Charles G. Harper

INNS WITH RELICS AND CURIOSITIES

Just as most cathedrals, and many ancient churches, are in these days unconsciously looked upon by antiquaries rather as museums than as places of worship, so many ancient inns attract the tourist and the artist less as places for rest and refreshment than subjects for the pencil, the brush, or the camera; or as houses where relics, curious or beautiful, remain, of bygone people, or other times. Happy the traveller, with a warm corner in his heart for such things, who comes at the close of day to a house historic or well stored with such links that connect us with the past.

There are, indeed, even in these days, when many a house has been ransacked of its interesting features, to furnish museums and private collections, still a goodly number of inns containing curious relics, old panelling, and ancient furniture. Still, for example, at the “Green Dragon,” Combe St. Nicholas, two miles from Chard, the fifteenth-century carved oak settle of pronounced ecclesiastical character remains in the tap-room, and beery rustics continue to this day to use it, even as did their remote ancestors, the Colin Clouts of over four hundred years ago; while at Ipswich, in the “Neptune” inn that was once a private mansion before it entered public life, the fine Tudor dresser, or sideboard, with elaborately carved Renaissance canopy and “linen-fold” panelling, is yet left, despite the persuasions and the long purses of would-be purchasers.

There are two evil fates constantly threatening the artistic work of our forbears: the one the unappreciative neglect that threatens its very existence, and the other the appreciation that, only too appreciative, tears it from its accustomed place, to be the apple of some collector’s jealous eye. To filch from old inn or manor-house, down on its luck, the carved overmantels or panelling built into the place is as mean and despicable a thing as to sneak the coppers out of a blind beggar’s tin mug—nay, almost as sacrilegious as to purloin the contents of the offertory-bag; but it is not commonly so regarded. For example, the “Tankard” tavern at Ipswich, once the town mansion of no less a person than Sir Anthony Wingfield, Captain of the Guard to Henry the Eighth, possessed a grandly panelled room with a highly elaborate chimney-piece representing the Judgment of Paris; but in 1843 the whole was taken down and re-erected at the country house of the Cobbolds.

Still, fortunately, at the “Trevelyan Arms,” Barnstaple, the fine old plaster fireplace remains, together with a good example at the “Three Tuns,” Bideford; while doubtless numerous other instances will be borne in mind by readers of these pages.

A “FENNY POPPER.”

We deal, however, more largely here with relics of a more easily removable kind, such, for example, as those odd pieces of miniature ordnance, the “Fenny Poppers,” formerly kept at the “Bull,” Fenny Stratford, but now withdrawn within the last year from active service, to be found reclining, in company with the churchyard grass-mower and a gas-meter, in a cupboard within the tower of the church. The “Fenny Poppers,” six in number, closely resemble in size and shape so many old-fashioned jugs or tankards. They are of cast-iron, about ten inches in length, and furnished with handles, and were presented to the town of Fenny Stratford in 1726 by Browne Willis, a once-noted antiquary, who rebuilt the church and dedicated it to St. Martin, in memory of his father, who was born in St. Martin’s Lane and died on St. Martin’s Day. These “cannon” were to be fired annually on that day, and to be followed by morning service in the church and evening festivities at the “Bull”—a custom still duly honoured, with the difference that this ancient park of artillery has recently been replaced by two small cannon, kept at the vicarage.

THE “BELL,” WOODBRIDGE.

How far one of the old-fashioned hay and straw weighing-machines, once common in East Anglia, but now growing scarce, may be reckoned a curiosity must be left to individual taste and fancy; but there can be no difference of opinion as to the picturesque nature of these antique contrivances. The example illustrated here gives an additionally pictorial quality to the “Bell” inn and to the view down the long street at Woodbridge. Cartloads of hay and straw, driven under these machines, were lifted bodily by means of the chains attached to them, and weighed by means of the lever with the sliding weight, seen projecting over the road. The innate artistry of the old craftsmen in wrought-iron is noticeable even here, in this business-like contrivance; for you see clearly how the man who wrought the projecting arm was not content to fashion it merely to a commonplace end, but must needs, to satisfy his own Æsthetic feeling, finish it off with little quirks and twirls that still, coming boldly as they do against the sky-line, gladden the heart of the illustrator.

THE “RED LION,” MARTLESHAM.

There was, until recent years, a similar machine attached to the “King’s Head” inn, at the entrance to Great Yarmouth, and there still exists one at King’s Lynn and another at Soham.

A rustic East Anglian inn that is alike beautiful in itself and in its tree-enshrouded setting, is the “Red Lion,” Martlesham. It possesses the additional claim to notice of its red lion sign being no less interesting a relic than the figurehead of one of the Hollanders’ ships that took part in the battle of Sole Bay, fought between Dutch and English, March 28th, 1672, off Southwold. He is a lion of a semi-heraldic type supporting a shield, and maintained carefully in a vermilion post-office hue.

