As there were many inns on the Southwark side of London Bridge for the reasons given when we spoke of the King’s Head, so for the same reason a number of inns, some of which we have already mentioned, were on the northern side of the bridge. Besides those already named, there was the Spread Eagle, in Gracechurch Street. The original building had perished in the great fire, but the inn was rebuilt after it. It had the usual yard and galleries to the two floors. At first only a carriers’ inn, it became famous as a coaching-house, the mails and principal stage-coaches for Kent and other southern counties arriving and departing from here. It was long the property of John Chaplin, cousin of William Chaplin, of the firm of Chaplin and Horne. The inn was taken down in 1865; the plot of ground which it occupied contained 12,600 feet, and was sold for £95,000. The Swan with Two Necks is a curious sign, variously explained. It is supposed to mean the swan with two nicks or notches cut into swans’ bills, so that each owner might know his. But these nicks being so small as not to be discernible on an inn sign hung high up, there seems no sense in referring to them. More likely two swans swimming side by side, and the neck of one of them protruding beyond that of the other, took some artist’s fancy, and induced him to produce the illusion in a picture. However, the origin of the sign does not concern us, but the inn with that sign. There was a famous one in what was Lad Lane, and is now Gresham Street. It was for a century and more the head coach-inn and booking-office for the North. Its courtyard was of great size; the galleries were of somewhat irregular arrangement, there being one only at the back, communicating at one end with a lower and an upper gallery on one side, whilst on the other side there was a gallery unconnected with the others, and which also was wider and more elaborately decorated than the others. A view of it appeared in the _Illustrated London News_, December 23, 1865.