In the map of Southwark dating from about 1542, this inn is called the Horse Hede. In 1720 Strype says that "the buildings are old and sorry with inhabitants answerable." The inn standing in 1886, of which only a small part is shown to the right of the drawing, looks as if it were built not much more than a hundred years ago, but it will be seen that the tenements on the same side next the High Street were much older. Here Andrew Ducrow, the great equestrian performer, is said to have been born, May 12, 1796. His parents had just arrived from Germany. George Colman, the younger, in his "Poor Gentleman," a comedy produced at Covent Garden in 1801, makes a farmer say:—"I be come from Lunnon you see. I warrant I smell of smoke, like the Nag's Head chimney in the Borough." The inn was well spoken of in a little book called the Epicure's Almanac, published in 1815; there were balls here sometimes in the earlier half of the last century. The tavern business is no longer carried on, the yard and premises being in the hands of the Great Western Railway Company. The building over the entrance to this yard remains, but all those on the north side, that is to spectator's right, including the inn, disappeared some years ago. (9-3/4 × 6-3/4) D. 18-1896. 11. Remains of the King's Head Inn, Southwark (Water colour). (7-3/16 × 10-1/2) D. 14-1896. [Illustration: No. 12. THE KING'S HEAD INN, SOUTHWARK.] 12. The last of the Old King's Head (Water-colour). This inn was originally the Pope's Head, and the name was changed at the time of the Reformation. In 1534 the Abbot of Waverley, whose town house was not far off, writes, apparently on business, that he will be "at the _Pope's Head_ in Southwark." This was the very year of the separation of the Church of England from Papal headship. Eight years afterwards the house is marked in the Record Office map as the "Kynge's Hed." That the two were one and the same is proved by a deed of 1559, that belonged to the late Mr. G. Eliot Hodgkin, F.S.A., whose family at one time possessed the property. This deed is between John Gresham, uncle of Sir Richard and Lord Mayor in 1547, and John White, Lord Mayor in 1563, on the one side, and Thomas Cure, a notable inhabitant of Southwark, on the other; and the inn is here described as having been "formerly known as the Pope's Hed and now as le kynge's hed abutting on the highway called Longe Southwarke." In 1588 the house came into the possession of the Humble family. John Taylor mentions it as frequented by carriers in 1637; ten years afterwards it belonged to Humble, Lord Ward. A seventeenth-century trade token which was issued from here, reads thus:— O.—AT . THE . KINGS . HEAD . IN = Bust of Henry VIII. R.—SOUTHWARKE . GROCER = W. P.