That well-known commercial hotel at Burton-on-Trent, styled nowadays the “Queen’s Hotel,” but formerly the “Three Queens,” from an earlier house on the site having been visited at different times by Queen Elizabeth, Mary, Queen of Scots, and Queen Adelaide, still displays in its hall the cloak worn by the Queen of Scots’ coachman, probably during the time of her captivity at Tutbury Castle, near by. Why he should have left it behind is not stated; but as the garment—an Inverness cape of very thin material—is figured all over with the particularly vivid and variegated Stuart tartan—all scarlet, blue, and green—the conjecture may be hazarded that he was ashamed any longer to wear such a strikingly conspicuous article of attire in a country where it probably attracted the undesirable attentions of rude boys and other people who, most likely, took him for some mountebank, and wanted to know when the performance began.

“DEAN SWIFT’S CHAIR,” TOWCESTER.

The Holyhead Road, rich in memories of Dean Swift travelling to and from Ireland, has, in the “Talbot” inn at Towcester, a house associated with him. The “Talbot,” the property of the Sponne Charity since 1440, was sold about 1895 to a firm of brewers, and a chair, traditionally said to have been used by the Dean, was at the same time removed to the Town Hall, where, in the offices of the solicitor to the feoffees of the Charity, it remains. It will be observed that the chair was of a considerable age, even in Swift’s time. An ancient fragment of coloured glass, displaying the arms of William Sponne, remains in one of the windows of the “Talbot,” and on a pane of another may be seen scratched the words “Gilbert Gurney,” presumably the handiwork of Theodore Hook.

The “Bear,” at Esher, properly the “Black Bear,” is an old coaching- and posting-house. Still you see, on the parapet, the effigies of two bears, squatting on their rumps and stroking their stomachs in a manner strongly suggestive of repletion or indigestion. Sometimes the pilgrim of the roads finds them painted white, and on other occasions—in defiance of natural history—they have become pink; all according to the taste and fancy of the landlord for the time being. Whoever, that was not suffering from delirium tremens, saw such a thing as a pink bear?

Among other, and less interesting, relics in the entrance-hall of this house, the visitor’s attention is at once struck by a glass case containing a huge and clumsy pair of jack-boots closely resembling the type of foot-gear worn by Marlborough and his troopers in the long ago, at Blenheim, Ramillies, and Malplaquet. They are not, however, of so great an age as that, nor associated with warlike campaigns, for they were worn by the post-boy who, in 1848, drove Louis Philippe, the fugitive King of the French, to his refuge at neighbouring Claremont.

BOOTS AT THE “BEAR,” ESHER.

Certainly unique is the “George and Dragon” inn at Dragon’s Green, between Shipley and Horsham, in Sussex. Dragon’s Green (which doubtless derives its name from the inn-sign) is among the tiniest of hamlets, and few are those wayfarers who find their way to it, unless indeed they have any particular business there. In fact, so out of the world is it that those who inquire for Dragon’s Green, even at Horsham, are like to ask many people before they happen upon any one who has ever heard of the place. But who should have any business, save curiosity, at Dragon’s Green, it is somewhat difficult to conceive. Since 1893, however, it has been the bourne of those curiosity-mongers who have by chance heard of the tombstone erected by the roadside there, in the front garden of the inn. To the stranger who has never heard of this oddity, and comes unexpectedly upon it, the sight of a solemn white marble cross in a place so generally associated with conviviality is nothing less than startling. The epitaph upon it reads:

IN LOVING MEMORY OF
WALTER,
THE “ALBINO” SON OF
ALFRED AND CHARLOTTE BUDD,
born Feby. 12th, 1867, died Feby. 18th, 1893.
May God forgive those who forgot their duty
to him who was just and afflicted.

This Cross was erected on the Grave in
Shipley Churchyard, and Removed by order of
H. Gorham (Vicar).
Two Globe Wreaths placed on the Grave
by Friends, and after being there over
Two Years were Removed by
E. Arkle, Following (Vicar).

It seems, then, that this is to the memory of a son of the innkeeper, who committed suicide by drowning, owing to being worried in some local dispute. The Vicar of Shipley appears to have considered some portion of the epitaph to be a reflection upon himself, and consequently, in that Czar-like spirit of autocracy not infrequent in rural clergymen, ordered its removal. The cross was thereupon re-erected here, and is so conspicuous an object, and is attaining such notoriety, that the vicar has probably long since regretted his not allowing it to remain in its original obscurity. A great many efforts have been made by local magnates of one kind and another to secure its removal from this situation, and the innkeeper’s brewers even have been approached for this purpose, but as the innkeeper happens to be also the freeholder, and the house consequently not a “tied” one, the requisite leverage is not obtainable.

