“But why isn’t it called Tabard Yard?”
“It was burnt down about seventy years after Shakespeare’s day, and rebuilt and re-christened, but this is the actual place on which the old Tabard stood. Let us cross the road. Do you see that Court nearly opposite?”
“St. Margaret’s Court,” Betty read as they turned into a dingy-looking place with rather old but very poverty-stricken houses on either side. “Why, this must be where St. Margaret’s Church stood, and where we saw the Miracle play in the Middle Ages!”
“It is. The church was still there when Shakespeare lived, though I doubt whether he saw a Miracle play acted. They had gone out of fashion in his day.”
“Well, I’m glad that at least the names of the old places are kept,” sighed Betty, “for there’s nothing else, is there? It’s all ugly and dirty and modern now. How I wish even one bit of an old inn was left!”
“Well, you have your wish,” said Godmother. “There is one tiny bit of an inn left standing. Come in here.”
They recrossed the road, and at No. 77 in the High Street entered a yard, the end of which was occupied by the carts and other belongings of a railway. But on the right, with its two rows of wooden galleries still there, stretched one wall of an ancient tavern.
“This is the George Inn, and, so far as I know, the only old one left in Southwark,” Godmother said. “Having seen the Tabard Inn as it looked in the days of Chaucer and Shakespeare, you can sweep away in thought, all the railway part of the yard, and see it as it used to be. But I agree with you that except for its memories, Southwark is dreary enough, though even now at the back of this High Street where in ancient times so many processions have passed in and out of London, there are old houses still standing.”
They took an omnibus again at the beginning of London Bridge, and looking back towards St. Saviour’s Church, she added, “There’s the only building which Shakespeare would recognize to-day, and even that is much altered since he lived near it three hundred years ago or more.”
“You said you’d take me to see the Charterhouse. Can’t we go now?” urged Betty, almost before they were off the bridge.