For the beginning of the well-earned fame of the “Bell” we must go back a long way. Not, indeed, to ancient times, for there was never a mediæval hostel here, but to very old coaching days. Already, in 1776, when the Rev. Thomas Twining was ambling about the country on “Poppet,” making picturesque notes, it was a “gentlemanlike, comfortable house,” and Sterne knew it well. “I am worn out,” says he in one of his letters, “but press on to Barnby Moor to-night.” Even the “worn-out” would make an effort, you see, to reach this hospitable roof-tree. But a greater fame was earned by the “Bell” in its later days, when it was kept by George Clark, at once innkeeper, sportsman, and breeder of racehorses. He was famed for his anecdotal and conversational powers, and when free from gout was reputed “a tough customer over the mahogany,” in which testimony we may read, in the manner of that time, a crowning virtue. Something—nay, a great deal—more than the “red-nosed innkeepers” of whom Sir Walter Scott speaks, he was also a landed proprietor, and supplied his extensive establishment from his own farm. Peculiarly the man for this road, and especially for this portion of the road, his personality made the “Bell” inn—the word “hotel” was in those days an abomination and an offence—the especial resort of the sporting fraternity, and racing men generally contrived to make his house their halting-place. Clark reigned at the “Bell” for forty years, from 1800, dying of gout in 1842, shortly after he had sold the house to a Mr. Inett. His was that famous mare, Lollypop, who gave birth to the yet more famous Sweetmeat. But Clark did not live to learn the quality of that foal, and Sweetmeat was sold at the dispersal of his stable for ten guineas. Three years later, when he had won the Somersetshire Stakes at Bath, Lord George Bentinck in vain offered four thousand guineas for him, and later in that year, 1845, he won the Doncaster Cup.