Although the house looks so modern when viewed from the outside, acquaintance with its quaint parlour reveals the fact that one of the oaken beams is dated 1577, and that the old fireback in the capacious ingle-nook was cast in the year 1622.

THE “GEORGE AND DRAGON,” DRAGON’S GREEN.

The “White Bull” at the little Lancashire “town” of Ribchester, which still clings stoutly to the name of town, although it is properly a village, since its inhabitants number but 1,265, has some ancient relics in the shape of Roman columns, now used to support the porch and a projecting wing of the building. They are four in number, of a debased Doric character, and between six and seven feet high. They are said to be remains of the temple of Minerva, once standing in the Roman city of Coccium or Bremetennacum that once stood here, and were fished out of the river Ribble that now gives a name to Ribchester.

THE “WHITE BULL,” RIBCHESTER.

The effigy of the White Bull himself, that projects boldly from the front of the house, is a curiosity in its own way, and more nearly resembles the not very meaty breed of cattle found in toy Noah’s Arks, than anything that grazes in modern meadows.

From Lancashire to Yorkshire, in quest of inns, we come to the cathedral city of Ripon, and the “Unicorn” Hotel.

BOOTS OF THE “UNICORN,” RIPON.

No inn could have possessed a greater curiosity than grotesque Tom Crudd, who for many years was “Boots” at the “Unicorn,” and by his sheer physical peculiarities has achieved a kind of eccentric fame. “Old Boots,” as he was familiarly known by many who never learned his real name, flourished from the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, and lies, now that all his boot-cleaning is done, somewhere in the Minster yard.

This extraordinary person was endowed by nature with a nose and chin so enormously long, and so lovingly tending to embrace one another, that at length he acquired the power of holding a piece of money between them, and so turned his deformity to practical and commercial account. It was a part of his duty to wait upon travellers arriving at the inn, to assist them in taking off their boots. He usually introduced himself, as in the picture, with a pair of slippers in one hand, and a boot-jack in the other, and we are told that the company were generally so diverted by his appearance that they would frequently give him a piece of money, on condition that he held it between his nose and chin.

Other times, other tastes in amusement, and it is scarce possible that modern travellers would relish such an exhibition, even if provided gratis.

The “Castle Hotel” at Conway has an interesting and historic object, in the shape of an authentic contemporary portrait of Dame Joan Penderel, mother of the Penderel brothers of Boscobel, who secreted Charles the Second in the “Royal Oak.” It came to the hotel as a bequest to the landlord, from a friend who in his turn had received it from a man who had bought it among a number of household odds and ends belonging to two old maiden ladies of Broseley, connections of the Penderel family. It was then, to all appearance, nothing more than a dirty old stretched canvas that had long been used as “blower” to a kitchen fire; but, on being cleaned, was found to be a portrait of a woman wearing an old-fashioned steeple-crowned hat, and holding in her hand a rose. The portrait would never have been identified, but fortunately it was inscribed “Dame Pendrell, 1662.”

THE “RED LION,” CHISWICK.

A curious relic is to be seen to this day, chained securely to the doorway of the “Red Lion” inn at Chiswick. There are, in effect, two Chiswicks: the one the Chiswick of the Chiswick High Road, where the electric tramcars run, and the other the original waterside village in a bend of the river: a village of which all these portents of the main road are merely offshoots. In these latter days the riverside Chiswick is becoming more or less of a foul slum, but still, by the old parish church and the famous Mall—that roadway running alongside the river—there are old and stately houses, and quaint corners. It is here you find the “Red Lion”; not an ancient inn, nor yet precisely a new: a something between waterside tavern and public-house. It has a balcony looking out upon the broad river, and it also displays—as do many other waterside inns—drags and lifebelts, the rather grim reminders of waterside dangers. At hand is Chiswick Eyot, an island densely covered with osier-beds; and hay- and brick-barges wallow at all angles in the foreshore mud. The relic so jealously chained in the doorway of the “Red Lion” is a huge whetstone, some eighteen inches long, inscribed: “I am the old Whetstone, and have sharpned tools on this spot above 1000 years.” Marvellous!—but not true, and you who look narrowly into it will discover that at some period an additional “0” has been added to the original figure of 100, by some one to whom the antiquity of merely one century was not sufficient. This is readily discoverable by all who will take the trouble to observe that the customary spacing between all the other words is missing between “1000” and “years.”

The whetstone has, however, been here now considerably over a century. It existed on this spot in the time of Hogarth, whose old residence is near at hand; and at that time the inn, of which the present building is a successor, bore the sign of the “White Bear and Whetstone.” The stone then had a further inscription, long since rubbed away, “Whet without, wet within.”

The whetstone is thus obviously in constant use. And who, think you, chiefly use it? The mowers who cut the osiers of Chiswick Eyot. It was for their convenience, in sharpening their scythes—and incidentally to ensure that they “wetted their whistles” here—that the long-forgotten tapster first placed the whetstone in his doorway.

