GALLOWS SIGNS

It is an ominous name, but the signs that straddle across the road, something after the fashion of football goals, have none other. The day of the gallows sign is done. It flourished most abundantly in the middle of the eighteenth century, when travellers progressed, as it would appear from old prints, under a constant succession of them; but examples are so few nowadays that they are remarkable by reason of their very scarcity, instead of, as formerly, by their number, their size, and their extravagant ornamentation.

The largest, the costliest, and the most extravagant gallows sign that ever existed was that of “Scole White Hart,” on the Norwich Road. The inn remains, but the sign itself disappeared somewhere about 1803, after an existence of 148 years, both house and sign having been built in 1655. Sir Thomas Browne thought it “the noblest sighne-post in England,” as surely it should have been, for it cost £1,057, and was crowded with twenty-five carved figures, some of them of gigantic size, of classic deities and others. Not satisfied with displaying Olympus on the cross-beam, and Hades, with Cerberus and Charon, at the foot of the supporting posts, James Peck, the Norwich merchant who built the house and paid for this galanty-show, caused the armorial bearings of himself and his wife, and those of twelve prominent East Anglian families, to be tricked out in prominent places.[2]

THE “GREYHOUND,” SUTTON.

It does not appear that Grosley, an inquiring and diligent note-taking Frenchman who travelled through England in 1765, noticed this remarkable sign, but so soon as he had landed at Dover he was impressed with the extravagance of signs of all sorts, and as he journeyed to London took note of their “enormous size,” the “ridiculous magnificence of the ornaments with which they are overcharged, and the height of a sort of triumphal arches that support them.” He and other foreigners travelling in England at that period soon discovered that innkeepers overcharged their signs and their guests with the utmost impartiality.

Misson, another of these inquisitive foreigners, had already, in 1719, observed the signs. He rather wittily likened them to “a kind of triumphal arch to the honour of Bacchus.”

It will be seen, therefore, that the surviving signs of this character are very few and very simple, in proportion to their old numbers and ancient extravagance. If we are to believe another eighteenth-century writer on this subject, who declared that most of the inscriptions on these signs were incorrectly spelled, inquiring strangers very often were led astray by the ridiculous titles given by that lack of orthography. “This is the Beer,” said one sign, intending to convey the information that the house was the “Bear”; but the reader will probably agree that the misspelling in this case was more to the point than even the true name of the inn. To know where the beer is; that is the main thing. Who cares what the sign may be, so long as the booze is there? Swipes are no better for a good sign, nor good ale worse for a bad.

The Brighton Road being so greatly travelled, we may claim for the gallows sign of the “George” at Crawley[3] a greater fame than any other, although that of the “Greyhound” at Sutton, on an alternative route, is very well known. The once pretty little weather-boarded inn has, unfortunately, of late been rebuilt in a most distressingly ugly fashion. The gallows sign of the “Cock” at Sutton was pulled down in 1898.[4]

THE “FOUR SWANS,” WALTHAM CROSS.

The “Greyhound” at Croydon owned a similar sign until 1890, when, on the High Street being widened and the house itself rebuilt, it was disestablished, the square foot of ground on which the supporting post stood, on the opposite side of the street, costing the Improvements Committee £350, in purchase of freehold and in compensation to the proprietor of the “Greyhound,” for loss of advertisement.

At Little Stonham, on the Norwich Road, the sign of the “Pie”[5]—i.e. the Magpie—spans the road, while at Waltham Cross, on the way to Cambridge, that queer, rambling old coaching inn, the “Four Swans,” still keeps its sign, whereon the four swans themselves, in silhouette against the sky, form a very striking picture, in conjunction with the old Eleanor Cross standing at the cross-roads.

An equally effective sign is that of the rustic little “Fox and Hounds” inn at Barley, where the hunt, consisting of the fox, five hounds and two huntsmen, is shown crossing the beam, the fox about to enter a little kennel-like contrivance in the thatched roof.

THE “FOX AND HOUNDS,” BARLEY.

One of the most prominent and familiar of gallows signs is that of the great, ducal-looking “George” Hotel at Stamford, on the Great North Road. It spans the famous highway, and is the sole advertisement of any description the house permits itself. There is nothing to inform the wayfarer what brewer’s “Fine Ales and Stouts” are dispensed within, nor what distiller’s or wine-merchant’s wines and spirits; and were it not for that sign, I declare you would take the “George” to be the ducal mansion already suggested, or, if not that, a bank at the very least of it. There is an awful, and an almost uncanny, dignity about the “George” that makes you feel it is very kind and condescending to allow you to enter Stamford at all. I have seen dusty and tired, but still hilarious, cyclists come into Stamford from the direction of London and, seeing the “George” at the very front door of the town, they have instantly felt themselves to be worms. Their instant thought is to disappear down the first drain-opening; but, finding that impossible, they have crept by, abashed, only hoping, like Paul Pry, they “don’t intrude.” Even the haughty (and dusty) occupants of six-cylindered, two-thousand-guinea motor-cars with weird foreign names, begin to look reverent when they draw up to the frontage. The “George,” in short, is to all other inns what the AthenÆum Club is to other clubs. I should not be surprised if it were incumbent upon visitors entering those austere portals to remove their foot-gear, as customary in mosques, nor would it astonish to hear that the head waiter was the performer of awful rites, the chambermaids priestesses, and to stay in the house itself a sacrament.

