Inns and Taverns of Old London by Henry C. Shelley
Setting forth the historic and literary associations of those ancient hostelries, together with an account of the most notable coffee-houses, clubs and pleasure gardens of the British metropolis. Published in Boston by L.C. Page and Company 1909.
[Note: a few misprints in the original have been corrected in this e-text.]
Preface
For all races of Teutonic origin
the claim is made that they are essentially home-loving people. Yet the
Englishman of the sixteenth and seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
especially of the latter, is seen to have exercised considerable zeal
in creating substitutes for that home which, as a Teuton, he ought to
have loved above all else. This, at any rate, was emphatically the case
with the Londoner, as the following pages will testify. When he had
perfected his taverns and inns, perfected them, that is, according to
the light of the olden time, he set to work evolving a new species of
public resort in the coffee-house. That type of establishment appears
to have been responsible for the development of the club, another
substitute for the home. And then came the age of the pleasure-garden.
Both the latter survive, the one in a form of a more rigid
exclusiveness than the eighteenth century Londoner would have deemed
possible; the other in so changed a guise that frequenters of the
prototype would scarcely recognize the relationship. But the
coffee-house and the inn and tavern of old London exist but as a
picturesque memory which these pages attempt to revive.
Naturally much delving among records of the past has gone to the making of this book. To enumerate all the sources of information which have been laid under contribution would be a tedious task and need not be attempted, but it would be ungrateful to omit thankful acknowledgment to Henry B. Wheatley's exhaustive edition of Peter Cunningham's "Handbook of London," and to Warwick Wroth's admirable volume on "The London Pleasure Gardens of the Eighteenth Century." Many of the illustrations have been specially photographed from rare engravings in the Print Boom of the British Museum. H.C.S.
Contents
I. Inns and taverns of old London
- Famous Southwark Inns.
- Inns and taverns east of St Paul's.
- Taverns of Fleet Street and Thereabouts.
- Taverns west of Temple Bar.
- Inns and taverns further afield.
II. Coffee-houses of old London
III. The clubs of old London
IV. Pleasure gardens of old London
List of illustrations
- King's Head Tavern, Fleet Street.
- Geoffrey Chaucer
- Tabard Inn, Southwark in 1810
- Bridge-foot, Southwark, showing the Bear Inn in 1616
- Courtyard of Boar's Head Inn, Southwark
- George Inn
- White Hart Inn, Southwark
- Oliver Goldsmith
- Cock Inn, Leadenhall Street
- Paul Pindar Tavern
- Ancient view of Cheapside, showing the Nag's Head Inn
- A French ordinary in London
- Yard of Belle Sauvage Inn
- The Cheshire Cheese - entrance from Fleet Street
- The Cheshire Cheese - the Johnson Room
- Dr. Samuel Johnson
- Tablet and bust from the Devil Tavern
- Ben Jonson
- Feathers Tavern
- Adam and Eve Tavern
- A trial before the pie-powder court at the Hand and Shears Tavern
- Falcon Tavern, Bankside
- Garraway's Coffee-House
- Mad dog in a coffee-house
- Tom's Coffee-house
- Lloyd's Coffee-house
- Grecian Coffee-house
- John Dryden
- Joseph Addison
- Sir Richard Steele
- Lion's Head at Button's Coffee-house
- British Coffee-house
- Slaughter's Coffee-house
- Old Palace Yard, Westminster
- Don Saltero's Coffee-house
- St James's Street, showing White's on the left and Brooks's on the right
- The Brilliants
-
Promised horrors of the French invasion
- Gambling saloon at Brooks's Club
- Tickets for Vauxhall
- Entrance to Vauxhall
- The citizen at Vauxhall
- Scene at Vauxhall
- Venetian masquerade at Ranelagh, 1749
- The assault on Dr. John Hill at Ranelagh
- Marylebone Gardens
- White Conduit House
- Bagnigge Wells
- Finch's Grotto, Southwark
