London Taverns. The history of signboards, from the Earliest Times to
the Present Day.
By Jacob Larwood and john Camden Hotten. (1866)
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC.
In old times, when signboards flourished, there would have been many reasons for
choosing these house-decorations. 1. Their symbolic meaning, as the olive-tree,
the fig-tree, the palm-tree. 2. To intimate what was sold within, as the vine,
the coffee-plant, &c. 3. The use of some plants as badges. 4. The vicinity of
some well-known tree or road-mark, near the place where the sign was displayed.
5. The desire of a landlord to have an unusual sign.
The oldest sign borrowed from the vegetable kingdom is the Bush ; it was a bush
or bunch of ivy, box or evergreen, tied to the end of a pole, such as is
represented in many of the suttler's tents in the pictures of Wouverman. The
custom came evidently from the Romans, and with it the oft-repeated proverb, "
Good wine needs no Bush." (Vinum vendibile hedera non est opus; in Italian, Al
buon vino non bisogna frasca ; in French, a bon vin point d'enseigne) Ivy was
the plant commonly used : " The Tavern Ivy clings about my money and kills it,"
says the sottish lave in Massinger's " Virgin Martyr," (a. iii. s. 3.) It may
have been adopted as the plant sacred to Bacchus and the Bacchantes, or perhaps
simply because it is a hardy plant, and long continues green. As late as the
reign of King James I. many inns used it as their only sign. Taylor, the water
poet, in his perambulation of ten shires around London, notes various places
where there is " a taverne with a bush only;" in other parts he mentions " the
signe of the Bush." Even at the present day "the Bush" is a very general sign
for inn and public-house, whilst sometimes it assumes the name of the Ivy Bush,
or the Ivy Green, (two in Birmingham.) In Gloucester, "Warwick, and other
counties, where at certain fairs the ordinary booth people and tradesmen enjoy
the privilege of selling liquors without a licence, they hang out bunches of
ivy, flowers, or boughs of trees, to indicate this sale. As far away as the
western States of North America, at the building of a new village, or station,
it is no uncommon thing to see a bunch of hay, or a green bough, hung from above
the " grocery," or bar-room door, until such time as a superior decoration can
be provided. The bunch being fixed to a long staff was also called the Alepole ;
thus among the processions of odd characters that came to purchase ale at the
Tunnyng of Elinour Rummyng : —
" Another brought her bedes
Of jet or of coale,
To offer to the Alepole."
How these Alepoles, from the very earliest times, continued to enlarge and
encroach upon the public way, has been shown in our Introduction, pp. 16, 17.
The Bunch, gradually became a garland of flowers of considerable proportions,
whence Chaucer, describing the Sompnour, says : —
" A garlond hadde he sette upon his hede
As gret as it were for an alestake."
Afterwards it became a still more elegant object, as exemplified by the Nagshead
in Cheapside, in the print of the entry of Marie de Medici ; finally it appeared
as a crown of green leaves, with a little Bacchus, bestriding a tun dangling
from it. Thus the sign was used simultaneously with the bush.
" If these houses [ale-houses] have a boxe-bush, or an old post, it is enough to
show their profession. But if they be graced with a signe compleat, it's a signe
of a good custome." *
In a mask of 1633, the constituents of a tavern are thus described :
— " A flaminge red lattice, seueral drinking roomes, and a backe doore, but
especially a conceited signe and an eminent bush."
" Tavernes are quickly set up, it is but hanging out a bush at a nobleman's or
an alderman's gate, and 'tis made instantly." — Shirley's Masque of the Triumph
of Peace. In a woodcut from the " Cent Nouvelle Nouvelles," introduced in
Wright's " Domestic Manners," the Bush is suspended from a square board, on
which the sign was painted ; for in France as well as in England, signboard and
bush went together : —
" La taverne levee
L'enseigne et le bouchon,
La dame bien peignee
Les cheveux en bouchon." +
— Chanson nouvelle des Tavernes et Tavernieres, Flew des Chansons Nouvelles,
Lyon, 1586.
Whilst an English host in " Good News and Bad News," says : —
" I rather will take down my bush and sign than live by means of riotous
expense." Gradually, as signs became more costly, the bunch was entirely
neglected and the sign alone remained.
* " The Country Carbonadoed," by D. Lupton, 1632. Voce " Alehouse."
t " The tavern opened
With signboard and bush ;
The landlady's hair neatly dressed,
Tied up in a knot."
The Hand and Flower is a sign very frequently adopted by alehouses in the
vicinity of nursery grounds : — thus, there is one in the High Street,
Kensington, and one in the King's Eoad, a little past Cremorne, though there the
nursery ground has very recently been built over.
The Rose, besides being the queen of flowers, and the national emblem, had yet
another prestige which alone would have been sufficient to make it a favourite
sign in the middle ages ; this was its religious import. On the monumental brass
of Abbot Kirton, formerly in Westminster Abbey, there was a crowned rose with
3Lp?.(£. in its heart, and round it the words
SIS, ROSA, FLOS FLORT7M, MORBIS MEDECINA MEORUM.*
And in Caxton's Psalter, above a woodcut representing an angel
holding a shield with a rose on it, occur the words : —
"Per te rosa toluntur vitia,
Per te datur mestis leticia." +
It was evidently an emblem of the Virgin, and may contain some allusion to the
Rose of Jericho, or to the Christmas rose.
