Old Country Inns of England

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_ a...

Rural England, during the two centuries after the Conquest, was practically under martial law. The hardy Men of Kent and the Vale of Holmsdale were strong enough to retain some...

Mention of the Knights Hospitallers brings us by an easy stage to pilgrimages; it was the original purpose of this order to keep open the route to the Holy Places and to assist...

Every high road leads sooner or later to a market town, and in that town the tourist may be sure of finding a _White Hart Inn_. The _White Hart_ is the commonest of signs all th...

Of the writing of books about the mediæval guilds there seems to be no end, and each new contribution serves to mystify rather than to throw light on the difficulties of the sub...

We had occasion a year or two ago to visit a small country town where several public-houses were scheduled previous to being closed under the Licensing Act. It was impossible to...

A hundred years ago, everybody who had occasion for inland travelling was perforce obliged to use the road; that is, unless he preferred a canal boat or barge, and navigable wat...

We have shown in previous chapters how the old English inn grew up almost always under some local authority--either the lord of the manor, the monastery, or the parish--and its...

“The Greeks honoured their great men and successful commanders by erecting statues to them,” remarks Jacob Larwood; “modern nations make the portraits of their celebrities serve...

Many of the inn signs to be met with in the old provincial trading centres recall the sports of our ancestors. Too often these were of a brutal and barbarous character, suited o...

John Ball, shut up in the Archbishop’s prison at Canterbury, fell a’longing for “the green fields and the whitethorn bushes, and the lark singing over the corn, and the talk of...

The antiquarian magazines of the last century are full of correspondence and ingenious explanations of such signs as the _Pig and Whistle_, _Cat and Fiddle_, or _Goat in Boots_....

Why is it that haunted inns are so scarce and difficult to find? We have sought for them far and wide. During thirty years of wanderings among the old inns, we have retired for...

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...

The genuine traveller is really the man who is on business. Even the tourist can scarcely lay confident claim to the title. Is he not on pleasure bent? Is he not going from plac...

Whatever developments may be in store in the future will depend almost entirely as to how far the licensing authorities and the various bodies formed for the purpose of furtheri...

It will not come as any surprise to readers who have so far dipped with us into the pages of the past, to learn that mediæval inns, and indeed those of the fifteenth and early s...

“A seemly man our Hosté was withal. For to have been a marshall in a hall. A largé man he was with eyen stepe, A fairer burgess is there none in Chepe; Bold of his speech and wi...

“Nothing suits worse with vice than want of sense,” remarked Sir Harry Wilding in the “Constant Couple.” For vice we might read benevolence and find the maxim equally appropriat...