LITERARY PUBS: THE SPANIARDS INN, HAMPSTEAD

On the edge of Hampstead Heath is a handsome inn called The Spaniards, so named because it was built by two Spanish brothers, in the year 1585.  Our old friend Charles Dickens, who seems to pop up with uncanny frequency in these ‘literary pubs’, was one writer who frequented The Spaniards, which provided inspiration for ‘The Pickwick Papers’, but he was not the only one.

The attractive garden is said to have been where the poet John Keats wrote ‘Ode to a Nightingale’.  There is a Keats Room in the inn to commemorate the fact.  His contemporary Lord Byron also visited.  The inn also appears in Bram Stoker’s ‘Dracula’.  As a non-literary aside, the father of the highwayman Dick Turpin was once the landlord of the inn, and it was where Dick came into the world.

The Spaniards Inn 1585 AD and outbuilding - geograph.org.uk - 1131521. Photo by Mike Quinn, via Wikimedia Commons.

Map of the area.

LITERARY PUBS: THE NEW INN, CLOVELLY

It is amazing how often Charles Dickens’ name crops up when I am researching literary pubs.  The New Inn in Clovelly is one of the many hostelries visited by the writer during his lifetime.  He supped there in 1860, and he renamed the village Steepways when writing about it for the magazine All the Year Round.

Other authors who visited the inn include Sir Walter Raleigh, who stayed there on his honeymoon, Charles Kingsley and Josephine Tozier.  Tozier produced a book named Among English Inns and included a piece about the New Inn, describing it as “a doll’s inn”, "perfectly proportioned" and stuffed with breakable china objects. 

The New Inn is one of two inns in the pretty North Devon village of Clovelly, which is subject to an entrance charge.  For the first-time visitor it is immediately apparent why Dickens named the village Steepways, as the main street running through the village is so steep that coming back up necessitates frequent stops for breath, even for the fittest.  However, it is well worth the visit, both for the village itself and for the wonderful views along the coast.

Clovelly, The New Inn (10857529533). Photo courtesy of National Media Museum, via Wikimedia Commons.

LITERARY PUBS: THE LEATHER BOTTLE, COBHAM, KENT

 Fans of Charles Dickens will be aware that there are a number of pubs around London which were frequented by the famous writer.  However, Dickens did not confine his imbibing to our capital city.  He got about the country a fair bit, and no doubt found suitable watering holes wherever he went.

One particular part of the country with strong Dickens associations is the county of Kent, since he spent part of his life living there, first as a child, then later, following his separation from his wife Catherine, buying a house in Higham, between Rochester and Gravesend.  Near Gravesend is the village of Cobham, with the picturesque Leather Bottle inn, dating from around 1629.  Dickens used to enjoy rambles in the Kentish countryside, and he often stopped by here for liquid refreshment.

The 'Leather Bottle', Cobham - geograph.org.uk - 2209048. Photo by Roger Smith, via Wikimedia Commons.

Not only was the pub visited by Dickens himself, but it featured in one of his most famous works, The Pickwick Papers.  There is a scene in which Pickwick enters the pub with his companions Winkle and Snodgrass, to find another character Tracy Tupman, recently dumped by Rachel Wardle, sitting there with a magnificent feast before him.

In 2012, the BBC website carried a story about a single hair from Dickens’ head which had taken pride of place in the pub.  The hair was raffled to raise money for the restoration of the ‘chalet’ in Rochester where Dickens wrote many of his works.

Map of the area.

LITERARY PUBS: YE OLDE CHESHIRE CHEESE, LONDON

There are a number of pubs in London with Charles Dickens associations, but the one all Dickens fans should visit is Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese at 145 Fleet Street.  Not only did Dickens frequent this quaint and atompheric boozer during his time working in the city, but it had a role to play in one of his classics, ‘A Tale of Two Cities’, set before and after the French Revolution.  There is a scene in the novel in which two of the main characters, Charles Darnay and Sydney Carton, head to a tavern to dine.  Although the tavern is not named, its location on Fleet Street and access ‘up a covered way’ have led to universal acceptance that Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese is the inn in question.  The fare on offer is described as “a good plain dinner and good wine”.  I can back this up, based on a visit some years ago, when as far as I can recall I had a perfectly nice Ploughmans at a surprisingly reasonable price for London. 

Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, Holborn, London. Photo by Adam Bruderer, via Wikimedia Commons.

Charles Dickens is not the only well-known literary figure to have frequented Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese.  Others include G. K. Chesterton, Mark Twain, Samuel Johnson, W. B. Yeats and Arthur Conan Doyle.  In 1927 another eminent writer, P. G. Wodehouse, told a friend that he had looked in at the Garrick (presumably either the theatre or the Garrick Arms) at lunchtime, “took one glance of loathing at the mob, and went off to lunch by myself at the Cheshire Cheese”.   

Cheshire Cheese Basement (15815848118). Photo by It's No Game, via Wikimedia Commons.