Three centuries ago roses were still very scarce, as we learn from an original
MS. of the time of Henry VIII., and signed by him, preserved at the Remembrance
Office, in which it says that a red rose cost two shillings ; hence, roses were
often amongst the terms of a tenure. Sir Christopher Hatton, the handsome Lord
Chancellor, with the " bushy beard and shoe strings green," who danced himself
into Queen Elizabeth's favour, paid the Bishop of Ely for the rent of Ely House
for a term of twenty-one yearr in 1576, a red rose, ten loads of hay, and £10
a-year ; but that roses then were plentiful, in that garden at all events, is
also evident, for the Bishop and his successors had a right to gather yearly
twenty bushels of roses out of it. Sir John Poulteney, 21 Edward III., gave and
confirmed by charter to Humphrey de Bohun, Earl of Hereford and Essex, his
tenement of Cold Harborough, and appurtenances, for one rose at Midsummer ; a
still more whimsical tenure was that of a farm at Brookhouse, Penistone, York,
for which yearly a payment was to be made of a red rose at Christmas, and a snow
ball at Midsummer. J Unless the flower of the Viburnum or Gueldres Rose,
sometimes called a Snowball, was meant, the payment will have been almost
impossible in those days when ice-cellars were unknown.
* Be thou, rose, queen of flowers, the cure of my diseases,
t Through thee, rose, sins are taken away,
Through thee, gladness is given to the sorrowing.
% Blount's "Fragmenta Antiquitatis, or Ancient Tenures," p. 243.
At the present day some publicans take liberties with the old sign of the Kose ;
in Macclesfield, and at Preston, for instance, there is the Moss Ros^f on
Silkstone Common, in Yorkshire, the Bunch of Roses ; on" the London Road,
Preston, the Rosebud, &c. The Theee Ros^s was formerly a common sign ; from the
way they are represented, they appear to have been heraldic roses, (see our
illiistipation of the ancient Lattice.) It was the sign of Jonathan Edwin,
bookseller in Ludgate Street in 1673. At the Rose Gab. JUlNV, Robert Coplande,
the bookseller and printer, published in 1534 Dame Juliana Berner's "Boke of
Hawkyng, Huntyng, and Fyshyng." This shop was in " the Flete Strete." Rose
garlands or chaplets were not only worn in the middle ages as head-dresses, but
also awarded as archery prizes.
" On euery syde a Rose garlonde
They shott irader the fyne,
"Whoso faileth of the Rose garlonde, sayth Robyn,
His tacky 11 he shall tyne."
Merry Gestes of Robin Eoode.
Copland's Rose garland, doubtless, suggested the sign of another bookseller,
John Wayland, who also lived in Fleet Street about the year 1540 ; his sign was
the Blue Gaeland.
The colloquial phrase, Under the Rose, is sometimes used as sign, or written
under the pictorial representation of the rose ; occurs on a trade's token of
Cambridge,* and may be seen on \pus public-houses of the present day. Numerous
suppositions been made concerning its origin, some holding that it arose this
flower being the emblem of Harpocrates ; others from nainted on the ceiling, any
conversations held under which .xOt to be divulged; whilst Gregory Nazianzen
seems to imply that the rose, from its close bud, had been made the emblem of
silence.
" Utque latet rosa verna suo putamine clausa,
Sic os vincla ferat, validis arcietur habenis,
Indicatque suis prolixa silentia labris."f
At Lullingstone Castle, in Kent, the residence of Sir Percival
Dyke, Bart., there is, says a correspondent of Notes and Queries,
* See Boynes' Tokens issued in the seventeenth century in England, Wales, and
Ireland.
t Like the rose in spring, hidden in its bud, so must the mouth be closed and
restrained with strong reins, enforcing silence to the loquacious lips.
FLOWERS, TREES, HERBS, ETC. 237
a representation of a rose nearly two feet in diameter, surrounded
with the following inscription : —
" Kentish true blue
Take this as a token,
That what is said here
Under the Rose is spoken."
The Dutch have a similar phrase. In an old Book of Inscriptions of the
seventeenth century is a device written round a rose painted on the ceiling : —
" Al wat hier onder de Roos geschied,
Laat dat aldaar en meld het niet." *
There is one sign of the Kose, the origin of which it is difficult to ascertain,
this is the Kose of Normandy, a public-house in the High Street, Marylebone. It
was built in the seventeenth century, and is the oldest house in that parish. In
1659 it is described as having
" Outside a square brick wall set with fruit trees, gravel walks 204 paces long,
7 broad ; the circular wall 485 paces long, 6 broad ; the centre square, a
bowling-green, 112 paces one way, 88 another — all, except the first, double set
with quickset hedges, full grown, and kept in excellent order, and indented like
town walls." f
The street having been raised, the entrance to the house is at present some
steps beneath the roadway. The original form of the exterior has been preserved,
and the staircases and balusters are coeval with the building ; but the garden
and large bowling-green have dwindled into a miserable skittle-ground.
As a sign the Marygold, it is said, arose from a popular reading of the sign of
the Sun ; a very natural and plausible origin. At the same time, it is just
worth mentioning, that this flower (originally called the Gold) seems to have
been considered as an emblem of Queen Mary; so, at least, it would appear from a
lengthy ballad of " the Marygolde," composed by her chaplain, William Forrest,
in which, amongst many other similar allusions, the following words are found :
—
" She [the Queen] may be called Marygolde well,
Of Marie (chiefe) Christes mother deere,
That as in heaven she doth excell,
And golde on earth to have no peere,
So certainly she shineth cleere,
In grace and honour double fold,
* All that is done here, under the Rose,
Leave it here and do not divulge it.
t Memoirs by Samuel Sainthill, 1659, Gent Mag., Lxxxiii. p. 524.
The like was never erst seen heere,
Such as this flower the Marygolde."
