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THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND




WORKS BY THE SAME AUTHOR


The Portsmouth Road, and its Tributaries: To-day and in Days of Old.

The Dover Road: Annals of an Ancient Turnpike.

The Bath Road: History, Fashion, and Frivolity on an Old Highway.

The Exeter Road: The Story of the West of England Highway.

The Great North Road: The Old Mail Road to Scotland. Two Vols.

The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway.

The Holyhead Road: The Mail-Coach Road to Dublin. Two Vols.

The Cambridge, Ely, and King's Lynn Road: The Great Fenland Highway.

The Newmarket, Bury, Thetford, and Cromer Road: Sport and History on an
East Anglian Turnpike.

The Oxford, Gloucester, and Milford Haven Road: The Ready Way to South
Wales. Two Vols.

The Brighton Road: Speed, Sport, and History on the Classic Highway.

The Hastings Road and the "Happy Springs of Tunbridge."

Cycle Rides Round London.

A Practical Handbook of Drawing for Modern Methods of Reproduction.

Stage-Coach and Mail in Days of Yore. Two Vols.

The Ingoldsby Country: Literary Landmarks of "The Ingoldsby Legends."

The Hardy Country: Literary Landmarks of the Wessex Novels.

The Dorset Coast.

The South Devon Coast. [_In the Press._




[Illustration: A MUG OF CIDER: THE "WHITE HART" INN, CASTLE COMBE. _Photo
by Graystone Bird._]




  THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND

  _A PICTURESQUE ACCOUNT OF THE
  ANCIENT AND STORIED HOSTELRIES
  OF OUR OWN COUNTRY_


  VOL. II

  BY CHARLES G. HARPER


  [Illustration]

  _Illustrated chiefly by the Author, and from Prints
  and Photographs_


  LONDON:
  CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED
  1906

  _All rights reserved_




  PRINTED AND BOUND BY
  HAZELL, WATSON AND VINEY, LD.,
  LONDON AND AYLESBURY.




CONTENTS


  CHAPTER                                           PAGE

     I. A POSY OF OLD INNS                             1

    II. THE OLD INNS OF CHESHIRE                      58

   III. INNS RETIRED FROM BUSINESS                    79

    IV. INNS WITH RELICS AND CURIOSITIES             109

     V. TAVERN RHYMES AND INSCRIPTIONS               130

    VI. THE HIGHEST INNS IN ENGLAND                  144

   VII. GALLOWS SIGNS                                150

  VIII. SIGNS PAINTED BY ARTISTS                     161

    IX. QUEER SIGNS IN QUAINT PLACES                 184

     X. RURAL INNS                                   210

    XI. THE EVOLUTION OF A COUNTRY INN               235

   XII. INGLE-NOOKS                                  240

  XIII. INNKEEPERS' EPITAPHS                         245

   XIV. INNS WITH ODD PRIVILEGES                     255

    XV. INNS IN LITERATURE                           261

   XVI. VISITORS' BOOKS                              291




[Illustration: LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS]


SEPARATE PLATES

  A MUG OF CIDER: THE "WHITE HART" INN, CASTLE COMBE.
  (_Photo by Graystone Bird_)                               _Frontispiece_

                                                               FACING PAGE

  THE CROMWELL ROOM, "LYGON ARMS"                                        8

  THE DINING-ROOM AT "THE FEATHERS," LUDLOW                             22

  COURTYARD OF THE "MAID'S HEAD," NORWICH, SHOWING THE JACOBEAN
  BAR                                                                   42

  THE "BELL," BARNBY MOOR: MEET OF LORD GALWAY'S HOUNDS                 56

  THE "FOUR SWANS," WALTHAM CROSS                                      152

  SIGN OF THE "PACK HORSE AND TALBOT," TURNHAM GREEN                   194

  THE "RUNNING FOOTMAN," HAY HILL                                      194

  INTERIOR OF "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN"                                      196