The original tavern was opened in 1538 on a site which formed part of a 13^th century Carmelite monastery.  Like many of the capital’s inns of the time, it was destroyed by fire during the Great Fire of London in 1666, but was rebuilt the following year.  The authentic atmosphere inside the pub is enhanced by the sawdust on the floor, which is changed twice daily.  As well as the decent pub food, the bar dispenses beers and other drinks bearing the Samuel Smith label.

Map of the area.

DICKENS UP NORTH: PRESTON, LANCASHIRE

Among all the works by Charles Dickens, Hard Times seems a bit out on a limb.  The main reason for this is geographical, being set “up north” rather than the author’s usual stamping ground, which was mainly in the south-east, sometimes extending out west to Bath, or up the east coast to Great Yarmouth.  The story is set in the fictional Lancashire industrial centre known as Coketown.  Dickens had never ventured this far north prior to writing the novel, so to get himself into the mood he set off for Preston in 1854, where he reportedly became thoroughly bored and depressed, perhaps as much as anything because there was a strike on at the time – oh, and the fact that it was January probably didn’t help.  The industrial unrest witnessed by Dickens provided the main inspiration for the backdrop to the story, and for the characters, including the obnoxious industrialist Josiah Bounderby and one of his employees, the tragic Stephen Blackpool, unable to leave his alcoholic wife for his co-worker sweetheart, wrongly accused of a bank robbery and forced to flee the mill and Coketown before coming to an untimely end after falling into a hole in the ground. 

It has been commented that, unusually for Dickens, the characters in Hard Times lack vibrancy, not surprisingly since he did not linger long enough in Preston to get to know the local people.  However, where he does shine is in his descriptions of the local industrial landscape.  Coketown is described as “that ugly citadel, where Nature was as strongly bricked out as killing airs and gases were bricked in”.  The red brick architecture is dismissed with the comment that it is “of brick that would have been red if the smoke and ashes had allowed it”.  Not surprisingly, the chimneys attract particular disgust: “the chimneys, for want of air to make a draught, were built in an immense variety of stunted and crooked shapes”.  However, he did concede that the factories, when lit up, looked like “fairy palaces”.  Even on a sunny summer’s day and seen from a distance “Coketown lay shrouded in a haze of its own, which appeared impervious to the sun’s rays.   You only knew the town was there because you knew there could have been no such blotch upon the prospect without a town.” 

Miller Arcade Preston. Photo by Francis C. Franklin, via Wikimedia Commons

Preston lies on the banks of the River Ribble, and its origins go back to Roman times.  Highlights of the city’s pre-industrial age include the Battle of Preston in 1648, during the English Civil War, and another Battle of Preston during the Jacobite Rebellion, when the Jacobite army was defeated there.  It was in the 19^th century, however, that the former market town became a ‘poster child’ for the transformations brought about by the Industrial Revolution, most notably courtesy of the cotton industry and its mills such as the one owned by Bounderby.  The appalling conditions in the mills were what led to the strike of 1842 which led to the reading of the Riot Act and the involvement of armed troops, who killed several strikers.  Sadly, like so many places in the north, the 20^th century saw a notable decline in the city’s industrial activity.  The free to enter Harris Museum and Art Gallery has a section devoted to the city’s history alongside its art displays.  The town's shopping centres include the Victorian era Miller Arcade, pictured above, which was modelled on the Burlington Arcade in London.

The Harris Museum Preston.  Photo by Francis C. Franklin, via Wikimedia Commons

Map of the area.

GHOSTS OF CHRISTMAS PAST IN LONDON: A CHRISTMAS CAROL

During his long and prolific writing career, Charles Dickens wrote many Christmas stories, but the best known one must surely be A Christmas Carol, first published in 1843.  The main character of the story is Ebenezer Scrooge, a man whose penny-pinching and mean spiritedness was such that his surname  has become synonymous with mendacity in the English language.  You will often hear people say things like "Oh, he's a right old Scrooge".  During the course of a series of chapters, or staves, Scrooge is visited by a series of ghostly apparitions who take him to see a variety of Christmas scenes designed to make him change his ways, the most heartbreaking of which is when the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come shows him a time in the future when Tiny Tim, the son of Scrooge's long-suffering and poorly paid clerk Bob Cratchit, has died because Cratchit's pay is insufficient to look after his sickly son properly.  By the end of all this, Scrooge undergoes a transformation, his new-found largesse leading him to donate a Christmas turkey to the Cratchit family.

The opening paragraph includes a reference to 'Change.  This was how the Victorians referred to the Royal Exchange, a London centre of commerce founded in the 16th century by the merchant Thomas Gresham.  The building was devastated by the Great Fire of London, and suffered another fire in 1838, but has been returned to its former glory.  Commerce is still alive and kicking today at the building, which is next to the Bank of England: it is now a luxury shopping centre with designer stores and smart restaurants.  The building's grand facade, with the appearance of an ancient Greek temple, is as pretty as a picture at this time of year, with its columns all lit up and a huge Christmas tree in front.

