Whether St. George ever existed is doubtful; probably the story of this saint and the dragon is merely a corruption of the legend of St. Michael conquering Satan, or of Perseus’ delivery of Andromeda. The story was always doubted, hence the lines recorded by Aubrey: ’To save a maid St. George the dragon slew, A pretty tale if all is told be true. Most say there are no dragons, and it’s said There was no George; pray God there was a maid.’ But the George is, and always has been, a very common inn sign in this as well as in other countries. We are, however, here concerned with one George only, the one in the Borough. It existed in the time of Stow, who mentions it in the list of Southwark inns he gives, and its name occurs in a document of the year 1554. It stood near the Tabard. It had the usual courtyard, surrounded by buildings on all sides, with galleries to two stories on three sides giving access to the bedrooms. The banisters were of massive size, of the ’footman leg’ style. In 1670 the inn was in great part burnt down and demolished by a fire which broke out in the neighbourhood, and it was totally consumed by the great fire of Southwark some six years later. The fire began at one Mr. Welsh’s, an oilman, near St. Margaret’s Hill, between the George and Talbot inns. It was stopped by the substantial building of St. Thomas’s Hospital, then recently erected. The present George inn, although built only in the seventeenth century, was rebuilt on the old plan, having open wooden galleries leading to the bedchambers. When Mrs. Scholefield, descended from Weyland, the landlord of the inn at the time of the fires, died in 1859, the property was purchased by the governors of Guy’s Hospital. The George now styles itself a hotel, but still preserves one side of its galleries intact.