Mitre Inn

“ But the great building is still constructionally the house that fifteenth-century monk left, and how well and truly he built it, let its sound and stable condition, after four centuries and a half of constant use, tell.
Such modern touches as there are about this quaintly named “New” inn are the merest light clothing upon its ancient body, and the sitting-rooms and forty or so bedrooms, cosy and comfortable to us moderns, are but modern in their carpets and fittings, and in the paper that decorates their walls, in between the stout dark timber framing. ”

“ Along the walls directly in front of us, a blaze of purple bloom, stretches the [Pg 375] “largest wisteria in England,” one hundred and eighty feet in length, its stem like a good-sized tree. It has been thus with so many of the old-time inns; each has had some peculiar charm. But surely no architect ever planned the Red Lion Inn; it is a rambling building that seems to have grown up with the years. No straight line curbs its walls; none of its floors maintain the same level; it is a maze of strangely assorted apartments, narrow, winding hallways and odd nooks and corners. ”

“ We run for miles with no human habitation in sight save an occasional cottage in a small, barren field surrounded by stone walls. We come upon a large, attractive-looking inn unexpectedly—though it ought not to be unexpected to find an inn anywhere in England—the Two Bridges, situated near the head waters of the Dart, here no more than a brawling streamlet. We leave the car by the roadside and enter the homelike hall, where an array of fishing-tackle makes clear the excuse for this pleasant hotel in the moor. The day has been chilly and, strange to say, a fire flickers in the grate. ”

“ A couple of miles or so to the north is Stilton, which bears an air of decayed importance. A time-mellowed red-brick Queen Anne house, whose huge wooden supports, like cripples' crutches, keep it from toppling over, comes first in sight. In striking contrast, with its formal style of architecture, is the picturesque outline of the ancient inn beyond. A complicated flourish of ornamental ironwork, that would exasperate the most expert freehand draughtsman, supports the weather-beaten sign of solid copper. ”

“ Witness the carvings in the chapel and dining-hall of the Charterhouse, new in Milton’s boyhood, the carvings in the dining-halls of the different Inns of Court, and mural tablets everywhere with their obese cherubs and ghastly death’s heads. In the quaint beam and plaster front of Staple’s Inn on Holborn still remains the ancient type of domestic architecture which antedated and accompanied Milton’s boyhood. Hundreds of such cosy, homelike residences with their ample windows of many leaded panes lined the city streets. ”

“ Micawber stayed, and might have said—but didn’t—that he “resided, in short, ‘put up,’” [Pg 292] there, is claimed to be the “Sun,” but how, of all the little inns of Canterbury—and there are many—the “Sun” should so decisively claim the honour is beyond the wit of man to tell. It is an old, old inn that, rather mistakenly, calls itself an “hotel,” and the peaked, red-tiled roof, the projecting upper storey, bracketed out upon ancient timbers, are evidence enough that it was in being many centuries before the foreign word “hotel” became acclimatised in this country. ”

“ It is a morsel of certainty, snatched from the midst of the uncertainties of life; it is a sunny moment gleaming out kindly on a cloudy day; and he who has advanced some way on the pilgrimage of existence knows the importance of husbanding even morsels and moments of enjoyment. ‘Shall I not take mine ease in mine inn?’ thought I, as I gave the fire a stir, lolled back in my elbow-chair, and cast a complacent look about the little parlour of the ‘Red Horse,’ at Stratford-on-Avon. ”

“ 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 [Pg 242] 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. ”

“ But, as far as mere name goes, most inns are “hotels” nowadays. It is as though innkeepers were labouring under the illusion that “inn” connotes something inferior, and “hotel” a superior order of things. Even along the roads, in rustic situations, the mere word “inn”—an ancient and entirely honourable title—is become little used or understood, and, generally speaking, if you ask a rustic for the next “inn” he stares vacantly before his mind grasps the fact that you mean what he calls a “pub,” or, in some districts oftener still, a “house.” ”

“ In the good old days men did not go into a public-house to drown their wits in gin, but to buy each other good wholesome ale in Christian fellowship. And as every man went to church—of course, there had to be many alehouses!”
We have since discovered a less picturesque though much more plausible origin of these superfluous inns which will be given in another chapter. Nevertheless, allowing for our good friend’s flamboyant enthusiasm, there is an element of truth in his contention. Wherever there is a church we may be certain of finding an old inn hard by. ”

“ I thank Heaven—and it is no small matter, for surely one may be thankful for a good inn—that there yet remain many old inns in this Old England of ours, and that it is not yet quite (although nearly) a misdemeanour for the wayfarer to drink a tankard of ale and eat a modest lunch of bread and cheese in a stone-flagged, sanded rustic parlour; or even, having come at the close of day to his halting-place, to indulge in the mild dissipation and local gossip in the bar of an old-time hostelry. ”

“ It is, indeed, remarkable what picturesqueness lingers in the courtyards of old inns. The front of the house may have been modernised, or in some way smartened up, but the old gables and the casement windows are still generally to be found in the rear, and sometimes the local church-tower comes in, across the roof-tops, in a partly benedictory and wholly sketchable way, as at the village of Dedham, near Colchester, where the [Pg 225] yard of the “Sun” inn and the church-tower combine to make a very fine composition. ”

“ The way to this derelict haunt of eighteenth-century gaiety lies down the yard of the inn, and up a fine broad stone stairway, now much chipped, dirty, and neglected. On the ground floor is the billiard-room of the present day, formerly the coach dining-room. In crepuscular apartments adjoining, in these times given over to forgotten lumber, the curious may find the deserted kitchens of a bygone age, with the lifts and hatches to upper floors that once conveyed their abundant meals to a vanished generation of John Bulls. ”

