Page:The George Inn, Southwark.djvu/19

 to coffee room, up the ever clean wooden stairs to the galleries above and into the various bedrooms furnished with the furniture of polished and rich mahogany of the olden days, which would turn any and every dealer in antiques green with envy, and do, we believe, frequently. Their delight reaches its highest pitch when, in taking lunch or tea, their attention is drawn to the fact that the spoons and forks are silver and were once the property of the erstwhile proprietor, Westerman Scholefield, and have been in use since 1809—the proof of which is indelibly stamped on each article.

Added to all these pleasant reflections is the one, almost as uncommon as the Inn itself, that the amiable and good-natured proprietress, Miss Murray, is ever ready to welcome visitors, not merely because she has good wholesome English food and drink to dispense, but because she loves the old Inn and likes others to love it too. She maintains all the old traditions that such a place abounds in, and we can only hope that she will long remain to act as hostess, and that the ravages of the modern builder will never reach the walls of the old-time building.

2 The Inn is difficult to find, lying, as it does, back from the main road, which in itself is a virtue, as it preserves its privacy and consequently keeps it from being too much overrun and its cosiness violated. Its modest sign at the entrance from the road is overwhelmed by railway notices and other distracting commercial information of a very unattractive nature to the seeker after romantic buildings. This, however, was not the original entrance to the Inn and was only made when part of the building was demolished in 1889-90. In the photograph taken just before the alteration, facing page 30, the exact position of the entrance can be seen. The present roadway into the yard was cut through that portion of the building facing on the right behind the figures in the foreground. In our illustration on page 10, the Inn and yard can be seen as it is