The flower was a favourite one in the middle ages, deriving the first part of
its name from the Virgin Mary. No mention of the actual use of the sign,
however, has been met with previous to 1638, when it appears on the title-pages
of Francis Eglisfield, a book-seller in St Paul's Churchyard. His name still
occurs at the same house in 1673,* when it was also the sign of "Mr Cox,
milliner, over against St Clement's Church in the Strand." t
This must have been the same house in which Richard Blanchard and Francis Child, the goldsmiths, kept their "running cashes." %
It is the oldest banking firm in London. Francis Child, the founder, was, in the
reign of Charles I., apprenticed to a goldsmith, William Wheeler, whose shop
stood on the same spot now occupied by the bank. He married his master's
daughter, and thus laid the foundation of his immense fortune. Many bills and
other papers relating to Nell Gwynn are still preserved by this firm, as well as
various documents concerning the sale of Dunkerque. Alderman Blackwell, who was
ruined by the shutting up of the Exchequer in the reign of Charles II., was at
one time a partner in this house. It was here that Dryden deposited the .£50
offered for the discovery of the bullies of the " Rose-alley cudgel ambuscade."
§ The old sign of the house is still preserved by their successors, together
with various relics of the Devil Tavern, on the site of which it was built.
Only a few other flowers occur, mostly modern introductions.
The Daisey, Bramley, Leeds; the Tulip, Springfield, Chelms-
ford ; the Lilies of the Valley, Ible, near Wirksworth ; the
Snowdrop, near Lewes ; Woodbine Tavern, South Shields ; and
the Forest Blue Bell, Mansfield. The Blue Bell is very com-
mon, but, inter doctores lis est, whether it signifies the little blue
flower, or a bell painted blue.
As a sequel to the flowers, we may name the Myrtle tree, of which there are two
in Bristol, and the Rosemary Branch, in Camberwell, and in many other places.
Rosemary was formerly an emblem of Remembrance, in the same way as the
Forget-me-not is now; "There's Rosemary, that's for remembrance" says Ophelia,
(Hamlet, ac. iv., s. 5,) and in Winter's Tale, Perdita says : —
. * London Gazette, Nov. 6, 1673. t Ibid., Oct. 20, 1673.
—"7 X See the " Little London Directory, 1677," recently reprinted.
§ Domestic Intelligencer, Sept. 9, 1679.
" For you, there 's Kosemary and Rue, these keep Seeming and savour all the
winter long, Grace and remembrance be to you both."
Winter's Tale, ac. iv., s. 4.
Hence Kosemary and gloves were of old presented to those who followed the
funeral of a friend.
Fruit trees are much more common, particularly the Apple-tree and the Pear-tree,
which (owing to the favourite drinks of cider and perry) are next to the Rose ;
and the Oak, the most frequent among vegetable signs. The Apple-tree, near
Coldbath Fields prison, was one of the numerous public-houses which Topham the
strong man kept in 1745. At the Apple-tree Tavern, in Charles Street, Covent
Garden, four of the leading London Free Masons' lodges, considering themselves
neglected by Sir Christopher Wren in 1716, met and chose a grandmaster, pro
tern., until they should be able to place a noble brother at the head, which
they did the year following, electing the Duke of Montague. Sir Christopher had
been chosen in 1698. The three lodges that joined with the Apple-tree Lodge used
to meet respectively at the Goose and Gridiron, St Paul's Churchyard ; the
Crown, Parker's Lane ; and at the Rummer and Grapes Tavern, Westminster. The
Hand and Apple was the sign, in 1782, of a shop in Thames Street, where " syder,
Barcelona, cherry brandy, tobacco," &c, were sold. It represented a hand holding
an apple, and was chosen on account of the cider.* To this beverage other signs
owe their origin : for instance, the Red-streak Tree, from the apple of which
the best cider is made. Tickets used formerly to be in the windows of houses
where cider was sold, with the words, " Bright Red-streak Cyder sold here,"
illustrated with three merry companions in cocked hats, sitting under an
apple-tree drinking cider, on the other side a pile of barrels, from which the
landlord is drawing the liquor. In Maylordsham, Hereford, this sign is rendered
as the " Red-streaked Tree ;" there was a Red-streaked Tree Inn in that same
town in 1775.t The Apple-tree and Mitre is an old painted sign, a great deal the
worse for London smoke, in Cursitor Street. It represents an apple-tree
abundantly loaded with fruit, standing in a landscape, with some figures ; above
it a gilt mitre. It is evidently a combination of two signs.
* Banks's Bills in the British Museum. f Hereford Journal, January 7, 1775.
The Pear-tree is as common as the Apple-tree. The Iron Pear-tree at Appleshaw,
Andover, Hants, and at Redenham in the same county, may have been derived from
some noted pear-tree in that neighbourhood, whose hollow and broken stem was
secured with plates or bands of iron. Yery general, also, is the Cherry-tree. It
was the sign of a once famous resort in Bowling-green Lane, Clerkenwell, and was
adopted on account of the quantities of cherry-trees which grew upon its
grounds, even as late as thirty or forty years ago. In our younger days, this
house was the resort of the fast men of Clerkenwell ; its bowling-green gave the
name to the alley in which the house stood. Down the river, at Eotherhithe, was
the Cherry-garden, a famous place of entertainment in the reign of the Merry
Monarch. Pepys went to it on June 15, 1664, and, with his usual pleasant flow of
animal spirits, " came home by water, singing merrily."
