Most of the ingle-nooks are gone, and modern fire-places are installed in their stead, conferring upon the survivors an additional measure and esteem of respect in these times of a reaction in favour of the old English domestic arrangements. One of the finest of these surviving examples is that of the “White Horse” at Shere, an old-world inn in midst of an equally old-world village. Shere is the most picturesque of those rural villages--Wotton, Abinger Hatch, Gomshall, Shere, Albury and Shalford--strung along the road that runs, lovely, under the southern shoulders of the bold South Downs, between Reigate and Guildford. Modern times have passed it by, and the grey Norman church, a huge and ancient tree, and the old “White Horse,” have a very special quiet nook to themselves. One would not like to hazard too close a guess as to the antiquity of the “White Horse,” whose sign is perhaps the only new thing about it--and _that_ is a picturesque acquisition. The inn is, of course, not of the Norman and early English antiquity of the church, but it was built, let us say, “once upon a time”; which sounds vaguely impressive, and in doing so begins to do justice to the old-world air of the inn. The fine ingle-nook pictured here is to be found in the parlour, and is furnished, as usual in such hospitable contrivances, with a seat on either side and recesses for mugs and glasses. A fine array of copper kettles and brass pots, candlesticks and apothecaries’ mortars, together with an old sampler, runs along the wide beam, and on the hearth are a beautiful pair of fire-dogs and an elaborate cast-iron fireback. A good ingle-nook, rather obscured by the alterations and “improvements” of late years, is to be found in a low-ceilinged little front room at the “Anchor,” Ripley, with a highly ornate fireback; and at the “Swan,” Haslemere, we have the ingle-nook in perhaps its simplest and roughest expression, rudely brick-and-timber built and plastered, with an exiguous little shelf running along the beam, and above that a gunrack. The simple fire-dogs are entirely in character, and have probably been here almost as long as the ingle-nook itself. [Illustration: INGLE-NOOK AT THE “SWAN,” HASLEMERE.] The ingle-nook of the “Crown” inn at Chiddingfold exists, little altered, although a little iron grate, now itself of considerable age, has been built on the wide open hearth, with a brick smoke-hood over it. You see again, on either side of the deep recess, above the side benches, the little square cranny in the wall, handy to reach by those sitting in the nook, and intended, in those bygone days when this cosy feature was still in use, to hold the tankards, the jugs, and the pipes of those who here very literally “took their ease at their inn.” [Illustration: INGLE-NOOK AT THE “TALBOT,” TOWCESTER.]