  "UNCLE TOM'S CABIN," BLUEPITTS, NEAR ROCHDALE                        196

  THE "TALBOT," RIPLEY. (_Photo by R. W. Thomas_)                      212

  THE "ANCHOR," RIPLEY, IN THE DAYS OF THE DIBBLES AND THE
  CYCLING BOOM. (_Photo by R. W. Thomas_)                              214

  THE "SWAN," SANDLEFORD                                               216

  THE "SWAN," NEAR NEWBURY                                             216

  THE INGLE-NOOK, "WHITE HORSE" INN, SHERE                             240

  INGLE-NOOK AT THE "SWAN," HASLEMERE                                  242

  THE INGLE-NOOK, "CROWN" INN, CHIDDINGFOLD                            244

  INGLE-NOOK, "LYGON ARMS," BROADWAY                                   246

  THE "VINE TAVERN," MILE END ROAD                                     258

  YARD OF THE "WHITE HORSE," MAIDEN NEWTON                             288

  THE "WHITE HORSE," MAIDEN NEWTON                                     288


ILLUSTRATIONS IN TEXT

  Vignette, Toby Fillpot                                      _Title-page_

                                                                      PAGE

  List of Illustrations, The "Malt-shovel," Sandwich                   vii

  The Old Inns of Old England                                            1

  Doorway, the "Lygon Arms"                                              3

  The "Lygon Arms"                                                       5

  The "Bear," Devizes                                                   11

  Yard of the "Bear," Devizes                                           15

  The "George," Andover                                                 17

  The "Feathers," Ludlow                                                19

  Decorative Device in Moulded Plaster, from Ceiling of
  Dining-room, the "Feathers," Ludlow                                   25

  The "Peacock," Rowsley                                                27

  The "White Hart," Godstone                                            31

  The Old Window, "Luttrell Arms"                                       39

  Doorway, "The Cock," Stony Stratford                                  43

  Yard of "The George," Huntingdon                                      45

  The "Bell," Stilton                                                   49

  The "Red Lion," Egham                                                 53

  The "Old Hall" Inn, Sandbach                                          59

  Dog-gates at Head of Staircase, "Old Hall" Inn, Sandbach              61

  The "Bear's Head," Brereton                                           63

  The "Lion and Swan," Congleton                                        67

  The "Cock," Great Budworth                                            71

  The "Pickering Arms," Thelwall                                        73

  The "King Edgar" and "Bear and Billet," Chester                       75

  A Deserted Inn: The "Swan," at Ferrybridge                            83

  The Old "Raven," Hook                                                 86

  The "Hearts of Oak," near Bridport                                    88

  The "Bell" Inn, Dale Abbey                                            90

  The "Windmill," North Cheriton                                        91

  The "Castle" Inn, Marlborough                                         95

  Garden Front, "Castle" Inn, Marlborough                               99

  "Chapel House" Inn                                                   103

  "White Hart" Yard                                                    107

  A "Fenny Popper"                                                     111

  The "Bell," Woodbridge                                               112

  The "Red Lion," Martlesham                                           113

  "Dean Swift's Chair," Towcester                                      115

  Boots at the "Bear," Esher                                           117

  The "George and Dragon," Dragon's Green                              119

  The "White Bull," Ribchester                                         120

  Boots of the "Unicorn," Ripon                                        121

  The "Red Lion," Chiswick                                             123

  The Old Whetstone                                                    125

  Hot Cross Buns at the "Widow's Son"                                  127

  The "Gate" Inn, Dunkirk                                              132

  The "Gate Hangs Well," Nottingham                                    133

  Tablet at the "George," Wanstead                                     141

  "Tan Hill" Inn                                                       145

  The "Cat and Fiddle," near Buxton                                    147

  The "Traveller's Rest," Kirkstone Pass                               149

  The "Greyhound," Sutton                                              151

  The "Fox and Hounds," Barley                                         154

  The "George," Stamford                                               155

  The "Swan," Fittleworth                                              158

  The "Red Lion," Hampton-on-Thames                                    159

  The "Man Loaded with Mischief"                                       163

  Sign of the "Royal Oak," Bettws-y-Coed                               173

  Sign of the "George and Dragon," Wargrave-on-Thames.
  (_Painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A._)                                    176

