OLD INNS AND THEIR ARCHITECTURE

Although many of our country inns must in their structural substance date from the reigns of Edward III and Richard II, and some, like the Red Lion at Wingham, and the White Hart at Newark, possess features that are without doubt fourteenth-century work, the earliest examples worthy of extended description and classification date from the middle of the fifteenth century. The enormous development of trade, and the wealth of the towns at this period, occasioned the building of hostelries so magnificent in size and so well adapted for comfort that they have often served through the strain and stress of coaching days. Some of these inns are well worthy of being compared with the grand parish churches which the same age has bequeathed to us.

Hidden behind a corner of the market-place at Aylesbury is the noble old King’s Head, presenting to a narrow turning its broad mullioned windows and Tudor entrance gateway. The interior has an open spacious staircase, and a lofty tap-room with massive oak cornice, and moulded ceiling-ribs meeting in a carved boss. It is lighted by a magnificent window, the ancient stained glass in which represents the arms of England and France quartered, the arms of Margaret of Anjou, and numerous heraldic and ecclesiastical symbols. A strong opinion exists that this house was a refectory for the Grey Friars; others have suggested that it was a hall of one of the town Guilds, built soon after the marriage of Henry VI, in 1444. With regard to the glass, there is some question whether it was not brought hither from some other position, especially as one of the heraldic shields has been reversed during insertion. But the whole apartment remains very much in its original state except that the chimney piece is ordinary and modern.

King’s Head, Aylesbury

The yard of the old King’s Head is still a busy picturesque one on market days, but the scene has lost a delightful background since the removal of the old galleries.

Even finer in its carvings and the richly-moulded cornice and ceiling beams is the great hall in the Bull at Long Melford. Probably this is a little earlier in date than the Aylesbury house. Unfortunately, the beauty of this exquisite hall is marred by glass partitions and modern wall decoration of an inferior quality. Three miles away at Sudbury there is another Bull also of Edwardian date, full of quaint nooks and retaining its original front, altered only by the insertion of a few eighteenth-century window frames. It stands near the site of an old friary, but we are inclined to believe that it owes its name, not to a monastic origin, but to the Black Bull of the House of Clarence.

Tap-room at the Bull, Sudbury

Other fine old inns of this period are the New Inn at Gloucester, built by Abbot Seabrook from the designs of John Twyning, a monk; the Sun at Feering in Essex, formerly a manor-house; and the George at Glastonbury, unique in the possession of its original stone front, bold oriels and richly-traceried windows. The Crown at Shipton-under-Wychwood has a fine archway in the Perpendicular style and also some mullioned windows.

Nearer London is the White Hart at Brentwood. “There are few hostelries in England,” says Albert Smith, “into which a traveller would sooner turn for entertainment for himself and animal than that of the White Hart, whose effigy looks placidly along the principal street from his lofty bracket, secured thereto by a costly gilt chain, which assuredly prevents him from jumping down and plunging into the leafy glades and coverts within view. And when you enter the great gate, there is a friendly look in the old carved gallery running above the yard, which speaks of comfort and hospitality; you think at once of quiet chambers; beds into which you dive, and sink at least three feet down, for their very softness; with sweet, clean, country furniture, redolent of lavender. The pantry, too, is a thing to see, not so much for the promise of refection which it discloses, as for its blue Dutch tiles, with landscapes thereon, where gentlemen of meditative minds, something between Quakers and British yeomen, are walking about in wonderful coats, or fishing in troubled waters; all looking as if they were very near connections of the celebrated pedestrian, Christian, as he appeared in the old editions of ‘The Pilgrim’s Progress.’” And the White Hart at Brentwood remains a treasure among old inns, although fate has not been kind to it during the sixty years since little Fred Scattersgood found shelter there when running away from persecution at Merchant Taylors’ School. Depressed Tudor arches, framed in dark oak, open into each of its two great yards, and an early Tudor arcading forms the front of the gallery, a retreat from which the fair dames of Brentwood were wont to watch the cock-fightings. Just inside the principal entrance will be found some excellent renaissance woodwork.

“The King’s Head,” Loughton, Essex

At Alfriston, in Sussex, is the Star Inn, small in size, but of the highest interest. On brackets on each side of the doorway are mitred figures of St. Giles with a hind and St. Julian, the patrons of weary wayfarers. A beam in the parlour is ornamented with a shield and the sacred monogram, and all kinds of curious carvings abound in the building. In the dining-room upstairs, suggestive of an old ship’s cabin, the solid construction of the fine old roof may be studied. For four centuries it has borne its coverings of thick Horsham stone slabs without shifting, and seems sound enough to resist time for a long period to come. Antiquarians have supposed this inn to have been erected as a pilgrim’s hostel, but it seems scarcely probable that voyagers, even if they landed at Seaford, would take this route either to Canterbury or Chichester. It belonged to the Abbey of Battle, and the many ecclesiastical carvings may be ascribed to the monkish craftsmen. Just above a facetious, smiling lion thickly bedaubed with red paint, and evidently the figure-head of a ship stranded on this dangerous coast, is the carver’s mark showing the date of the building. A rude heraldic design on the angle bracket, represents a coronetted ragged staff supported by a bear and a lion with a twisted tail. In 1495, Edmund Dudley married Elizabeth Grey, last heiress of Warwick the “King-maker.” The union of the Green Lion with the Bear and Ragged Staff was a great event for the Sussex people. Edmund Dudley was brought up at Lewes Priory, and the hillfolk were proud of his success in becoming the chief minister of his time.

