Page:Notes and Queries - Series 11 - Volume 10.djvu/77

 ii s. x. JULY 25, ion.] NOTES AND QUERIES.

71

CHAPEL HOUSE. (11 S. ix. 489; x. 13.)

THIS inn, where Dr. Johnson dined, still stands. It is on the main road from London to Birmingham and Worcester, and half-way between the villages of Enstone and Long C'ompton. It is in the civil parish of Over Norton, and in the ecclesiastical parish of Chipping Norton. The inn stands 200 yards the London side of the four cross-ways whore the Birmingham road is intersected by the fine, wide road connecting Chipping Norton with Banbury. Turning to Dr. Birkbeek Hill's ' Boswell,' one is surprised to see that, with all his admirable editorial powers of annotation, he has not added a single line as to Chapel House.

It has been stated in at least one popular topographical book that the inn has been turned into labourers' cottages, but this is not correct. The inn itself remains very much as it was in March, 1776, when John- son, accompanied by Boswell, pulled up in his post-chaise. The stabling, which stood on the left-hand side of the road going westwards, has been turned into cottages, and the wide entrance through which the coaches drove has been built up by a stone wall. The yard is now an enclosed garden for the cottagers' use. The 1 inn itself is exactly facing this, on the opposite side of the road, and adjoining it are what were once the bakery and brew -house. There is also a pigeon-house, and all of these are much the same as in the eighteenth century. The dry wall which fences-in the inn garden from the road is of a more modern date. There were formerly posts and chains where the wall is now ; and what is a lawn was formerly more of a courtyard, with a bowling alley at the bottom. The hall and entrance to the inn are much the same as before, but the wing furthest from the road has been rebuilt by the landlord of the place, Col. Dawkins. Hospitality is still dispensed at Chapel House, and paying guests are now entertained there. The tenant, Mr. W. Warne, is proud of the house and its associa- tions. As long as he remains in occupation nothing very dire can befall the place. It would be interesting to discover who was the landlord in 1 776. Mr. Warne says that at least one old lease of the house is in the Public Library at Stratford-on-Avon, but perhaps Col. Dawkins has further documents.

The name " Chapel House " is associated with an earlier monastic building, which was connected with an adjoining priory, remains of which are still to be seen. A priory of Augustinian canons was founded in the twelfth century by William Fitzalan, lord of Chipping Norton. Stone coffins, bones, a crucifix, and some beads have been dug up beneath the house. Two fields in the immediate neighbourhood bear the names " First Chapel Hill " and " Second Chapel Hill." There is also "Chapel Close," and adjoining it are " Abbey Close " and " Abbey Ground."

In Ogilby's ' Britannia Depicta,' 1720, published nearly fifty years before Johnson visited the place, the house is marked on a map with the words " A house called Chappel on the Heath."

Notwithstanding all these evidences of the origin of the name " Chapel House," no one has, I believe, yet discovered any documentary evidence of the existence of the chapel as used for ecclesiastical purposes but it is certain that it was so.

The road-lore of the neighbourhood is interesting. When Dr. Johnson made his journey the road was then a new one, a former road having passed a little south of the present one, and joined the new road at Chapel House after passing through Chipping Norton, which town by the present road is left high and dry. Traces of the old road can still be seen. In the parish books of Enstone the Rev. Samuel Nash, an eighteenth-century vicar, entered some notes on the roads :

" As it is probable that the water at Oxford was always passed at the ford, we may see that the original road, to this day called the London drift road, was from Oxford to Campsfield, and from thence through the parishes of Wpotten, Glympton, Kiddington, Enstoue, and Chipping Norton, where

it becomes the Birmingham road Of late years a

new road has been made from Woodstock to Chip- ping Norton, through the village of Enstone."

This was the road which Johnson took. The village of Enstone was a great centre for coaching, and Mr. John Jolly was a large local proprietor of coaches. Twenty- two four-horse coaches passed along this road every day. In 1501 Paul Bombyn, a London merchant, was waylaid and killed close to Chapel House, and priests were suspected of the crime (see Beesley's ' His- tory of Banbury,' p. 190). In 1641 Taylor the water-poet visited the chief inns in Oxfordshire. His itinerary is printed, but I cannot at this moment get at it. Mr. Warne says that Queen Victoria slept at Chapel House on one of her progresses as a