  Sign of the "George and Dragon," Wargrave-on-Thames.
  (_Painted by J. E. Hodgson, R.A._)                                   177

  The "Row Barge," Wallingford. (_Painted by G. D. Leslie, R.A._)      178

  The "Swan," Preston Crowmarsh                                        178

  The "Windmill," Tabley                                               179

  The "Smoker" Inn, Plumbley                                           179

  The "Ferry" Inn, Rosneath                                            180

  The "Ferry" Inn, Rosneath                                            180

  The "Fox and Pelican," Grayshott                                     181

  The "Cat and Fiddle," near Christchurch                              182

  The "Cat and Fiddle," near Christchurch                              182

  The "Swan," Charing                                                  189

  Sign of the "Leather Bottle," Leather Lane. (_Removed 1896_)         191

  Sign of the "Beehive," Grantham                                      193

  Sign of the "Lion and Fiddle," Hilperton                             195

  The "Sugar Loaves," Sible Hedingham                                  195

  Sign of the "Old Rock House" Inn, Barton                             197

  The "Three Horseshoes," Great Mongeham                               198

  Sign of the "Red Lion," Great Missenden                              198

  Sign of the "Labour in Vain"                                         199

  The "Eight Bells," Twickenham                                        201

  Sign of the "Stocks" Inn, Clapgate, near Wimborne                    202

  The "Shears" Inn, Wantage                                            202

  Sign of the "White Bear," Fickles Hole                               203

  The "Crow-on-Gate" Inn, Crowborough                                  205

  The "First and Last" Inn, Sennen                                     206

  The "First and Last," Land's End                                     207

  The "Eagle and Child," Nether Alderley                               209

  The "White Horse," Woolstone                                         211

  The "Halfway House," Rickmansworth                                   215

  The "Rose and Crown," Mill End, Rickmansworth                        216

  The "Jolly Farmer," Farnham                                          217

  The "Boar's Head," Middleton                                         218

  The "Old House at Home," Havant                                      219

  "Pounds Bridge"                                                      221

  Yard of the "George and Dragon," West Wycombe                        223

  The Yard of the "Sun," Dedham                                        225

  The "Old Ship," Worksop                                              226

  The "Old Swan," Atherstone                                           227

  The "King's Arms," Sandwich                                          229

  The "Keigwin Arms," Mousehole                                        230

  The "Swan," Knowle                                                   231

  Sign of the "Swan," Knowle                                           232

  The "Running Horse," Merrow                                          233

  Ingle-nook at the "Talbot," Towcester                                243

  Tipper's Epitaph, Newhaven                                           251

  Preston's Epitaph, St. Magnus-the-Martyr                             253

  "Newhaven" Inn                                                       257

  House where the Duke of Buckingham died, Kirkby Moorside             265

  The "Black Swan," Kirkby Moorside                                    267

  Washington Irving's "Throne" and "Sceptre"                           270

  Yard of the "Old Angel," Basingstoke                                 279

  The "White Hart," Whitchurch                                         281

  The "Bell," Tewkesbury                                               285

  The "Wheatsheaf," Tewkesbury                                         287

  Henley-in-Arden, and the "White Swan"                                301




[Illustration]


THE OLD INNS OF OLD ENGLAND




CHAPTER I

A POSY OF OLD INNS

  "Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?"


In dealing with the Old Inns of England, one is first met with the great
difficulty of classification, and lastly with the greater of coming to a
conclusion. There are--let us be thankful for it--so many fine old inns.
Some of the finest lend themselves to no ready method of classifying.
Although they have existed through historic times, they are not historic,
and they have no literary associations: they are simply beautiful and
comfortable in the old-world way, which is a way a great deal more keenly
appreciated than may commonly be supposed in these times. Let those who
will flock to Metropoles and other barracks whose very names are evidence
of their exotic style; but give me the old inns with such signs as the
"Lygon Arms," the "Feathers," the "Peacock," and the like, which you still
find--not in the crowded resorts of the seaside, or in great cities, but
in the old English country towns and districts frequented by the
appreciative few.