The Maid’s Head at Norwich, so far as the older part of this excellent house is concerned, is chiefly Elizabethan and early Jacobean; thanks to the careful restoration and the valuable collection of old furniture introduced by Mr. Walter Rye, much of the interior helps us to realise what an old inn looked like two or three centuries ago. But the Maid’s Head has a more ancient history, and can boast of a Norman cellar (a relic of the Bishop’s Palace), while in the drawing-room, a real fifteenth-century fireplace, discovered in the thickness of the wall, has been opened up and correctly fitted with dogs and hood. The panelled billiard-room, cosy Jacobean bar, and the music gallery in the assembly room (like the “Elevated Den” in the Bull at Rochester), are all delightful. The only fault we can find at the Maid’s Head is that the old inn-yard, now converted into a lounge, has been roofed in with glass at too low a level. A much better effect would have been attained by introducing the glazed protection high above the galleries, as has been done in the yard of the Rose and Crown at Sudbury.

Sun Inn, Feering

Another Elizabethan inn of note is the Star at Great Yarmouth, built by a local merchant, William Crowe, at the end of the sixteenth century. Here the Nelson Room, so called from a famous portrait of Lord Nelson, is beautifully panelled in dark oak. When the match-boarding was torn down for repairs about forty years ago the original fireplace and chimney-piece were discovered and restored. Over the mantel are the arms of the Merchant Adventurers who received their charters from Queen Elizabeth.

The exact date of the Feathers at Ludlow is not very easy to determine, but it must have existed before 1609, when Rees Jones took a lease of the premises; and the initials “R. I.” on the lockplate probably refer to him. The splendid carved front with a gallery of spiral balusters, the studded door, elaborate ceilings, fireplaces and panelling are, of course, well known to all students, and illustrated in every collection. In 1616, there was a celebration in Ludlow of “The Love of Wales to their Sovereign Prince”; and from this event the inn must have received its name. It is the finest of all the Magpie half-timbered inns of Cheshire, Herefordshire, and Shropshire. By the time these lines are in print the famous “Globe Room” at the Reindeer at Banbury will have been exported to America, but a replica in all respects is to be erected in its place. A copy of the ceiling is already at the South Kensington Museum.

Many of the great coaching inns of the Queen Anne and Georgian eras are not lacking in good proportion and correct classic detail. But they lack the individuality of the very old inns, and a long description of them would interest only the purely architectural student. The artist will find effects of colour and lighting in the mouldering brick cornices at Godalming or Sittingbourne. The old ballrooms in county towns, now deserted for the modern Town Hall, and made to do duty as store rooms, are always worth peeping into; and little survivals of our forefathers’ habits of life are to be detected in the broad staircases and deep easy window seats. Hotel architecture continued to follow the fashion, and even the Greek revival early in the last century and the later Italian revival had their influence.

Some very curious examples of the Sir Charles Barry period are to be noted in the neighbourhood of the Crystal Palace. Fifty years of wear might make us forgive some of their eccentricities. Among these, one of the best from the architectural point of view, is the little Goat House Hotel in South Norwood, so named from a famous goat-breeding establishment which existed on an island of the Croydon Canal. The portico, cluster of narrow round-headed windows and slender Lombardic tower of this building are not bad, albeit hopelessly exotic. At least they show an attempt at artistic purpose during the years when public-house design was generally mechanical and sordid.

For the very queerest adaptation by a local builder of the style in vogue during the Greek revival, a visit must be paid to the Lisle Castle, on the Dover Road, about three miles beyond Gravesend.

The Noah’s Ark, Lurgashall

Old wayside inns, as a rule, have few architectural pretensions; good sound proportion, breadth of roof, bold chimney breasts, and age together suffice to make them attractive and dignified. Internally the tap-rooms are often panelled, and the ceilings crossed by many smoke-stained beams; with here and there a welcome chimney-corner. Ingle-nooks and chimney-corners are still fairly numerous even in the home counties. Surrey can boast of a good half-dozen; The Plough at Smallfield, near Red Hill, the Crown at Chiddingfold, the White Lion at Warlingham, may be given as instances—while there are more than one in that fine old Elizabethan inn, the Clayton Arms, formerly the White Hart at Godstone. Leaves Green and Groombridge own two out of the many scattered about Kent. In Sussex they are too common to require special notice.