Half-timber House at Alcester
There is much in the neighbourhood of Evesham which is worthy of note, many old-fashioned villages and country towns, manor-houses, churches, and inns which are refreshing to the eyes of those who have seen so much destruction, so much of the England that is vanishing. The old abbey tithe-barn at Littleton of the fourteenth century, Wickhamford Manor, the home of Penelope Washington, whose tomb is in the adjoining church, the picturesque village of Cropthorne, Winchcombe and its houses, Sudeley Castle, the timbered houses at Norton and Harvington, Broadway and Campden, abounding with beautiful houses, and the old town of Alcester, of which some views are given—all these contain many objects of antiquarian and artistic interest, and can easily be reached from Evesham. In that old town we have seen much to interest, and the historian will delight to fight over again the battle of Evesham and study the records of the siege of the town in the Civil War.
CHAPTER X
OLD INNS
The trend of popular legislation is in the direction of the diminishing of the number of licensed premises and the destruction of inns. Very soon, we may suppose, the "Black Boy" and the "Red Lion" and hosts of other old signs will have vanished, and there will be a very large number of famous inns which have "retired from business." Already their number is considerable. In many towns through which in olden days the stage-coaches passed inns were almost as plentiful as blackberries; they were needed then for the numerous passengers who journeyed along the great roads in the coaches; they are not needed now when people rush past the places in express trains. Hence the order has gone forth that these superfluous houses shall cease to be licensed premises and must submit to the removal of their signs. Others have been so remodelled in order to provide modern comforts and conveniences that scarce a trace of their old-fashioned appearance can be found. Modern temperance legislators imagine that if they can only reduce the number of inns they will reduce drunkenness and make the English people a sober nation. This is not the place to discuss whether the destruction of inns tends to promote temperance. We may, perhaps, be permitted to doubt the truth of the legend, oft repeated on temperance platforms, of the working man, returning homewards from his toil, struggling past nineteen inns and succumbing to the syren charms of the twentieth. We may fear lest the gathering together of large numbers of men in a few public-houses may not increase rather than diminish their thirst and the love of good fellowship which in some mysterious way is stimulated by the imbibing of many pots of beer. We may, perhaps, feel some misgiving with regard to the temperate habits of the people, if instead of well-conducted hostels, duly inspected by the police, the landlords of which are liable to prosecution for improper conduct, we see arising a host of ungoverned clubs, wherein no control is exercised over the manners of the members and adequate supervision impossible. We cannot refuse to listen to the opinion of certain royal commissioners who, after much sifting of evidence, came to the conclusion that as far as the suppression of public-houses had gone, their diminution had not lessened the convictions for drunkenness.
But all this is beside our subject. We have only to record another feature of vanishing England, the gradual disappearance of many of its ancient and historic inns, and to describe some of the fortunate survivors. Many of them are very old, and cannot long contend against the fiery eloquence of the young temperance orator, the newly fledged justice of the peace, or the budding member of Parliament who tries to win votes by pulling things down.
We have, however, still some of these old hostelries left; medieval pilgrim inns redolent of the memories of the not very pious companies of men and women who wended their way to visit the shrines of St. Thomas of Canterbury or Our Lady at Walsingham; historic inns wherein some of the great events in the annals of England have occurred; inns associated with old romances or frequented by notorious highwaymen, or that recall the adventures of Mr. Pickwick and other heroes and villains of Dickensian tales. It is well that we should try to depict some of these before they altogether vanish.
There was nothing vulgar or disgraceful about an inn a century ago. From Elizabethan times to the early part of the nineteenth century they were frequented by most of the leading spirits of each generation. Archbishop Leighton, who died in 1684, often used to say to Bishop Burnet that "if he were to choose a place to die in it should be an inn; it looked like a pilgrim's going home, to whom this world was all as an Inn, and who was weary of the noise and confusion of it." His desire was fulfilled. He died at the old Bell Inn in Warwick Lane, London, an old galleried hostel which was not demolished until 1865. Dr. Johnson, when delighting in the comfort of the Shakespeare's Head Inn, between Worcester and Lichfield, exclaimed: "No, sir, there is nothing which has yet been contrived by man, by which so much happiness is provided as by a good tavern or inn." This oft-quoted saying the learned Doctor uttered at the Chapel House Inn, near King's Norton; its glory has departed; it is now a simple country-house by the roadside. Shakespeare, who doubtless had many opportunities of testing the comforts of the famous inns at Southwark, makes Falstaff say: "Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?"; and Shenstone wrote the well-known rhymes on a window of the old Red Lion at Henley-on-Thames:—