"The Old Inns of Old England" in 2 volumes is a detailed and picturesque account of the ancient and storied hostelries of England written by the English author and illustrator Charles George Harper. This carefully crafted DigiCat ebook is formatted for your eReader with a functional and detailed table of contents. Volume 1: Introductory The Ancient History of Inns General History of Inns The Eighteenth Century Latter Days Pilgrims' Inns and Monastic Hostels Historic Inns Inns of Old Romance Pickwickian Inns Dickensian Inns Highwaymen's Inns Volume 2: A Posy of Old Inns The Old Inns of Cheshire Inns Retired from Business Inns with Relics and Curiosities Tavern Rhymes and Inscriptions The Highest Inns in England Gallows Signs Signs Painted by Artists Queer Signs in Quaint Places Rural Inns The Evolution of a Country Inn Ingle-nooks Innkeepers' Epitaphs Inns with Odd Privileges Inns in Literature Visitors' Books

Reproduction of the original: The Old Inns of Old England by Charles G. Harper

Reproduction of the original: The Old Inns of Old England by Charles G. Harper

"Shall I not take mine ease at mine inn?" In dealing with the Old Inns of England, one is first met with the great difficulty of classification, and lastly with the greater of coming to a conclusion. There are-let us be thankful for it-so many fine old inns. Some of the finest lend themselves to no ready method of classifying. Although they have existed through historic times, they are not historic, and they have no literary associations: they are simply beautiful and comfortable in the old-world way, which is a way a great deal more keenly appreciated than may commonly be supposed in these times. Let those who will flock to Metropoles and other barracks whose very names are evidence of their exotic style; but give me the old inns with such signs as the "Lygon Arms," the "Feathers," the "Peacock," and the like, which you still find-not in the crowded resorts of the seaside, or in great cities, but in the old English country towns and districts frequented by the appreciative few.

The Old Inns of Old England!—how alluring and how inexhaustible a theme! When you set out to reckon up the number of those old inns that demand a mention, how vast a subject it is! For although the Vandal—identified here with the brewer and the ground-landlord—has been busy in London and the great centres of population, destroying many of those famous old hostelries our grandfathers knew and appreciated, and building in their stead “hotels” of the most grandiose and palatial kind, there are happily still remaining to us a large number of the genuine old cosy haunts where the traveller, stained with the marks of travel, may enter and take his ease without being ashamed of his travel-stains or put out of countenance by the modish visitors of this complicated age, who dress usually as if going to a ball, and whose patronage has rung the death-knell of many an inn once quaint and curious, but now merely “replete with every modern convenience.”I thank Heaven—and it is no small matter, for surely one may be thankful for a good inn—that there yet remain many old inns in this Old England of ours, and that it is not yet quite (although nearly) a misdemeanour for the wayfarer to drink a tankard of ale and eat a modest lunch of bread and cheese in a stone-flagged, sanded rustic parlour; or even, having come at the close of day to his halting-place, to indulge in the mild dissipation and local gossip in the bar of an old-time hostelry.