" Over against the parish church, [St Olave's, Southwark,] on the south side of
the street, was some time one great house, builded of stone, with arched gates,
which pertained to the Prior of Lewis, in Sussex, and was his lodging when
he came to London ; it is now a common hostelry for travellers, and hath to sign
the Walnut-tree." *
The Walnut-tree was also the sign of a tavern at the south side of St Paul's
Churchyard, over against the New Vault, in which place a concert is advertised
in July 1718, which, from the high price of the admission tickets — 5s. each —
must have been something out of the common.t The Walnut-tree was frequently
adopted by cabinetmakers, and is at the present day a not uncommon alehouse
sign.
The Mulberry-tree was introduced at an early period, but does not seem to have
been used as a sign until modern times. James I., in 1609, caused several
shiploads of mulberry trees to be imported from abroad to encourage the home
manufacture of silk : these were planted in a part of St James's Park ; but the
climate being too cold for the silk worms, it was changed into a pleasure
garden, where even the serious Evelyn would occasionally relax. 10th May 1654 :—
" My Lady Gerard treated us at the Mulberry Gardens, now ye only place of
refreshment about y e towne for persons of ye best quality to be exceedingly
cheated at; Cromwell and his partizans having shut up and seized on Spring
Gardens, which till now had been ye usual rendezvous for ye ladys and gallants
at this season."
Here Dryden went to eat mulberry tarts, and here Pepys occasionally dined, as
5th April 1669, when he indulged in what he calls an " olio," evidently an olla
podrida, since it was prepared by a Spanish cook ; and the dish was so " noble."
and such a success, that he and his friends left the rest of their dinners
untouched ; and after a ride in a coach and a walk for digestion, they took
supper " upon what was left at noon, and very good."
* Stow's Survey, p. 340. t Daily Cmrant, July 1, 1718.
Orange trees were one of the ornaments of St James' Park in the reign of Charles
II. ; and at that period and long after, were mostly used as signboards of the
seed-shops, and by Italian merchants. The Orange-tree and Two Jars was the sign
of a shop of the latter description in the Haymarket in 1753 * No doubt, the
orange tree must have obtained some popularity in the reign of William III., as
it is the emblem of the Orange family. The orange tree is said to be originally
a Chinese plant, (whence they were formerly called China oranges.) They were
unknown to the ancients, and introduced by the Moors into Sicily in the twelfth
century. France possessed them in the fourteenth century ; and probably much
about the same period they were brought to England, for we find " pome d'orring
" mentioned as one of the items at the coronation dinner of Henry IV. in 1399,
where they occur in the third course, along with qitincys en corrifyte doucettys,
and other items of a modern dessert, t But a still earlier instance is mentioned
in the " Book of Days," (vol. ii. p. 694,) viz., in 1290, when a large ship from
Spain arrived at Portsmouth laden with spices. On this occasion, Queen Eleanor
of Castile, anxious to taste again the luscious fruit that reminded her of her
home in sunny Spain and the days of her girlhood, bought out of the cargo " a
frail of figs, of raisins, and of grapes, a bale of dates, 230 pomegranates, 15
citrons, and 7 oranges." This probably is the oldest mention of the orange being
brought to England. The tree is said to have been introduced ¦ into this country
by a member of the Carew family. Oranges are named amongst the articles of diet
consumed by the Lords of the Star Chamber in 1509, when their price is quoted
one day at iijd., and another at ijd., whilst the charge for strawberries was
vijd., and on another day iiijd. % Perhaps, however, they were only used as hors
d'ceuvres, for Eandle Holme, in his instructions how to arrange a dinner, (in
that omnium gatherum, " Academy of Armory,") mentions oranges and lemons as the
first item of the second course. At all events, they were abundant enough in
1559, for on May day of that year the revellers " at the queen's plasse at
Westminster shott and threw eges and orengs on a-gaynst a-nodur."*
In an "Account ef several Gardens near London," in 1691, Beddington Gardens are
mentioned — then in the hands of the Duke of Norfolk, but belonging to the Carew
family — as having in it the best oranges in England. The orange and lemon trees
grew in the ground, " and had done so near one hundred years, the house in which
they were being above 200 feet long. Each of the trees was about 13 feet high,
and generally full of fruit, producing above 10,000 oranges a year." Sir William
Temple's oranges at Sheen are also praised. It is, indeed, a pity that this
plant has so much gone out of fashion ; for, besides being always green, it
bears fruit and flowers all the year round, both appearing at the same time. The
flowers have a delicious smell ; the candied petals impart a very fine flavour
to tea, if a few of them are infused with it ; whilst the fruit may be preserved
in exactly the same manner as other fruit. The sign of the orange-tree still
occurs at Highgate, Birmingham; the Lemon Tkee at Beacon Street, Lichfield.
* Banks's Bills. t Harl. MSS., 279, p. 47, a cookery book of that period.
% Lansdowne MS., No. 1, fol. 49. Three weeks' diet of the Lords of the Star
Chamber.
These lords appear to have lived very well, as we may learn from some of the
items of
one day's dinner :— ffirst for bread, xijd. ; ale, iijs. iiijd. ; and wine, xvjd.
Item to
viijd. vjd. vd. ijd. xiiijd. xd.
loyne of moton; maribones and beef; powdered beef; ij capons; ij geese; v conyes;
iiijd. xvirjd. vd. xijd. vjd. xd.
j leg moton ; vj places ; vj pegions ; ij doz. larkes ; salt and sause ; butter
and eggs,
&c, &c, &c.
Q
The Olive Tree was a common Italian warehouse sign, but was occasionally used by
other shops. Amongst the tokens in the Beaufoy Collection, there is the " Olfa
Tree, Singon Strete," an example of the liberties taken with our language on the
old tokens, as this stands for the Olive Tree in St John's Street. The
usefulness of the olive tree made it in very early times a symbol of peace. In
1503 it was the sign of Henry Estienne, a book-seller and printer at the end of
the Hue de St Jean Beauvais, otherwise Clos Braneau, in Paris. This firm, for
several generations, continued the leading publishers and printers in Paris.
