The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2): A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own CountryHarper, Charles G. (Charles George)
History
The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2): A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own Country
Harper, Charles G. (Charles George)
England -- Social life and customs; Hotels -- England
The vanished interest of other corners in London might be enlarged upon,
but it is too melancholy a picture. Let us to the Borough High Street,
and, resolutely refusing to think for the moment of the many queer old
galleried inns that not so long since remained there, come to that sole
survivor, the “George.”
You would never by mere chance find the “George,” for it has no frontage
to the street, and lies along one side of a yard not at first sight very
prepossessing, and, in fact, used in these days for the unsentimental
purposes of a railway goods-receiving depot. This, however, is the old
yard once entirely in use for the business of the inn.
The “George,” as it now stands, is the successor of a pre-Reformation inn
that, formerly the “St. George,” became secularised in the time of Henry
the Eighth, when saints, even patron saints, were under a cloud. It is an
exceedingly long range of buildings, dating from the seventeenth century,
and in two distinct and different styles: a timbered, wooden-balustraded
gallery in two storeys, and a white-washed brick continuation. The long
ground-floor range of windows to the kitchen, the bar, and the
coffee-room, is, as seen in the illustration, protected from any accidents
in the manœuvring of the railway waggons by a continuous bulkhead of
sleepers driven into the ground. It is pleasing to be able to bear witness
to the thriving trade that continues to be done in this sole ancient
survivor of the old Southwark galleried inns, and to note that, however
harshly fate, as personified by rapacious landlords, has dealt with its
kind, the old-world savour of the inn is thoroughly appreciated by those
not generally thought sentimental persons, the commercial men who dine and
lunch, and the commercial travellers who sleep, here.
But, however pleasing the old survivals in brick and stone, in timber and
plaster, may be to the present generation, we seem, by the evidence left
us in the literature and printed matter of an earlier age, to have
travelled far from gross to comparatively ideal manners.
[Illustration: THE LAST OF THE OLD GALLERIED INNS OF LONDON: THE “GEORGE,”
SOUTHWARK. _Photo by T. W. Tyrrell._]
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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