(1114 × 858) D. 9B-1896.
6. Old Houses in Inner Yard of the White Hart, 1884 (Water-colour).
No. 6. OLD HOUSES. WHITE HART INN. SOUTHWARK.
Southwark being on the high road to the coast and to Canterbury, which contained the famous shrine of St. Thomas à Becket, was for centuries occupied by inns in number out of all proportion to ordinary shops and dwellings.
The Borough, according to a State Paper of 1619, "consists chiefly of inn-keepers." John Stow, in his Survey (1598), says, "from thence (the Marshalsea) towards London Bridge on the same side, be many fair inns for the receipt of travellers; by these signs: the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queen's Head, Tabard, George, Hart, King's Head," etc. Of older date (about 1542) is a map of Southwark, to be found among the Duchy of Lancaster Records in the Record Office, which shows almost all the more important Southwark inns. They were grouped together chiefly on the east side of what is now called the Borough High Street, the most distant not being more than a quarter of a mile apart. These inns had a gateway from the street, which was closed at night. Passing through this gateway one entered a yard, round which ran the galleries where the guests were housed. Beyond this again there was a larger yard, which contained the stabling, and where there were often various tenements. This was approached by a passage from the outer yard, and generally there was also access to it from behind.
The White Hart was perhaps the largest Southwark inn, and appears to have dated from the latter part of the 14th century, the sign being the badge of Richard II., derived from his mother, Joan of Kent. In the summer of 1450 it was Jack Cade's headquarters whilst he was striving to gain possession of London. Hall, in his Chronicle, thus speaks of him:—"The capitayn being advertized of the kynge's absence came first into Southwarke, and there lodged at the White Hart, prohibiting to all men Murder, Rape, or Robbery; by which colour he allured to him the hartes of the common people." It must have been by his orders, if not in his presence, that "at the Whyt harte in Southwarke, one Hawaydyne of sent Martyns was beheaded," as we are told in the Chronicle of the Grey Friars. Here, too, Sir John Fastolfe's servant, Payne, was despoiled and threatened with death. Cade's success was of short duration: his followers wavered; he said, or might have said, in the words of Shakespeare (2 Henry VI., act iv., sc. 8), "Hath my sword therefore broke through London gates that you should leave me at the White Hart in Southwark?" The outbreak collapsed, and our inn is not heard of again for many years. In 1529 a message was sent to Thomas Cromwell, the notorious minister of Henry VIII., by some one asking for an interview at the White Hart. In 1669 the back of the inn was burnt down; and on May 26, 1676, a most destructive fire occurred in Southwark, when according to the best authorities, no fewer than 500 houses were either burnt or blown up. The White Hart was quite destroyed, but was rebuilt shortly afterwards on the old foundations, at a cost of £2,400. In 1720 Strype describes it as "very large and of a considerable trade, being esteemed one of the best inns in Southwark," and it so continued until the early years of the 19th century. Charles Dickens, in the tenth chapter of Pickwick, has given us the following graphic description of the house when something of its old prosperity still clung to it:—
"In the Borough especially, there still remain some half dozen old inns, which have preserved their external features unchanged and which have escaped alike the rage for public improvement and the encroachment of private speculation. Great, rambling, queer old places they are, with galleries, and passages, and staircases, wide enough and antiquated enough to furnish material for a hundred ghost stories. It was in the yard of one of these inns—of no less celebrated a one than the White Hart—that a man was busily employed in brushing the dirt off a pair of boots, early on the morning succeeding the events narrated in the last chapter. The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three or four lumbering wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample canopy, about the height of the second floor window of an ordinary house, were stowed away beneath a lofty roof, which extended over one end of the yard; and another, which was probably to commence its journey that morning, was drawn out into the open space. A double tier of bedroom galleries, with old clumsy balustrades, ran round two sides of the straggling area, and a double row of bells to correspond, sheltered from the weather by a little sloping roof, hung over the door leading to the bar and coffee-room. Two or three gigs and chaise-carts were wheeled up under different little sheds and penthouses; and the occasional heavy tread of a cart-horse, or rattling of a chain at the further end of the yard, announced to anybody who cared about the matter, that the stable lay in that direction. When we add that a few boys in smock frocks were lying asleep on heavy packages, woolpacks, and other articles that were scattered about on heaps of straw, we have described as fully as need be, the general appearance of the yard of the White Hart Inn, High Street, Borough, on the particular morning in question."