Sauval, who wrote in 1650, says that in his time the olive tree, carved in
stone, was still to be seen in the front of the house. Here Francis I., in 1539,
visited Bobert Estienne, grandson of the founder of the firm, in his workshops ;
and to give him a proof of his favour, conferred upon him the title of Printer
to the King for Latin and Hebrew ; and presented him with those beautiful
letters which Estienne proudly mentions on his title-pages : " Ex officina
Roberti Stephani, typographi regii, typis regiis."
* Machyn's Diary. f Archseolosia, vol. xii.
The Vine, or the Bunch of Geapes, is a very natural sign at a place where wine
is sold. The last particularly was almost inseparable from every tavern, and was
often combined with other objects—
" "Without there hangs a noble sign.
Where golden grapes in image shine ;
To crown the bush, a little Punch-
Gut Bacchus dangling of a bunch,
Sits loftily enthron'd upon
What 's called (in miniature) a Tun."
Co mplegJL Xmtner : London, 1720, p. 86.
The Bunch of Careots, at Hampton Bishop, Hereford, is probably meant as a joke
upon the Bunch of Grapes. Bagford, in a letter to his brother antiquary, Leland,
* says : — ¦
" I have often thought, and am now fully perswaded, that the planting of vines
in the adjacent parts about this city, was first of all begun by the Eomaus, an
industrious people, and famous for their skill in agriculture and gardening, as
may appear from their rei agrarice scrijrtores, as well as from Pliny and other
authors. We had a vineyard in East Smithfield, another in Hatton Garden, (which
at this time is called Vine Street,) and a third in St Giles-in-the-Fields. f
Many places in the country bear the name of the Vineyard to this day, especially
in the ancient monasteries, as Canterbury, Ely, Abingdon, &c, which were left as
such by the Romans."
In Bede's time vineyards were abundant • and still later, tithes on wine were
common in Gloucester, Kent, Surrey, and the adjacent counties. Winchester was
famous for its vineyards in olden times, for Robert of Gloucester, in summing up
the various commodities of the English counties, says : —
" And London ships most, and wine at Winchester."
The Isle of Ely was called Isle des Vignes, and the tithe on the vines yielded
as much as three or four tuns of wine to the bishop. Even in Richard II.'s time,
the Little Park at Windsor was used as a vineyard for the home consumption ; and
the vale of Gloucester, according to William of Malmesbury, produced, in the
twelfth century, as good a wine as many of the provinces of France ; this
county, in fact, produced the best wine : —
* Prefixed to Collectanea, 1770, p. lxxv. ; there is also a paper on Vines in
England in
Archaeologia, i. p. 321; and Roach Smith's Collectanea Antiqua, vol. vi., p. 78,
et sej.
may be consulted with advantage upon this subject.
f Curiously enough, until about 1820, a public-house, the sign of the Vine, in
Dobie Street, St Giles, occupied the very site assigned to this vinevard in
Domesday Book, a.d. 1070.
" There is no province in England hath so many or such good vineyards as this
county, [Gloucester,] either for fertility or sweetness of the grape ; the wine
whereof carrieth no unpleasant tartness, being not much inferior to French in
sweetness." *
From the household expenses of Richard de Swinfield, Bishop of Hereford,
(1289-1290,) it appears that the white wine was at that period chiefly
home-grown, whilst the greater proportion of red wine was imported from abroad.
Even as late as the last century wine was made in England : Faulkner t quotes
the following memorandum from the MS. notes of Peter Collinson : —
" October 1 8, 1765. — I went to see Mr Roger's vineyards at Parson's Green [at
Fulham] all of Burgundy grapes, and seemingly all perfectly ripe ; I did not see
a green, half -ripe grape in all this qiiantity. He does not expect to make less
than fourteen hogsheads of wine. The branches and fruit are remarkably large,
and the wine very strong."
Grosley^ mentions a vineyard at Cobham, belonging to a Mr Hamilton, of about
half an acre, planted with Burgundian vines; but the wine it produced will cause
nobody to regret that the culture has been abandoned, for " it was a liquor of a
darkish gray color ; to the palate it was like verjuice and vinegar blended
together by a bad taste of the soil. ;; This description, enough to set the
teeth on edge, is most likely true, and gives us the reason why English wine
came to be abandoned.
As the vine was set up as a sign in honour of wine, so the Hop-pole, or the Hop
and Barleycorn, the Barley Mow, the Barley Stack, the Malt and Hops, and the
Hopbine, are very general tributes of honour rendered to beer. In many
ale-houses a bunch of hops may be seen suspended in some conspicuous place.
The Pine-apple, in the end of the last and the beginning of this century, was
generally the emblem adopted by confectioners, though not exclusively, for it
was the sign of an eating-house in New Street, Strand, at which Dr Johnson, on
his first coming to town, used to dine.
* Hollinshed's Description of Britain, p. 3.
t Faulkner, Antiquities of Kensington. % G-rosley, vol. i., p. 83.
§ He lived then in Exeter Street, at a slay-maker's. BoswelTs Johnson : London,
1819, p. 57.
I dined very well for eightpence, with very good company, at the Pineapple in
New Street, just by. § Several of them had travelled; they expected to meet
every day, but did not know one another's names. It use before the rest a
shilling, for they drank wine ; hut I had a cut of meat fed. to pence, and bread
for a penny, and gave the waiter a penny ; so that 1 „_quite well served, nay,
better than the rest, for they gave the wait, nothing."
