To return to the Rose and Crown. Two sides of the yard had a gallery to the first floor, but it was of the poorest description. There were no elegant banisters, the lower part of the gallery was closed up with boards of the roughest kind, about breast high, and irregularly nailed on to the posts supporting the roof. Two water-colour drawings, dated 1857, showing the exterior of the house and the yard, are in the Crace collection. Corbould painted this inn under the title of the ’Old Hostelrie at Knightsbridge,’ exhibited in 1849; but he transferred its date to 1497, altering the house according to his fancy. In 1853 the inn had a narrow escape from destruction by fire. Before its final demolition it had been much modernized, though leaving enough of its original characteristics to testify to its antiquity and former importance. The Royal Oak at Vauxhall was an old inn with a galleried yard. It was taken down circa 1812 to make the road to Vauxhall Bridge, then in course of construction. One of the oldest of galleried inns in London was the Saracen’s Head, on Snow Hill. In 1377 the fraternity founded in St. Botolph’s Church, Aldersgate, in honour of the Body of Christ and of the saints Fabian and Sebastian, were the proprietors of the Saracen’s Head inn. In the reign of Richard II. they granted a lease of twenty-one years to John Hertyshorn of the Saracen’s Head, with appurtenances, consisting of two houses adjoining on the north side, at the yearly rent of ten marks. In the reign of Henry VI. Dame Joan Astley (some time nurse to that King) obtained a license to refound the fraternity in honour of the Holy Trinity. In the reign of Edward VI. it was suppressed, and its endowments, valued at £30 per annum, granted to William Harris. The antiquity of the inn was thus beyond question. Stow, describing this neighbourhood, mentions it as ’a fair large inn for receipt of travellers.’ The courtyard had to the last many of the characteristics of an old English inn: there were galleries all round leading to the bedrooms, and a spacious gateway through which the mail-coaches used to pass in and out. It was at this inn that Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited on Squeers, the schoolmaster of Dotheboys Hall. It was demolished in 1863, when the Holborn Valley improvements were undertaken. A view of the inn as it appeared in 1855 is in the Crace collection.