The Royal Exchange - geograph.org.uk - 863444. Photo by Peter McDermott, via Wikimedia Commons

As for Scrooge's hangouts, his counting house lay in an alley in the heart of the City, off Cornhill, which runs east from the Bank underground station.  Dickens describes the building as facing an ancient church tower, "whose gruffold bell was always peeping down at Scrooge out of a Gothic window in the wall".  His house was at 45 Lime Street, off Leadenhall Street, "a gloomy suite of rooms", where the yard was so dark that even Scrooge, who lived there, "was fain to grope with his hands".  The well-known Leadenhall Market (known as much as anything for its role in the Harry Potter films) lies nearby, and may well have been where Scrooge went to get the turkey for the Cratchits.  Today, Lime Street is home to the futuristic Lloyds Insurance building, on the site of the former East India House. 

The wretched Bob Cratchit and his family lived in Camden Town, which in those days was a filthy slum.  The area around Agar Grove in the east part of Camden is described by Dickens as "a complete bog of mud and filth".  Hard to believe today, since Camden Town is now an achingly hip and trendy part of London, most famous for its amazing market which is guaranteed to be heaving on weekends.  Another place referred to in the novel is Mansion House in Walbrook, the Lord Mayor's official residence.  This neoclassical house was built by George Dance in 1753 and it has its own court and prison cells.  Dickens recounts how the fifty cooks and butlers were ordered to "keep Christmas as a Lord Mayor's household should".  

Starbucks at Camden Market. Photo by CherryX, via Wikimedia Commons

Charles Dickens fans visiting London who want to explore the areas featured in the novel can join an A Christmas Carol walking tour.  The Charles Dickens Museum at 48 Doughty Street in Holborn occupies the house where Dickens lived from 1837 to 1839.

Map of the area around Lime Street.

WHAT THE DICKENS! ROCHESTER AND CHATHAM

The celebrated British writer Charles Dickens was born in Portsmouth, but he spent part of his childhood at 2 Ordnance Terrace in Chatham, adjacent to Rochester.  He later bought a house at Gad's Hill Place, Higham, between Gravesend and Rochester.  It is evident from his writing that Rochester and the surrounding area made quite an impression on him, in fact it features in a number of his works.  For Dickens fans visiting Rochester, the city offers the Footsteps In Time guided walking tours conducted by costumed Dickens characters, while the best time of year for them to visit Rochester is just before Christmas, when the Dickensian Christmas Festival takes place, and there is also a Christmas market at the castle.  There is another Dickens festival in the town in June.

Rochester Castle

One of Dickens' best known works is The Pickwick Papers, originally written as a serial for a publication, 19 issues in all.  The story centres around Mr Pickwick, founder of the Pickwick Club based in London, and three of his fellow Pickwickians, as they set off on a journey full of amusing adventures - or more often misadventures - encountering a whole sub-cast of eccentric characters along the way.  The action kicks off with a stay in Rochester, where they put up at the Bull Inn on the High Street.  The castle makes an immediate impression on the friends: one of them, Mr Snodgrass, declares it a "Magnificent ruin!", while Pickwick himself adds "What a study for an antiquarian!" Pickwick makes some observations on the character of the town, describing its "principle productions" as "soldiers, sailors, Jews, chalk, shrimps, officers and dockyard men", while commercial activities include marine stores and the sale of "hard-bake, apples, flat-fish and oysters".  He also comments on the smell of tobacco in the streets: as a sign of how different attitudes to such things were in those days, he describes it as "exceedingly delicious to those who are extremely fond of smoking".  

View of the Medway from the castle

In one of the story's many comic episodes, one of Pickwick's friends, Mr Winkle, becomes the unwitting victim of a case of mistaken identity following an incident at a ball being held at The Bull, which very nearly results in him becoming involved in a duel.  Another hilarious episode takes place on a journey from the inn out to the country, in which the friends make a disastrous attempt at controlling a horse.  One of their outings from Rochester is a visit to Chatham to observe some military maneuvers put on for the public on The Lines, an open space neaer Chatham barracks.  The friends get into trouble again, this time finding themselves in the line of fire by standing in the wrong place.  Dickens' affection for Rochester shows through in a contemplative scene in which Pickwick is standing on Rochester Bridge admiring the river scene.  There is a vivid description of the castle on the left with "the ruined wall, broken in many places", while the banks of the Medway are "covered with corn-fields and pastures, with here and there a windmill". 

Rochester Castle still makes an impressive sight today, as does the Cathedral, which dates back to Norman times.  The inn featured in The Pickwick Papers (and also in Great Expectations, where it was named the Blue Boar Inn) still stands on the High Street at nos 16-18.  It is now called the Royal Victoria and Bull Hotel - the name acquired the Victoria part following a stay by Queen Victoria, who allegedly complained about the uncomfortable bed she slept in.  The High Street retains quite a lot of its old world charm, with a pleasant mix of pubs, restaurants and independent shops occupying the period buildings.  One of these, an Elizabethan mansion called Eastgate House, featured in Dickens' final, unfinished novel The Mystery of Edwin Drood.  As for neighbouring Chatham, the other big draw besides Dickens World is the Chatham Historic Dockyard, where the construction of ships dates back to Tudor times and has encompassed both surface ships and submarines.  The site is now a major tourist attraction for visitors to the area.  

Side entrance to Eastgate House

For more information about the area see the Visit Medway website. 

Map of Rochester.