The pine-apple was first known at the discovery of America, and was preserved in
sngar as early as 1556. The first pine-apple was brought from Santa Cruz to the
West Indies, thence to the East Indies and China. Lady Mary Wortley Montagu,
writing in October 1716, informs her sister that she had been at a supper of the
King of Hanover, " where there were," says she, " what I thought worth all the
rest, two ripe ananas, which, to my taste, are a fruit perfectly delicious. You
know they are naturally the growth of Brazil, and I could not imagine how they
came there, but by enchantment." Upon inquiry she learned that they had been
forced in stoves or hot-houses, and is " surprised we do not practise in
England so useful an invention." It was not till the end of the last century
that they were introduced into English gardens, having been brought over from
hot-houses in Holland ; and from that time seems to date their introduction on
the signboard. It is still in general use with public-houses.
Of the Fig Teee there are several examples among the London trades tokens, some
of them, no doubt, grocers' signs, but other trades may have adopted it, either
in allusion to the text of every man " sitting under his own fig-tree," or
because the fig-tree was a symbol of quiet unassuming industry; as such, at
least, Camerarius represents it : —
" Verno tempore ficus arbor speciosis floribus aut fructuum prgecocium
abundantia minim e sese ostentat, nullamque inanem hominibus de se spem
injicit : in autumno autem fructus suaviss. ac quidem in illis reconditos
quasi flores quosdam proferre solet."*
The Almond Tree was the sign of John Webster in St Paul's
Churchyard, in 1663 ; and the Peach Teee occurs sometimes as
an ale-house sign, as, for instance, in Nottingham. Neither of
these signs, however, are of frequent occurrence.
Not only fruit-trees but various forest-trees are constantly met with on the
signboard ; thus the Geeen Teee, which is very common, originally had allusion
to the foresters of the " merry greenwood," or was suggested by some large
evergreen, or tree shelter-
* " In spring-time the fig-tree does not make any show of beautiful flowers or
precocious fruit to deceive mankind with idle hope ; but in autumn it generally
produces exceedingly sweet fruit, with flowers as it were contained within
them." — Joachimus Camerarius,
" Symltolorum Centuries Quatuor," 1697, Centur. i., p. 18.
the twf standing near the inn ; of this green tree the Green SeedFran> i n
Chester is evidently a sprout. Again, in Sheffield there /e two signs of the
Burnt Tree, which name possibly originated from some tree having been damaged in
a fire, and becoming a well-known landmark. The Oak, the vigorous emblem of our
mighty state, is deservedly much used for a sign ; sometimes it is called the
British Oak. At Kilpeck, in Herefordshire, the following rhyme accompanies it :
—
" I am an oak and not a yew,
So drink a cup with good John Pugh."
Druidical recollections are called up by the Oak and Ivy, at Bilston, Stafford;
Hearts of Oak is the material out of which, according to the song, our ships and
seamen are constructed, and therefore well deserves the favourite place it
occupies amongst the signboards of the present day ; whilst the Acorn, the fruit
of the British oak, is nearly as common as the other oak signs.
Next to the oak the Elm seems to have had most followers. From the trades tokens
it appears that the Three Elms was the sign of Edward Boswell in Chandos Street,
in 1667 ; and also of Isaac Elliotson, St John Street, Clerkenwell. Besides
these there was, about the same date, the One Elm, and the Elm. At present we
have the Nine Elms, and the Queen's Elm, Brompton, which is mentioned under the
name of the Queen's Tree, in the parish books of 1586. This tree is said to
derive its name from the fact of Queen Elizabeth, when on a visit to Lord
Burleigh,
being caught in a shower of rain, and taking shelter under the branches of an
elm-tree, then growing on this spot. The Seven Sisters, the sign of two
public-houses in Tottenham, were seven elm-trees, planted in a circular form,
with a walnut tree in the middle ; they were upwards of 500 years old, and the
local tradition said that a martyr had been burnt on that spot. They stood
formerly at the entrance from the high road at Page Green, Tottenham. Within the
last twenty years they have been removed. The Chestnut, the Sycamore, the Beech
Tree, the Fir Tree, the Birch Tree, and the Ash Tree, all occur in various
places where ale-houses are built in the shadow of such trees. The Thorn Tree is
peculiar to Derbyshire. The Buckthorn Tree was, in 1775, the sign of " William
Blackwell in Covent Garden, or at his garden in South Lambeth/' He had chosen
this sign because he sold, amongst other herbs, "buckthorn and elder-berries,
besides leeches and vipers." What the use of the first was is well known; as for
the vipers, they were eaten in broth and soups, before Madame Eachel's enamels
were employed, by ladies who wished to continue " young and beautiful for ever."
The Crab Tree, our indigenous apple-tree, is also seen in a great many places. A
house in Fulham, with that name, is well known to the oarsmen on the Thames. It
derives its denomination from a large crab-tree growing near the public-house,
which gave its name to the whole village. The Willow Tree is very rare ; in the
seventeenth century it was the sign of a shop in the Old Exchange, as appears
from a trades token, but what business was carried on under this gloomy sign
does not appear. Fuller, in his Worthies, (voce Cambridgeshire,) says of willows
: —
" A sad tree whereof such who have lost their love make them mourning garlands;
and we know that exiles hung their harps upon such doleful supporters ; the
twiggs hereoff are physick to drive out the folly of children. Let me add that
if green ash may burn before a queen, withered willows may be allowed to burn
before a lady."
As an attribute of forsaken love it is of constant occurrence in old plays :—
" Sylli. If you forsake me,
Send me word, that I may provide a willow garland
To wear when I drown myself."
Massestger's Maid of Honour, a. iv. s. 5, 1631.
