Among brewers who have had the foresight to erect inns of better accommodation and more pleasing design than most of those put up during the latter part of last century are Messrs. Godsell & Co., of Stroud, an example of whose houses we illustrate in the _Greyhound Inn_; and the Stroud Brewery Co., whose _Prince Albert_ at Rodborough, Gloucestershire, and the _Clothiers’ Arms_, are excellent specimens of the modern country inn. These three were from the designs of Mr. P. Morley Horder. Good taste is by no means lacking in some of the many houses owned by Messrs. Nalder & Collyer, Ltd., in Kent, Surrey, and Sussex. This firm have also restored the old-fashioned type of signboards.
Other inns of recent date and of distinctive design are the _Red Lion_, King’s Heath, Worcestershire, by Messrs. Bateman & Bateman; the _Wentworth Arms_, Elmesthorpe, Leicestershire, by Mr. C. F. A. Voysey; the _George_, Hayes, Kent, by Mr. Ernest Newton; the _Duck-in-the-Pond_, Harrow Weald, by Mr. R. A. Briggs; the _Maynard Arms_, Bagworth, Leicester, by Messrs. Everard & Pick; the remodelled _White Hart_ at Sonning-on-Thames, by Mr. W. Campbell Jones; the _Dog and Doublet_, Sandon; the _Hundred House_, Purslow, Shropshire (a modern reconstruction); the _Green Man_, Tunstall, Suffolk; the _Old White House_ and the _Elm Tree_ at Oxford, by Mr. Henry T. Hare; and various temperance inns, amongst which are the _Ossington Coffee House_, Newark, by Messrs. Ernest George & Yeates; the _Bridge Inn_, Port Sunlight, by Messrs. Grayson & Ould (now fully licensed); and the Bournville Estate public-house, by Mr. W. Alexander Harvey. In London two finely designed interiors are the _Coal Hole_, in the Strand, by Mr. W. Colcutt, and the _Copt Hall_, in Copthall Avenue, by Mr. P. Morley Horder.
It will not come as any surprise to readers who have so far dipped with us into the pages of the past, to learn that mediæval inns, and indeed those of the fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, have very little to show in the way of furniture. Our ancestors had far less done for them when they put up for the night than we are accustomed to to-day in the most primitive districts. Travellers did not even expect a bed. They were thankful enough if they could get some sort of rough bedstead on which to lay their own bed which they brought with them. Of course, these were people of some means. Whenever Royalty travelled the train of waggons required to convey furnishing equipment frequently extended to formidable dimensions. On the other hand, the accumulation of wealth in the sixteenth century soon began to raise the standard of furnishing at the inn, and a diary kept by a Dutch physician named Levinus Lemnius, who made an adventure into England during Elizabeth’s reign, is worth quoting as an indication of the rapid improvement which was taking place. The good doctor evidently had not been used to luxuries, for he says: “The neate cleanliness, the exquisite fineness, the pleasaunte and delightful furniture in every poynt for the household, wonderfully rejoyced me, their nosegayes, finely entermingled with sundry sortes of fragreunte flowers in their bedchambers and privy roomes with comfortable smell cheered mee up and entirely delyghted all my sences.” He probably stayed at the best hostelries which could be found, and it would be unwise to conclude that all inns of the period had so many charms as those to which he refers.