I shall not attempt the unthankful office of determining which is the
finest among these grand old English inns whose title to notice rests upon
no adventitious aid of history, but upon their antique beauty, combined
with modern comfort, alone, but will take them as they occur to me.

Let us, then, imagine ourselves at Broadway, in Worcestershire, and at the
"Lygon Arms" there. The village, still somewhat remote from railways, was
once an important place on the London and Worcester Road, and its long,
three-quarter-mile street is really as broad as its name implies; but
since the disappearance of the coaches it has ceased to be the busy stage
it once was, and has became, in the familiar ironic way of fortune, a
haven of rest and quiet for those who are weary of the busy world; a home
of artists amid the apple-orchards of the Vale of Evesham; a slumberous
place of old gabled houses, with mullioned and transomed windows and
old-time vanities of architectural enrichment; for this is a district of
fine building-stone, and the old craftsmen were not slow to take advantage
of their material, in the artistic sort.

[Illustration: DOORWAY, THE "LYGON ARMS."]

Many enraptured people declare Broadway to be the prettiest village in
England, and the existence of its artist-colony perhaps lends some aid to
their contention; but it is not quite that, and although the long single
street of the place is beautiful in detail, it does not compose a picture
as a whole. One of the finest--if not indeed the finest--of those detailed
beauties is the grand old stone front of the "Lygon Arms," built, as the
"White Hart" inn, so long ago as 1540, and bearing that name until the
early part of the last century, when the property was purchased by the
Lygon family, whose head is now Earl Beauchamp, a title that, although it
looks so mediaeval, was created in 1815. In more recent times the house was
purchased by the great unwieldy brewing firm of Allsopp, but in 1903 was
sold again to the present resident proprietor, Mr. S. B. Russell, and so
has achieved its freedom and independence once more. The "Lygon Arms,"
however, it still remains, its armorial sign-board displaying the heraldic
coat of that family, with their motto, _Ex Fide Fortis_.

The great four-gabled stone front of the "Lygon Arms" gives it the air of
some ancient manor-house, an effect enhanced by the fine Renaissance
enriched stone doorway added by John Trevis, an old-time innkeeper, who
flourished in the reigns of James the First and Charles the First, and
whose name, together with that of his wife, Ursula, and the date, 1620,
can still be plainly seen. John Trevis (or "Treavis," as the name was
sometimes spelled) ended his hostelling in 1641, as appears by a rubbing
from his memorial brass from Broadway old church, prominently displayed in
the hall of the house.

[Illustration: THE "LYGON ARMS."]

The house has during the last few years been gradually brought back to its
ancient state, and the neglect that befell on the withdrawal of the
road-traffic repaired. But not merely neglect had injured it. The
ancient features had suffered greatly in the prosperous times at the
opening of the nineteenth century, when the stone mullions of nearly all
the windows were removed and modern glass and wooden sashes inserted. The
thing seems so wanton and so useless that it is difficult to understand,
in these days of reversion to type. A gas-lamp and bracket had at the same
time been fixed to the doorway, defacing the stonework, and where
alterations of this kind had not taken place, injury of another sort arose
from the greater part of the inn being unoccupied and the rest degraded to
little above the condition of an ale-house.

All the ancient features have been reinstated, and a general restoration
effected, under the advice of experts, and in the "Lygon Arms" of to-day
you see a house typical of an old English inn of the seventeenth century.

There is the Cromwell Room, so named from a tradition that the Protector
slept in it the night before the Battle of Worcester. It is now a
sitting-room. A great carved stone fireplace is the chief feature of that
apartment, whose beautiful plaster ceiling is also worthy of notice. There
is even a tradition that Charles the First visited the inn on two or three
occasions; but no details of either his, or Cromwell's, visits, survive.