And in the same play Sylli, who thinks himself the preferred
lover, says to his rival : —
" You may cry willow, willow !" — Ibid., a. v. s. 1.
Shakespeare uses the same emblem frequently, particularly in Desdemona's famous
willow song. There is a quaint ballad which an old Northumberland woman used to
sing, but which we have never seen in print : it begins as follows : —
" Young men are false, and they are so deceitful :
Young men are false, and they seldom will prove true ;
For wi' wrangling and jangling, their minds are always changing,
They 're always seeking for some pretty girl that 's new.
It 's all round my hat, I will wear a green willow,
It 's all round my hat for a twelvemonth and a day ;
If any one should ask you the reason why I wear it,
Oh ! tell them I have been slighted by my own true love."
Douce, in his "Illustrations to Shakespeare," says : — This tree might have been
chosen as the symbol of sadness from the verse in Psalm cxxxvii. : " We hanged
our harps upon the willows in the midst thereof f or else from a coincidence
between the weeping willow and falling tears. Another reason has been assigned :
the Agnus castus or vitex was supposed by the ancients to promote chastity, "
and the willow being of a much like nature," says an old writer, "it is yet a
custom that he which is deprived of Lis love must wear a willow garland." —
Swans Speculum Mundi, ch. vi. sec. 4. 1635.
The frequency of the sign of the Yew Teee is not to be attributed to its
association with the churchyard, but to its being the wood from which those
famous bows were made that did such execution at Agincourt and Poictiers, and
wherever the English armies trod the field before the invention of gunpowder. So
great was the patronage our early kings granted to the practice of the bow, that
the patten-makers, by an Act of Parliament of 4 Henry V., were forbidden, under
a penalty of £5, to use in their craft any kind of wood fit to make arrows of.
The Cotton Tree is a sign generally put up in the neighbourhood of cotton
factories, as at Manchester. The Palm Teee is one of the oldest symbols known :
it was used as such by the Assyrians, the Greeks, the Eomans, and by them
transmitted to the early Christians. St Ambrosius, in a very forcible image,
compares the life of an early and faithful Christian to the palm tree, rough and
rugged below, like its stem, but increasing in beauty upwards, where it bears
heavenly fruit. It might also illustrate a more homely truth, namely, that
business cannot flourish without patronage and custom ; thus, Camerarius says :
—
" Inter alias multas singulares proprietates quas scriptores rerum naturalium
Palmse attribuunt, ista non postrema est, quod hgec arbor non facile crescat,
nisi radiis solaribus opt. foveatur nee non humore aliquo conveniente irrigetur."*
The Cocoa Teee was frequently the sign of chocolate-houses when that beverage
was newly imported and very fashionable. One of the most famous was in St James'
Street ; it was, in the reign of Queen Anne, strictly a Tory house : — " A Whig
will no more go to the Cocoa Tree, or Ozinda's, [another chocolate-
house in the same neighbourhood,] than a Tory will be seen at the coffee-house
of St James'. ' ; t Deep play was the order of the day in that as in all other
fashionable resorts at the end of the last century. Walpole, in 1780, wrote to
one of his friends : —
* " Among the many curious properties which the -writers on natui'al history
attribute to the palm tree, it is not one of the least singular that this tree
cannot well thrive unless it be properly basked by the beams of the sun, and
watered by some neighbouring stream."
—J. Camerarius, " Centuria," i., 1697.
f Defoe's Journey through England, p. 168.
" Within this week there has been a cast at hazard at the Cocoa Tree, the
difference of which amounted to an hundred and four score thousand pounds. Mr
O'Birne, an Irish gamester, had won £100,000 off a young Mr Harvey, of Chigwell,
just started from a midshipman into an estate by his elder brother's death.
O'Birne said, ' You can never pay me V 'I can/ said the youth, ' my estate will
sell for the debt.' ' No/ said O., ' I will win ten thousand, you shall throw
for the odd ninety.' They did, and Harvey won." *
It ' afterwards became a club, of which Byron was a member. This gambling seems
to have been inseparable from the chocolate-houses. Eoger North,
attorney-general to James II., says, —
" The use of coffee-houses seems newly improved by a new invention called
Chocolate-houses, for the benefit of rooks and cullies of all the quality,
where gaming is added to all the rest, and the summons of wh seldom fails : as
if the devil had erected a new university, and those were the colleges of its
professors, as well as his school of discipline." f
Chocolate was known in Germany as early as 1624, when Joan Franz. Eauch wrote a
treatise against that beverage and the monks.
In England, however, it seems to have been introduced much later, for in 1657 it
was advertised as a new drink : —
" TN BISHOPSGATE STREET, in Queen's Head Alley, at a Frenchman's house, is an
excellent West India drink called Chocolate to be Sud, where you may have it
ready at any time, and also unmade, at reasonable rates." +
ft is amusing to observe the fluctuating reputation of chocolate on its first
introduction. M m e. de Sevigne, in her letters, gives many proofs of it ; at
one time she fervently recommends it to her daughter as a perfect panacea, at
other times she is as violently against it, and puts it down as the root of all
evil.
The Coffee House is the now inappropriate sign of a gin-palace in Chalton
Street, Somers Town. Early in the last century this neighbourhood was a
delightful rural suburb, with fields and flower gardens. A short distance down
the hill was the then famous Bagnigge Wells, and close by were the remains of
TottenHall, with the Adam and Eve tea-gardens, and the so-called King John's
Palace. Many foreign Protestant refugees had taken up their residence in this
suburb, on account of the retirement it afforded, and the low rates asked for
the small houses. " The Coffee House " was then the popular tea and
coffee-gardens of the district, and was visited by the foreigners of the
neighbourhood, as well as the pleasure-seeking Cockney from the distant city.
