The George stood on the sites now occupied by the Post Office, and the adjoining shop of Messrs. Salter, Shoemakers, the original archway of the inn yard still remaining between them. This was formerly one of the principle inns of the town, equal in size to the Bull and the Red Lion; and from it, before the railway line was opened to Horncastle, the landlord, Mr. Hackford, ran a coach, to meet the train at Kirkstead. An incident, in connection with the George may here be mentioned, which is not likely to occur again. A wealthy lady, Miss Heald (who had also a house in London, where the writer, as a boy, visited her), occupied in those days the old hall (now demolished) in Edlington Park. She was of the family of Chancellor Heald, to whose memory there is a marble tablet, on the north wall of the chancel of St. Mary’s Church. She had a nephew, who was an officer in the fashionable regiment of the Guards. He became enamoured of the once famous courtesan, Lola Montez, who had been mistress to the King of Bavaria, attracted by her beauty, it was said, as she drove, and he rode, along Rotten Row, the resort of fashion, in Hyde Park, London. She wished to make the most of the opportunity to regain a respectable position, and pressed her attentions of the young officer too persistently. She was a woman of daring and reckless temperament; and his love and admiration gradually, on closer acquaintance, gave way to fear. At length he did all he could to avoid her, which roused her bitter resentment, and at length he became in daily terror of her revengeful nature. Coming down from London to Horncastle, to collect his rents, he put up at the George, and was there found, by a friend who called upon him, sitting at his luncheon, but with a brace of pistols lying on the table, fully expecting that she would follow him, and force him into matrimony. It is said that she ended her days in an American prison, after perpetrating a murder in a railway carriage. [Picture: Old Thatched Inn in the Bull Ring] Another inn worthy of mention here is the Fighting Cocks. Here this once fashionable but cruel sport used to be practised, until it was made illegal by Act of Parliament, in 1849, and it is said to have been clandestinely continued for some time longer, although a penalty of £5 was imposed. An old man working on the premises in 1902 could remember the last fight. The “pit” was in the present garden, at the rear of the inn yard. In the Fighting Cocks yard were formerly the kennels of the South Wold hounds, and the writer can well remember going frequently, as a boy, while he attended the Grammar School, to see them fed, as well as occasionally being mounted by the whips on one of the horses of the hunt, when, after the hunting season, they went out for exercise. Mr. “Jack” Musters, the whilom rival of Byron for the hand of Miss Chaworth, was at that time Master.