Searching for Regency London


by Ann Lethbridge

New Cover!

This is my December book The Gamekeeper's Lady out in the UK, isn't it gorgeous? Drooling here. I don't yet have a copy but I am very pleased with this new style and the cover itself. So like my heroine.

Regency London

You would think after a day of tramping around Hampstead, I would have had the sense to go home and have a nice cup of tea. Not.

That evening I took the underground to Southwark. This is Southwark Cathedral, at night of course. I must say blogger is being very slow with pictures today, which may limit the number I post this time, so please excused the short post.

This was originally a priory and was not a cathedral during the regency era, but it was one of England's first Gothic churches and stands at the entry to London Bridge, the only way into London for many centuries.

The real reason for my visit to Southwark is of course the coaching inn. One of the few remaining where one can still see the galleries.

This is the George Inn in Southwark. Only one of its sides - the south side now remains. I wanted to see it at night.





I also went there during daylight hours.


The George can be traced back to 1542 although it is likely that an inn existed here prior to this. Built around three sides of a courtyard - the style became known as an 'inn-yard'. The inn served as an Elizabethan inn-yard theatre. Its wide, double-tiered balconies were an excellent vantage point for the Elizabethan plays. William Shakespeare lived and worked in the area and there is no doubt that he would have frequented the Inn on a regular basis and even possibly have played there, though not in the building we see now, the original inn burned down in 1676, but was rebuilt the same as the old one.



Coaches would have left from here to go through Tunbridge Wells to Dover during the Regency.



Well that is all from me today, so until next time, Happy Rambles.

Regency London

by Michele Ann
It's been a while since we visited London, but I thought we might have a change of scene.

Inns in our period were very important places. The larger ones were not only watering holes, but they were meeting places, transportation terminals and hotels.

The Talbot pictured here in 1810. This inn which was established in 1307 on the east side of Borough High Street in Southwark. A principal route in and out of London.

(Originally called the Tabard after a short coat, either sleeveless, or with short sleeves or shoulder pieces, which was a common item of men's clothing in the middle ages.)

The Tabard appears in Chaucer's Cantebury Tales as the place where the pilgrims gathered prior to setting out on their journey.

It was renamed after a fire destroyed it and it was rebuilt 1669.

It became a posting house, and a place for visitors to London to stay on the other side of the Thames opposite the city.

The gallery which runs around the inside of the courtyard of many these inns always reminds me of a modern motel.

The Cock Inn Leadenhall Street.

This is a lesser known inn according to my source "Inns and Taverns of Old London" and was thought to be originally a boys charity school - the carvings of small boys holding up the over-hanging second story giving it away. You can also make out the cockerel sign below the bay window. It is a beautiful building and still in existence during our period. It is a tavern rather than a coaching inn and would have provided food as well as a favourite libation.

That's all from me. Until next time, happy rambles.