.” Signs, it must be admitted, are among those things which the enlightenment of this go-ahead nineteenth century is rapidly improving off the face of the earth. Yet one cannot but agree with the writer in Frazer’s Magazine, already quoted, who aptly observes that it is a thousand pities the old signs were ever taken down. “Men might,” he says, “read something of history (to say nothing of a hash of heraldry) in their different devices.”
This decay in the use of inn-signs, however, is no greater than the decline in importance of the inns themselves. These have within quite recent years fallen from a position of great eminence and prosperity to one of comparative degradation. Up to about fifty years ago, inns were the centres round which most events of the time revolved. They combined within themselves, to a very large extent, the various uses to which modern clubs, reading-rooms, institutes, railway stations, restaurants, eating-houses, hotels, public-houses, livery-stables, and the like are now severally put. At present the majority of our inns are little more than tippling-houses or drinking-places for the poorer classes. The upper stratum of society has but little connection with them, beyond receiving their rents.
Nothing has done more to promote this lowering of the status of modern inns in general than the disuse of coaching. Inns were the starting-points and destinations of the old coaches, and travellers naturally put up and took their meals at them. Now people travel by rail, stop at railway stations, put up at the “Railway Hotel,” and get their meals in the station “refreshment rooms.” In days, too, when country inns formed the stopping-places of the coaches they naturally became important centres of information. In this they answered the purpose to which clubs, institutes, reading-rooms, and the like are now put. The cheap newspapers of to-day have given another serious shock to the old tavern life of last century. Then, too, the innumerable horses, needed for the many coaches on the great high-roads of fifty or a hundred years ago, were kept at the inns, to the great advantage of the latter. Now the various railway companies, of course, provide their own engines, and the old-fashioned inns have to content themselves with a very limited posting or omnibus business.
It is, indeed, not too much to say that in the old coaching days a small town or village on any main road often consisted largely or almost entirely of inns, and lived upon the traffic. Supplying the necessaries for this traffic may be said to have been “the local industry” by which the inhabitants of such places lived. Evidences of this may be gained from not a few old books. Thus in Ogilby’s Traveller’s Guide, a book of the roads published in 1699, Bow, near Stratford, is said to be “full of inns,” while Stratford and Kelvedon are both spoken of as “consisting chiefly of inns.” Again, in Daniel Defoe’s Tour through the whole Island of Great Britain, published in 1724 (vol. i. p. 52), it is said that—
“Brent-Wood and Ingarstone, and even Chelmsford itself, have very little to be said of them, but that they are large thorough-fair Towns, full of good Inns, and chiefly maintained by the excessive Multitude of Carriers and Passengers, which are constantly passing this Way, with Droves of Cattle, Provisions, and Manufactures for London.”
Few persons of the present day have any adequate idea of the extent to which tavern life influenced thought and manners seventy, eighty, or one hundred years ago. Each man then had his tavern, much as we now have our clubs and reading-rooms. There he met his friends every evening, discussed the political questions of the day, talked over business topics, and heard the expensive and highly-valued London newspapers read aloud. Dickens, in Barnaby Rudge, has well sketched the select village company, which, for forty or fifty years, had met nightly in the bar of the old Maypole to tipple and debate. Ale was the universal beverage on these occasions, and the fame of any given tavern was great or small according to the skill of the landlord or his servants in producing this beverage. It was not then, as now, the product of colossal breweries at Burton, Romford, or elsewhere, but was entirely brewed upon the premises of those who retailed it. Such customs as these, however, are now almost entirely of the past.
We will now return once more to the discussion of sign-boards and their modern degeneration. When signs were in general use by all tradesmen, it was but natural that people should endeavour to outvie one another in the prominence and obtrusiveness of their sign-boards. Exactly the same thing may be seen at the present day on any hoarding which the bill-sticker has ornamented with his flaring posters. These are of all imaginable colours and designs, in order to advertise and draw attention to the wares of rival tradesmen, each of whom endeavours to obtain greater publicity and attract more attention than his neighbour. Many were the devices made use of a century or more ago to draw attention to the sign-boards of those times. Some of the boards were made of enormous size; others were painted in flaring colours; others bore striking or amusing devices, likely to be remembered by those who saw them; while others were projected far out into the street, or hung in elaborate and ornamental frameworks of iron. When each man endeavoured to outdo his neighbour in these particulars, it may well be imagined that no slight inconvenience was caused to the public. Complaints that the size and prominence of the sign-boards in the London streets prevented the access of sunlight and the free circulation of the air began to be heard, according to Messrs. Larwood and Hotten, as early as the beginning of the fifteenth century, and an order was made to do away with the nuisance. In the course of time, however, the evil grew again, till Charles II., in 1667, “ordered that in all the streets no sign-board shall hang across, but that the sign shall be fixed against the balconies, or some convenient part of the side of the house.” Again, however, the nuisance grew, and in 1762 large powers were once more granted for clearing away the too obtrusive sign-boards, and very many were taken down.
In France and other continental countries the same evil has had to be grappled with. Time after time, as reference to the works previously mentioned will show, the police of Paris and other large towns have issued orders concerning the pulling down and putting up of sign-boards. All Parisian signs are, consequently, now fastened to the fronts of the houses.