INGLE-NOOKS

The chimney-corners of the old rustic inns, in which the gossips lingered late on bitter winter nights, have ever formed an attraction for writers of the historic novel. There is no more romantic opening possible than that of the village inn, with the spiced ale warming on the hearth, and the rustics toasting their toes in the ingle-nook, what time the wind howls without, roars in the trees, like the roaring of an angry sea, and takes hold of the casements and shakes and rattles them, as though some outcast, denied admittance, would yet force his way into the warmth and comfort, out of the cheerless night. The warring elements, and the gush of wind and driven snow following the opening of the door and the entrance from time to time of other recruits for the ingle-nook, would make that cosy corner seem, if possible, only the more desirable.

THE INGLE-NOOK, “WHITE HORSE” INN, SHERE.

In fact, there is no more sure way of engrossing a reader from the very first page than that of beginning on this note. He feels that something melodramatic is in the wind, and pokes the fire, snuggles up in his arm-chair, and prepares to be thrilled. The thrill is generally not long in coming, for there was never—or, well, hardly ever—any romantic novel where an ingle-nook occurs in which we do not presently find the advent of the inscrutable and taciturn stranger who, after calling, “Ho! landlord, a tankard of your best,” relapses into a bodeful and gloomy silence, and piques the curiosity, and at the same time chills the marrow, of the assembled company, and may turn out to be anything you please, according to the period, from a king in disguise to a burglar on his way to crack some lonely crib.

Most of the ingle-nooks are gone, and modern fire-places are installed in their stead, conferring upon the survivors an additional measure and esteem of respect in these times of a reaction in favour of the old English domestic arrangements. One of the finest of these surviving examples is that of the “White Horse” at Shere, an old-world inn in midst of an equally old-world village. Shere is the most picturesque of those rural villages—Wotton, Abinger Hatch, Gomshall, Shere, Albury and Shalford—strung along the road that runs, lovely, under the southern shoulders of the bold South Downs, between Reigate and Guildford. Modern times have passed it by, and the grey Norman church, a huge and ancient tree, and the old “White Horse,” have a very special quiet nook to themselves. One would not like to hazard too close a guess as to the antiquity of the “White Horse,” whose sign is perhaps the only new thing about it—and that is a picturesque acquisition. The inn is, of course, not of the Norman and early English antiquity of the church, but it was built, let us say, “once upon a time”; which sounds vaguely impressive, and in doing so begins to do justice to the old-world air of the inn. The fine ingle-nook pictured here is to be found in the parlour, and is furnished, as usual in such hospitable contrivances, with a seat on either side and recesses for mugs and glasses. A fine array of copper kettles and brass pots, candlesticks and apothecaries’ mortars, together with an old sampler, runs along the wide beam, and on the hearth are a beautiful pair of fire-dogs and an elaborate cast-iron fireback.

A good ingle-nook, rather obscured by the alterations and “improvements” of late years, is to be found in a low-ceilinged little front room at the “Anchor,” Ripley, with a highly ornate fireback; and at the “Swan,” Haslemere, we have the ingle-nook in perhaps its simplest and roughest expression, rudely brick-and-timber built and plastered, with an exiguous little shelf running along the beam, and above that a gunrack. The simple fire-dogs are entirely in character, and have probably been here almost as long as the ingle-nook itself.

INGLE-NOOK AT THE “SWAN,” HASLEMERE.

The ingle-nook of the “Crown” inn at Chiddingfold exists, little altered, although a little iron grate, now itself of considerable age, has been built on the wide open hearth, with a brick smoke-hood over it. You see again, on either side of the deep recess, above the side benches, the little square cranny in the wall, handy to reach by those sitting in the nook, and intended, in those bygone days when this cosy feature was still in use, to hold the tankards, the jugs, and the pipes of those who here very literally “took their ease at their inn.”

INGLE-NOOK AT THE “TALBOT,” TOWCESTER.

In this room the curious may notice the copy of a deed, dated March 22nd, 1383, conveying the inn from one Peter Pokeland to Richard Gofayre; but, although the “Crown” is a house of considerable antiquity, and mentioned in that document, the existing house is not of so great an age as this, and has been rebuilt, or very extensively remodelled, since then.

A fine ingle-nook, with ancient iron crane, is now a feature of the refurnished “Lygon Arms” at Broadway, in Worcestershire, an hotel that in these latter days has been carefully “restored” and so fitted out with modern-ancient features by Warings, and some really old articles of furniture, purchased here, there, and everywhere, that in course of time posterity may agree to consider the whole house-full a legacy, as it stands, of the old domestic economy of the inn-keeping of the sixteenth, the seventeenth, and the eighteenth centuries.

At the quaint Kentish village of Sissinghurst, near Cranbrook, stands the old “Bull” inn. It had a rugged ingle-nook occupying one side of the taproom, and on the wall picturesquely hung a very old pair of bellows, a domestic utensil now not often seen. In the corner of the room stood a gigantic eight-footer “grandfather” clock. But the chief item of interest was, without doubt, the roasting-jack over the hearth, with the date “1684.” All this formed one of the most delightful old-world interiors, until quite recently, but now the ingle is abolished and the ancient crane sold to a museum.

A particularly good ingle-nook is to be seen in what is now a lumber-room, but was once the tap-room of the “Talbot” inn at Towcester, the great oaken beam spanning the fireplace being quaintly carved, in flat and low relief, with the figure of that extinct breed of dog, the “talbot.”

THE INGLE-NOOK, “CROWN” INN, CHIDDINGFOLD.