Quaint, unexpected corners, lobbies and staircases abound here, and
ancient fittings are found, even in the domestic kitchen portion of the
house. In the entrance-hall is some very old carved oak from Chipping
Campden church, with an inscription no man can read; while, to keep
company with the undoubtedly indigenous old oak panelling of the so-called
"Panelled Room," and others, elaborate ancient firebacks and open grates
have been introduced--the spoil of curiosity shops. Noticeable among these
are the ornate fireback in the Cromwell Room and the very fine specimen of
a wrought-iron chimney-crane in the ingle-nook of a cosy corner by the
entrance.

While it would be perhaps too much to say that Broadway and the "Lygon
Arms" are better known to and appreciated by touring Americans than by our
own people, they are certainly visited very largely by travellers from the
United States during the summer months; the fame of Broadway having spread
over-sea very largely on account of the resident American artist-colony
and Madame de Navarro, who as Mary Anderson--"our Mary"--figured
prominently on the stage, some years since.

Those travellers who in the fine, romantic, dangerous old days travelled
by coach, or the more expensive, exclusive, and aristocratic post-chaise,
to Bath, and selected the Devizes route, came at that town to one of the
finest inns on that road of exceptionally fine hostelries. The "Bear" at
Devizes was never so large or so stately as the "Castle" at Marlborough,
but it was no bad second, and it remains to-day an old-fashioned and
dignified inn, the first in the town; looking with something of a
county-family aloofness upon the wide Market-place and that
extraordinary Gothic cross erected in the middle of it, to the memory of
one Ruth Pierce, of Potterne, a market-woman, who on January 25th, 1753,
calling God to witness the truth of a lie she was telling, was struck dead
on the instant.

[Illustration: THE CROMWELL ROOM, "LYGON ARMS."]

The "Bear," indeed, is of two entirely separate and distinct periods, as
you clearly perceive from the strikingly different character of the front
buildings. The one is a haughty structure in dark stone, designed in that
fine architectural style practised in the middle of the eighteenth century
by the brothers Adam; the other has a plastered and painted frontage, fine
in its way, but bespeaking rather the Commercial Hotel. In the older
building, to which you enter up flights of steps, you picture the great
ones of the earth, resting on their way to or from "the Bath," in a
setting of Chippendale, Sheraton or Hepplewhite furniture; and in the
other the imagination sees the dignified, prosperous "commercial
gentlemen" of two or three generations ago--was there ever, anywhere,
another order of being so supremely dignified as they were?--dining, with
much roast beef and port, in a framing of mahogany sideboards and
monumentally heavy chairs stuffed with horse-hair--each treating the
others with a lofty and punctilious ceremonial courtesy, more punctilious
and much loftier than anything ever observed in the House of Peers.

The "Bear" figures in the letters of Fanny Burney, who with her friend
Mrs. Thrale was travelling to Bath in 1780. They took four days about
that business, halting the first night at Maidenhead, the second at the
"Castle," Speen Hill, and the third here. In the evening they played
cards, the lively Miss Burney declaring to her correspondent that the
doing so made her feel "old-cattish": whist having ever been the resort of
dowagers. Engaged upon this engrossing occupation, the strains of music
gradually dawned upon their attention, coming from an adjoining room. Did
they, as many would have done, thump upon the intervening wall, by way of
signifying their disapproval? Not at all. The player was rendering the
overture to the _Buono Figliuola_--whatever that may have been--and
playing it well. Mrs. Thrale went and tapped at the door whence these
sweet sounds came, in order to compliment the unknown musician; whereupon
a handsome girl whose dark hair clustered finely upon a noble forehead,
opened the door, and another invited Mrs. Thrale and Miss Burney to
chairs. These pretty creatures were the daughters of the innkeeper. They
were well enough, to be sure, but the wonder of the family was away from
home. "This was their brother, a most lovely boy of ten years of age, who
seems to be not merely the wonder of their family, but of the times, for
his astonishing skill at drawing. They protest he has never had any
instruction, yet showed us some of his productions that were really
beautiful."

