INN SIGNS 



299 



of town-planning. One of the most prominent objects in the 

 view is the inn sign, a good solid structure, thrust well out into 

 the public way; it is characteristic of the times, both in its size 

 and in the wrought-iron scroll-work which surrounds the swing- 

 ing lion ; indeed bits of fanciful ironwork such as this were 

 prodigally used during the eighteenth century, and give interest 

 to a house or a street which otherwise would attract no attention. 

 In the middle distance is another sign typical of many which 

 used to exist, but 

 which are seldom 

 found in the present 

 day. Here it stretches 

 across a large part 

 of the public road, 

 but in many cases 

 these signs were made 

 to span the whole 

 width of the street. 

 An example of an 

 elaborate sign may 

 be seen at the Swan 

 Inn, Market Har- 

 borough (Fig. 212), 

 and an unpretentious 

 but effective specimen is shown in Fig. 213.- 



In most of the county towns the gentry of the district used 

 to have their winter residences, to which they repaired when 

 the state of the roads rendered locomotion difficult. It must be 

 remembered that the roads in those days, except the most im- 

 portant, were little more than tracks across the country ; nothing 

 was done to make them hard or permanent they merely traversed 

 the natural soil. " Where there is good land there is foul way," 

 was a saying of the time ; and conversely, where the ground 

 was stony the roads were fairly hard. Horace Walpole, among 

 other writers, recounts the difficulties he experienced on country 

 roads in bad weather, and this condition of things accounts 

 for the number of horses which, according to old prints, 

 were harnessed to family coaches. These in their turn were 

 built in a strong and heavy fashion, in order to withstand the 

 shocks to which they were inevitably subjected. When the wet 

 weather came on, families who lived in country houses betook 



FlG. 213. The Sign of an Inn at Salisbury. 