THE “GEORGE,” STAMFORD.

It is perhaps hardly necessary to say that the “George” at Stamford, in common with the many other inns of the same name throughout the country, derived the sign from the English patron saint, St. George, and not out of compliment to any one of our Four Georges. The existing house is largely of late eighteenth-century period, having been remodelled during those prosperous times of the road, to meet the greatly-increased coaching and posting business; and can have little likeness to the inn where Charles the First lay, on the night of Saturday, August 23rd, 1645, on the march with his army from Newark to Huntingdon.

In that older “George,” in 1714, another taste of warlike times was felt. The town was then full of the King’s troops, come to overawe Jacobites. Queen Anne was just dead, and Bolton, the tapster of the “George,” suspected of Jacobite leanings, was compelled by the military to drink on his bended knees to her memory. He was doing so, meekly enough, when a dragoon ran him through the heart with his sabre. A furious mob then assembled in front of the house, seeking to avenge him, and very quickly broke the windows of his house and threatened to entirely demolish it, if the murderer were not given up to them. We learn, however, that “the villain escaped backway, and the tumult gradually subsided.”

At the “George” in 1745, the Duke of Cumberland, the victor of Culloden, stayed, on his return, and in 1768, the King of Denmark; but I think the most remarkable thing about the “George” is that Margaret, eldest daughter of Bryan Hodgson, the landlord at that time, in 1765, married a clergyman who afterwards became Bishop of London. The Reverend Beilby Porteous was, at the time of his marriage, Vicar of Ruckinge and Wittersham, in Kent. In 1776 he became Bishop of Chester, and eleven years later was translated to London.

In 1776 the Reverend Thomas Twining wrote of the “distracting bustle of the ‘George,’ which exceeded anything I ever saw or heard.” All that has long since given place to the gravity and sobriety already described, and the great central entrance for the coaches has for many years past been covered over and converted into halls and reception-rooms; but there may yet be seen an ivied courtyard and ancient staircase.

Even as I write, a great change is coming upon the fortunes of the “George.” The motorists who, with the neighbouring huntsmen, have during these last few years been its chief support, have now wholly taken it over. That is to say, the Road Club, establishing club quarters along the Great North Road, as nearly as may be fifty miles apart, has procured a long lease of the house from the Marquis of Exeter, and has remodelled the interior and furnished it with billiard-rooms up-to-date, a library of road literature, and other essentials of the automobile tourist. While especially devoted to these interests, the “George” will still welcome the huntsman fresh from the fallows, and hopes to interest him in the scent of the petrol as much as in that of the fox.

THE “SWAN,” FITTLEWORTH.

It may be noted, in passing, that the “Red Bull” at Stamford also claims to have entertained the Duke of Cumberland on his return from Culloden, and that the “Crown” inn, with its old staircase and picturesque courtyard, is interesting.

A small gallows sign is still to be seen at the “Old Star,” in Stonegate, York, another at Ottery St. Mary, and a larger, wreathed in summer with creepers, at the “Swan,” Fittleworth, while at Hampton-on-Thames the picturesque “Red Lion” sign still spans a narrow and busy street.

THE “RED LION,” HAMPTON-ON-THAMES.

The “Green Man” at Ashbourne, in Derbyshire, has a sign of this stamp. That fine old inn, which has added the sign of the “Black’s Head,” since the purchase of a house of that name, is of a size and a respectable mellowed red-brick frontage eminently suited to a road of the ancient importance of that leading from London to Manchester and Glasgow, on which Ashbourne stands. The inn figures in the writings of Boswell as a very good house, and its landlady as “a mighty civil gentlewoman.” She and her establishment no doubt earned the patronising praise of the self-sufficient Laird of Auchinleck by the humble curtsey she gave him when he hired a post-chaise here to convey him home to Scotland, and by an engraving of her house she handed him, on which she had written:

“M. Kilingley’s duty waits upon Mr. Boswell, is exceedingly obliged to him for this favour; whenever he comes this way, hopes for the continuance of the same. Would Mr. Boswell name this house to his extensive acquaintance, it would be a singular favour conferred on one who has it not in her power to make any other return but her most grateful thanks and sincerest prayers for his happiness in time and in blessed eternity. Tuesday morn.”

Alas! wishes for his worldly and eternal welfare no longer speed the parting guest, especially if he “tips” insufficiently. As for “M. Kilingley,” surely she and her inn must have been doing very badly, for Boswell’s patronage to have turned on so much eloquence at the main.