[Illustration: THE "BEAR," DEVIZES.]

This marvel was none other than Thomas Lawrence, the future painter of
innumerable portraits of the wealthy and the noble, who rose to be P.R.A.
and to knighthood at the hands of George the Fourth. His father, at this
time landlord of the "Bear," seems to have been a singularly close
parallel to Mr. Micawber in fiction, and to Mr. John Dickens in real life.
The son of a Presbyterian minister, and articled to a solicitor, he turned
aside from writs and affidavits and practical things of that kind, to the
making of verses; and the verse-making, by a sort of natural declension,
presently led him to fall in love, and to run away with the pretty
daughter of the vicar of Tenbury, in Worcestershire. He tried life as an
actor, and that failed; as a surveyor of excise, with little better
result; and then became landlord of the "White Lion" at Bristol, the house
in which his son Thomas, the future P.R.A., was born, in 1769. In 1772 he
removed to Devizes, and took the "Bear": not an inconsiderable
speculation, as the description of the house, already given, would lead
one to suspect. Some unduly confiding person must have lent the shiftless,
but engaging and gentlemanly, fellow the capital, and it is to be feared
he lost by it, for although in the pages of _Columella_, a curious work of
fiction published at that time, Lawrence is styled "the only man upon the
road for warm rooms, soft beds, and--Oh, prodigious!--for reading Milton,"
his innkeeping was a failure.

Notwithstanding those "warm rooms and soft beds," which rather remind you
of Mr. W. S. Gilbert's lines in _The Mountebanks_--

              Excellent eating,
  Good beds and warm sheeting,
  That never want Keating,
  Afford a good greeting
    To people who stop at my inn--

Lawrence had to relinquish the "Bear." He was known as a "public-spirited
landlord, who erected at his own expense signal-posts twelve feet high,
painted white, to guide travellers by night over Salisbury Plain"; but,
although he was greatly commended for that public spirit, no profit
accrued from it. Public spirit in a public-house--even though it be that
higher order of public-house styled an hotel--is out of place.

At the early age of five the innkeeper's son Thomas became distinctly an
asset. He was as many-sided as a politician who cannot find place in his
own party and so, scenting opportunities, seeks preferment with former
enemies. Young Lawrence it would, however, be far prettier to compare with
a many-faceted diamond. He shone with accomplishments. A beautiful boy,
his manners, too, were pleasing. He was kissed and petted by the ladies,
and to the gentlemen he recited. He painted the portraits, in curiously
frank and artless profile, of all guests who would sport half a guinea for
the purpose, and between whiles would be found in the yard, punching the
heads of the stable-boys, for he was alike born painter and pugilist!

A less beautiful nature than his would early have been spoiled by so much
notice, but to the end of his long and phenomenally successful career
Lawrence retained a courtly, but natural and frank, personality. As a boy
he was introduced to the guests of the "Bear" by his fond father in this
wise: "Gentlemen, here's my son; will you have him recite from the poets,
or take your portraits?" and in this way he held forth in such great
presences as those of Dr. Johnson, Garrick, Foote, Burke, Sheridan, and
Mrs. Siddons.

[Illustration: YARD OF THE "BEAR," DEVIZES.]

But the business of the "Bear" languished under the proprietorship of the
elder Lawrence. Probably many of the guests resented what was rightly
styled "the obtrusive pertinacity" of the fond father, and being
interrupted in their talk, or disturbed at the engrossing occupation of
winning and losing money at cards, by the appearance of this _wunderkind_.
By the time the genius was eleven years of age the family had left
Devizes, and were being entirely supported by his growing skill in the
painting of pleasing likenesses!

