The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway — John Shaqi
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian HighwayHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Norwich Road: An East Anglian Highway
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Description and travel; Norwich Road
Close by the "Bull" was another old coaching inn, the "Blue Boar,"
now quite vanished, kept for a time by John Thorogood. The Thorogoods
were in those days, and in these times of amateur coaching are still,
a family of coachmen. "Old John," who owned the "Norwich Times," and
actually drove it for two years without missing a journey the whole of
that time, clearly deserved his patronymic, in thus handling the reins
along a hundred and twelve miles of road for seven hundred and thirty
consecutive days.
It was to the "Blue Boar" that little David Copperfield came, on his
miserable journey from Yarmouth:--"We approached London by degrees, and
got, in due time, to the inn, in the Whitechapel district, I forget
whether it was the 'Blue Bull' or the 'Blue Boar,' but I know it was
the Blue Something, and that its likeness was painted upon the back
of the coach." The sculptured effigy of a boar, with gilded tusks and
hoofs, built into the wall of a tobacco factory, marks the site of the
inn.
Among other noted inns, the "Three Nuns" must be named. From it set
out the short stages to Ilford, Epping, Romford and Woodford, together
with coaches for several of the Essex by-roads. The house owes its
name to the Minoresses, or nuns, of St Clare, from whose religious
establishment the Minories obtains its title. The inn was rebuilt in
1877, and is now nothing more than a huge public-house.
Many other inns of consequence in their day have left nothing but
their yards behind them to show where they stood:--George Yard, Spread
Eagle Yard, Black Horse Yard, Boar's Head Yard, White Swan Yard, Half
Moon Passage, and Kent and Essex Yard are such relics, bordering High
Street, Whitechapel, where one curious sign survives, that of an inn
called the "Horse and Leaping Bar."
VI
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