Among inns with relics the “Widow’s Son” must undoubtedly be included. Unfortunately it is by no means a picturesque inn, and is, in plain, unlovely fact, an extremely commonplace, not to say pitifully mean and ugly, plaster-faced public-house in squalid Devons Road, Bromley-by-Bow.

The history of the “Widow’s Son” is a matter of tradition, rather than of sheer ascertainable fact. According to generally received accounts, the present house, which may, by the look of it, have been built about 1860, was erected upon the site of a cottage occupied by a widow whose only son “went for a sailor.” Not only did he, against her wishes, take up the hazardous trade of seafaring, but he must needs further tempt Fate by sailing on a Friday, and, of all possible Fridays, a Good Friday! Such perversity, in all old sailor-men’s opinions, could only lead to disaster; it would be, in such circles, equivalent to committing suicide.

THE OLD WHETSTONE.

The widow, however, expected the return of her rash son on the anniversary of his departure, and put aside a “hot cross bun” for him. Good Friday passed, and no familiar footstep came to the threshold, and the days, weeks, and months succeeded one another until at last Easter came round again. Hoping fondly against hope, the widow put aside another bun for the wanderer: in vain. Year by year she maintained the custom; but the son lay drowned somewhere “full fathom deep,” and the mother never again saw him on earth.

In the fulness of time she died, and strangers came and were told the story of that accumulated store of stale buns. And then the cottage was demolished and the present house built, taking its name from this tale. And ever since, with every recurrent Easter, a bun is added to the great store that is by this time accumulated in the wire-netting hanging from the ceiling of the otherwise commonplace bar. Then the story is told anew; not with much apparent interest nor belief in the good faith of it; but sentiment lurks in the heart, even though it refuse to be spoken, and the flippant stranger is apt to find himself unexpectedly discouraged.

On Good Friday, 1906, the sixty-eighth annual bun, stamped with the date, was duly added to the dried, smoke-begrimed and blackened collection.

HOT CROSS BUNS AT THE “WIDOW’S SON.”

We must perhaps include among inns with relics those modern public-houses whose owners, as a bid for custom, have established museums of more or less importance on their premises. Among these the “Edinburgh Castle,” in Mornington Road, Regent’s Park, is prominent, and boasts no fewer than three eggs of the Great Auk, whose aggregate cost at auction was 620 guineas. They were, of course, all purchased at different times, for Great Auk’s eggs do not come into the country, like the “new-laid” products of the domestic fowls, by the gross. The Great Auk, in fact, is extinct, and the eggs are exceedingly rare, as may be judged by the price they command. “Great,” of course, is a relative term, and in this case a considerable deal of misapprehension as to the size of the eggs originally existed in the minds of many customers of the “Edinburgh Castle.” In especial, the newspaper reports of how Mr. T. G. Middlebrook, the proprietor, had given 200 guineas for the third egg in his collection, excited the interest of a cabman, who drove all the way from Charing Cross to see the marvel. When he was shown, reposing in a plush-lined case, an egg not much larger than that of a goose, his indignation was pathetic.

“Where is it?” he asked....

“Wot? Thet? ’Corl thet a Great Hork’s Hegg? W’y, from wot they tole me, I thort it was abaht the size of me bloomin’ keb!”

But they have no roc’s eggs, imported from the pages of the Arabian Nights, at the “Edinburgh Castle.”

One of the most cherished items in the collection is what is described as “Fagin’s Kitchen,” the interior of a thieves’ kitchen brought from an old house on Saffron Hill, pulled down some years ago. You are shown “the frying-pan in which Fagin cooked Oliver’s sausages,” and “Fagin’s Chair,” together with an undoubted “jemmy” found under the flooring, and not identified with any Old Master in the art of burglary.

Down in the Vale of Health, on Hampstead Heath, the pilgrim in search of cooling drinks on dry and dusty public holidays may find a public-house museum that cherishes “one of Dick Turpin’s pistols”; a pair of Dr. Nansen’s glasses; a stuffed civet-cat; the helmet of one of the Russian Imperial Guard, brought from the battlefields of the Crimea; and the skull of a donkey said to have belonged to Nell Gwynne: a fine confused assortment, surely!

More serious, and indeed, of some importance, is the collection of preserved birds, beasts, fishes, and insects, originally founded by the East London Entomological Society, shown at the “Bell and Mackerel” in Mile End Road. The exhibition numbers 20,000 specimens in 500 separate cases.

In the same road may be found the public-house called “The 101,” containing an oil-painting of three quaint-looking persons, inscribed, “These three men dranke in this house 101 pots of porter in one day, for a wager.” The work of art is displayed in the bar, as an inducement to others to follow the example set by those champions; but the age of heroes is past.