Old Country Inns Of England (1911) (e-book) (used book) | bookbook.eu

Description

“Why do your guide books tell us about nothing but Churches and Manor Houses?” Such was the not altogether unjustifiable complaint of an American friend whose motor car was undergoing repairs. He was stranded in a sleepy old market town of winding streets, overhanging structures and oddly set gables, where every stone and carved beam seemed only waiting an interpreter to unfold its story.
In the following pages we have attempted a classification and description of the inns, which not only sheltered our forefathers when on their journeys, but served as their usual places for meeting and recreation. The subject is by no means exhausted. All over England there are hundreds of other old inns quite as interesting as those which find mention, and it is hoped that our work may prove for many tourists the introduction to a most fascinating study.
Thoughtful men, including earnest Churchmen such as the Bishop of Birmingham and the Rev. H. R. Gamble, are asking the question whether the old inns should be allowed to disappear. The public house as a national institution has still its purposes to fulfil, and a few suggestions have therefore been included with a view of showing how it might easily be adapted to modern social needs.
MANORIAL INNS
Which among the thousand of old inns to be met with on our country roads has a right to be called the oldest? There are many claimants. The title-deeds of the Saracen’s Head at Newark refer back to 1341. Local antiquaries cite documentary evidence to prove that the Seven Stars at Manchester existed before the year 1356. Symond Potyn, who founded St. Catherine’s Hospital for poor Pilgrims at Rochester in 1316, is described as “of the Crown Inn.” A Nottingham ballad relates the adventures of one Dame Rose who kept the Ram in that town “in the days of good King Stephen.” Then we have the witness of the German Ambassador to the comfort and excellence of the Fountain at Canterbury, when he lodged there in 1299, on the occasion of the marriage of King Edward I to Margaret of France. Nay, the legend runs that within its walls the four murderers of St. Thomas arranged the last details of their plot in 1170, and that the wife of Earl Godwin stayed at this inn in 1029. But what are all these compared with the Fighting Cocks at St. Albans, said to be the oldest inhabited house in England? A few years ago its signboard modestly chronicled the fact that it had been “Rebuilt after the Flood.”
CONTENTS
Manorial Inns
Monastic Inns
The Hospices
The Rise of the Towns
The Craft Guilds and Traders’ Inns
Church Inns and Church Ales
Coaching Inns
Wayside Inns and Alehouses
Historic Signs and Historic Inns
Sports and Pastimes
The Inns of Literature and Art
Fanciful Signs and Curious Signboards
Haunted Inns
Old Inns and their Architecture
The Commercial Traveller
The New Inn and its Possibilities
Inn Furniture
The Innkeeper
Public House Reform
ILLUSTRATIONS
The Chequers, Loose
The King’s Arms, Hemel Hempstead
The Spread Eagle, Midhurst
The Bull, Sudbury
Pigeon House at the Bull, Long Melford
Yard of the White Horse, Dorking
The White Hart, Brentwood
The Swan, Felstead
The Bricklayers’ Arms, Caxton
The Golden Fleece, South Weald
Porch, Chalk Church, Kent
Church House, Penshurst
The Punch Bowl, High Easter
Yard of the White Hart, St. Albans
Coach Gallery at the Bull, Long Melford
Fireplace at the White Hart, Witham
Old Coaching Inns, St.