London (England) -- Antiquities; London (England) -- History
Not far off, in Bishopsgate Street Without, there was until lately a
"Two Swan" inn yard, and a "One Swan" with a large yard--an old place
of call for carriers and waggons. These lingered on until the general
clearance by the Great Eastern Railway Company a few years ago, when
the remains of Sir Paul Pindar's mansion, latterly a tavern, were also
removed; the finely-carved timber front and a stuccoed ceiling finding
their way into the Victoria and Albert Museum. Another old Bishopsgate
house was the "White Hart," near St. Botolph's Church, a picturesque
building with projecting storeys, and in front the date 1480, but the
actual structure was probably much less ancient. It was drawn by J.
T. Smith and others early in the nineteenth century, and did not long
survive. The site is still marked by White Hart Court. On the opposite
side of the way was an inn, the "Dolphin," which, as Stow tells us,
was given in 1513 by Margaret Ricroft, widow, with a charge in favour
of the Grey Friars. It disappeared in the first half of the eighteenth
century. The old "Catherine Wheel," a galleried inn hard by, mentioned
by De Laune in 1681, was not entirely destroyed till 1894.
Another road out of London richly furnished with inns was that from
Newgate westward. The first one came to was the "Saracen's Head"
on Snow Hill, an important house, to which the late Mr. Heckethorn
assigned a very early origin. Whether or not it existed in the
fourteenth century, as he asserts, it was certainly flourishing when
Stow in his _Survey_ described it as "a fair and large inn for receipt
of travellers." It continued for centuries to be largely used, and
here Nicholas Nickleby and his uncle waited on Squeers, the Yorkshire
schoolmaster, whom Dickens must have modelled from various real
personages. In a _Times_ advertisement for January 3rd, 1801, I read
that "at Mr. Simpson's Academy, Wodencroft Lodge, near Greta Bridge,
Yorkshire, young gentlemen are boarded and accurately instructed in the
English, Latin, and Greek languages, writing, arithmetic, merchants'
accounts, and the most useful branches of the mathematics, at 16
guineas per annum, if under nine years of age, and above that age
17 guineas; French taught by a native of France at 1 guinea extra.
Mr. Simpson is now in town, and may be treated with from eleven
till two o'clock every day at the 'Saracen's Head,' Snow Hill." In
the early part of last century the landlady was Sarah Ann Mountain,
coach proprietor, and worthy rival of Mrs. Nelson, of the "Bull" Inn,
Aldgate. The "Saracen's Head" disappeared in the early part of 1868,
when this neighbourhood was entirely changed by the formation of the
Holborn Viaduct. Another Snow Hill inn was the "George," or "George and
Dragon," mentioned by Strype as very large and of considerable trade. A
sculptured sign from there is in the Guildhall Museum.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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