“ Not an innkeeper, but a brewer, was Thomas Tipper, whose alliterative name is boldly carved on his remarkable tombstone in the windy little churchyard of Newhaven. I make no sort of apology or excuse for including Tipper’s epitaph in this chapter, for if he did not, in fact, keep an inn, he at any rate kept many inns supplied with his “stingo,” and his brew was a favourite [Pg 251] with the immortal Mrs. Gamp, an acknowledged connoisseur in curious liquors. A “pint of the celebrated staggering ale or Real Old Brighton Tipper,” was her little whack at supper-time. ”

“ In any competition as to which old inn had the ugliest frontage, the “Red Horse” at Stratford-on-Avon, and the “George” at Huntingdon would probably tie for first place; but the courtyard of the “George” makes amends, [Pg 48] and is one of the finest anywhere in existence, as the illustration serves to show.
A fine old house, with a still finer old sign, is that old coaching hostelry, the “Bell,” at Stilton, formerly one of the largest and most important of the many great and indispensable inns that once ministered to the needs of travellers along the Great North Road. ”

“ There are low-browed old rooms at the inn, with a cosy kitchen that is as much parlour; with undisguised oaken beams running overhead, rich in pendant hams that by due hanging have acquired artistic old-masterish tones, like mellow Morlands and rich Gainsboroughs. There is a capacious hearth, there are settles to sit easily in, and warming pans that have warmed many a bed for old-time travellers ”

“ In fact, as we approach we can see the blue water shining out only about a mile away across a flat expanse broken by hummocky sandhills. The village is one long straggling street of thatched huts, rather like huge beehives, with broad eaves. Our rickshaw men, who have been showing signs of exhaustion, make a gallant effort at the last, and run us up to the door of the inn in fine style. ”

“ 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. ”

“ At Havant, adjoining the church, as may be [Pg 220] seen in the illustration, is an extremely ancient and highly picturesque inn, the “Old House at Home,” enormously strong and sturdy, with huge beams criss-crossing in every direction, and stout enough to support a superstructure several storeys high, instead of merely two floors. It is as excellent an example as could probably be found anywhere of a fifteenth- or sixteenth-century lavishness of material and want of proportion of means toward ends. ”

“ The traveller with an eye for such things may still identify these inns retired from business, chiefly by their old archways and entries into stable-yards, but to the expert, even when those features are absent, there is generally some indefinable air about a house once an inn that singles it out from others. Such an one is the immense, four-square, red-brick farm-house midway between Lichfield and Burton-on-Trent, once a coaching- and posting-house famous in all that countryside as the “Flitch of Bacon” ”

“ Facing the inn is the church, remarkable for its Early English windows and fine open hammer-beam, carved-oak roof, supported from corbels of angel figures with extended wings. Quite as unusual is the hexagonal market cross, built of heavy oak timbers, gracefully carved, which support the leaden roof. Besides these ancient landmarks, there is much else pleasing in Mildenhall. The thatched cottages, brilliant flower gardens and narrow streets, all combine to make it a snug, charming place where one might quite forget the workaday world without. ”

“ Walter Rye, much of the interior helps us to realise what an old inn looked like two or three centuries ago. But the Maid’s Head has a more ancient history, and can boast of a Norman cellar (a relic of the Bishop’s Palace) , while in the drawing-room, a real fifteenth-century fireplace, discovered in the thickness of the wall, has been opened up and correctly fitted with dogs and hood. [Pg 203] The panelled billiard-room, cosy Jacobean bar, and the music gallery in the assembly room (like the “Elevated Den” in the Bull at Rochester) , are all delightful. ”

“ It is a deep seclusion, with mountains and crags on all sides.
About a mile beyond the castle we stopped at a little wayside inn, the King's Head, and put up for the night. This, I believe, is the only inn which I have found in England—the only one where I have eaten and slept —that does not call itself a hotel. It is very primitive in its arrangements,—a long, low, whitewashed, unadorned, and ugly cottage of two stories. ”

“ Added to all these pleasant reflections is the one, almost as uncommon as the Inn itself, that the amiable and good-natured proprietress, Miss Murray, is ever ready to welcome visitors, not merely because she has good wholesome English food and drink to dispense, but because she loves the old Inn and likes others to love it too. She maintains all the old traditions that such a place abounds in, and we can only hope that she will long remain to act as hostess, and that the ravages of the modern builder will never reach the walls of the old-time building. ”

“ A staircase from the courtyard leads up to the first-floor gallery, still screened off by the old open-lattice gates reaching from floor to ceiling, originally intended to prevent stray dogs entering.
Portions of the “New Inn” let off in the days of its declining prosperity have in modern times been taken back again: among them the large dining-hall overlooking the lane, for many years used as a Sunday school for the children of St. Nicholas parish, and other rooms looking upon Northgate Street. ”

“ It tells me vaguely of romance, and I resolve, at all hazards, to go to that spot and sketch, if sketchable, the inn I suspect to be there, and note the story that belongs, or should belong, to it. In due course I come to that lonely place, and there, to be sure, is an inn—once a considerable house on the old coaching and posting route between Cheltenham and Tewkesbury—and not only an inn, but a picturesque one, fronted with the giant stump of an elm—whether Piff’s or another’s, who shall say? ”