If the front of the house, with its odd effigy of a black bear eating a
bunch of grapes, is fine, much finer, in the picturesque way, is the back,
where, from the stable-yard, you see a noble range of Ionic columns,
rather lost in that position, and surmounted as they are with gables of a
Gothic feeling, looking as though the projector of some ambitious classic
extension had begun a great work without counting the cost of its
completion, and so had ingloriously to decline upon a humble ending.

The "George" at Andover, whatever importance it once possessed, now
displays the merest slip of frontage. It is, in essentials, a very old
house, with a good deal of stout timber framing in odd corners: all more
or less overlaid with the fittings of a modern market inn. The "George"
figures in what remains probably the most extraordinary solicitor's bill
on record: the account rendered to Sir Francis Blake Delaval, M.P., by
his attorney, for work done during one of the Andover elections. It is a
document famous in the history of Parliamentary contests, and it was the
subject of an action in the King's Bench. The most outstanding item of it
was: "To being thrown out of the window of the 'George' inn, Andover.--To
my leg being thereby broken.--To Surgeon's bill and loss of time and
business.--All in the service of Sir Francis B. Delaval----L500."

[Illustration: THE "GEORGE," ANDOVER.]

It seems that this unfortunate attorney owed his flight through the window
to his having played a practical joke upon the officers of a regiment
stationed at Andover, to whom he sent invitations for a banquet at the
"George" on the King's birthday, purporting to come from the Mayor and
corporation, and similar invitations to the Mayor and corporation,
supposed to come from the officers. The two parties met and dined, but,
preparing to depart, and each thanking the others for the hospitality, the
trick was disclosed, and the author of it, who had been rash enough to
attend, to see for himself the success of his joke, was seized and flung
out of the window by the enraged diners.

Turn we now to Shropshire, to that sweet and gracious old town of Ludlow,
where--albeit ruined--the great Castle of the Lords Presidents of the
Council of the Marches of Wales yet stands, and where many an ancient
house belonging to history fronts on to the quiet streets: some whose
antique interiors are altogether unsuspected of the passer-by, by reason
of the Georgian red-brick fronts or Early Victorian plaster faces that
have masked the older and sturdier construction of oaken beams. I love the
old town of Ludlow, as needs I must do, for it is the home of my forbears,
who, certainly since the days of Elizabeth, when the registers of the
Cathedral-like church of St. Lawrence begin, lived there and worked
there in what was their almost invariable handicraft of joining and
cabinet-making, until quite recent years.

[Illustration: THE "FEATHERS," LUDLOW.]

The finest old timber-fronted, black-and-white house in Ludlow is the
"Feathers" inn, in Corve Street. There are many ancient and picturesque
hostelries in England, but none finer than the "Feathers," and it is
additionally remarkable for being as exquisite within as without. You see
its nodding gables and peaked roofs among the earliest of the beautiful
things of Ludlow, as you come from the railway-station and ascend the
steep Corve Street, that leads out of the town, into Corve Dale.

Very little is known of the history of the "Feathers." The earliest deed
relating to the property is dated August 2nd, 1609, when it appears to
have been leased from a member of the Council of the Marches, one Edward
Waties of Burway, by Rees Jones and Isabel, his wife. Ten years later,
March 10th, 1618-9, Rees Jones purchased the fee-simple of the house from
Edward Waties and his wife, Martha: other parties to the transaction being
Sir Charles Foxe, of Bromfield, and his son Francis, respectively father
and brother of Martha Waties. The purchase price of the freehold was L225.
In neither of those transactions is the house called the "Feathers," or
even referred to as an inn; nor do we know whether Rees Jones purchased
the existing house, or an older one, on this site. It seems probable,
however, that this is the original mansion of some personage connected
with the ancient government of the Welsh marches, or perhaps the "town
house" of the Foxes of Bromfield in those times when every Shropshire
squire of wealth and standing repaired for a season every year with his
family from his country seat to Shrewsbury or Ludlow; the two resorts of
Society in those days when London, in the toils, dangers, and expenses of
travelling, was so far removed that it was a place to be seen but once or
tw