There were other public-houses and places of entertainment near at hand, but the
specialty of this establishment was its coffee. As the traffic increased, it
became a posting-house, uniting the business of an inn to the profits of a
pleasure garden. Gradually the demand for coffee fell off, and that for malt and
spirituous liquors increased. At present the gardens are all built over, and the
old gateway forms part of the modern bar ; but there are aged persons in the
neighbourhood who remember Sunday-school excursions to the place, and pic-nic
parties from the crowded city, making merry here in the grounds.
* Horace Walpole's Letters to Mr Mann, February 6, 1780.
t As quoted in Disraeli's Curiosities of Literature, ii. p. 326.
% PuMick Advertiser, Tuesday, June 16-22, 1657.
The Holly Bush is a common public-house sign at the present day. Among the
London trades tokens there is one of the Hand and Holly Bush at Templebar,
evidently the same inn mentioned in 1708 by Hatton, " on the north side, and
about the middle of the backside of St Clements, near the church."* This
combination with the hand does not seem to have any very distinct meaning, and
apparently arose simply from the manner of representing objects in those days,
as being held by a hand issuing from a cloud. Adorning houses and churches at
Christmas with evergreens and holly is a very ancient custom, supposed, like
some others of our old customs, to be derived from the Druids. Formerly the
streets also appear to have been decked out, for Stow tells us that
" Against the feast of Christmas every man's house, as also the parish churches,
were decked with holme, ivy, and bayes, and whatsoever the season of the year
afforded to be given. The conduits and standards in the streets were likewise
garnished."
Thus flowers, fruit trees, and forest trees were represented on the signboard,
and with them even the homely but useful tenants of the kitchen garden found a
place. The Aetichoke, above all, used to be a great favourite, and still gives a
name to some public-houses. As a seedsman's sign it was common and rational; not
so for a milliner, yet both among the Bagford and Banks's shopbills there are
several instances of its being the sign of that business; thus : —
" Susannah Fordham, att the Hartichoake, in ye Eoyal Exchange," in the reign of
Queen Anne, sold " all sorts of fine poynts, laces, and linnens, and all sorts
of gloves and ribons, and all other sorts of millenary wares.' " f
* Hatton's New View of London, 1708, p. 36. f Bagford Bills.
Probably the novelty of the plant bad more than anything else to do with this
selection; for though it was introduced in this country in the reign of King
Henry VIII., yet Evelyn observes : —
" Tis not very long since this noble thistle came first into Italy, improved to
this magnitude by culture, and so rare in England that they were commonly sold
for a crowne a piece." *
The Cabbage is an ale-house sign at Hunslet, Leeds, and at Liverpool, and
Cabbage Hall, opposite Chaney Lane, on the road to the Lunatic Asylum, Oxford,
was formerly the name of a public-house kept by a tailor ; but whether he
himself had christened it thus, or his customers had a sly suspicion that it
owed its origin to cabbaging, history has omitted to record. Another
public-house, higher up the hill, was known by the name of Cateepillae Hall, a
name clearly selected in compliment to Cabbage Hall, intimating that it meant to
draw away the customers from Cabbage Hall, in other words, that the caterpillar
would eat the cabbage. The Oxnoble, a kind of potato, is the name of a
public-house in Manchester, and the homely mess of Pease and Beans was a sign in
Norwich in 17o0.t The Three Eadishes was, in the seventeenth century, a common
nursery and market gardener's sign in Holland. There was one near Haarlem, to
which was added a representation of Christ appearing to Mary Magdalene in the
garden, with this rhyme —
" Christus vertoont men hier
Na zyn dood in verryzen,
Alseen groot hovenier
Die ieder cen moet pryzen.
Dit 's in de drie Badyzen."
Another, near Gouda, had a still more absurd inscription : —
" Adam en Eva leefden in den Paradyze
Zelden aten zy stokvisch maar veel warmoes, kropsla en radyzen.
Hier vindt gy allerley aardgewas om menschen mee te spyzen." §
* Evelyn's Miscellaneous Writings, p. 735. f Gent Mag., March 1842.
% " Christ is represented here
After his death and resurrection,
As a great gardener
Whom every body must praise.
This is at the Three Eadishes."
5 "Adam and Eve lived in Paradise,
They rarely ate stock fish, but a great deal of hotchpotch, lettuce, and
radishes. All sorts of vegetables sold here for human food."
A similarly dull joke occurs in an old English comedy, "Law Tricks," by John
Day, 1608. "I have heard old Adam was an honest man and a good gardener, loved
lettuce well, salads and cabbage reasonably well, yet no tobacco."
The Wheatsheaf is an extremely common inn, public-house, and baker's sign ; it
is a charge in the arms of these three corporations, besides that of the
brewers. In the middle of Farringdon Street, opposite the vegetable market, is
Wheatsheaf Yard, once a famous waggon inn, which also did a roaring trade in
wine, spirits, and Fleet Street marriages. Indeed, most of the large inns within
the liberties of the Fleet served as " marriage shops" between 1734 and 1749 ;
amongst the most famous were the Bull and Garter, the Hoop and Bunch of Grapes,
the Bishop Blaize and Two Sawyers, the Fighting Cocks, and numerous others. The
gateway entrance to the old coach-yard is adorned with very fine carvings of
wheat ears and lions' heads intermixed, finished in a manner not unworthy of
Grinling Gibbons himself.
The Oatsheaf is very rare ; it was the sign of a shop in Cree Church Lane,
Leadenhall Street, in the seventeenth century, as appears from a trades token;
but this seems the only instance of the sign.
With these plants we may also class Tobacco, that best abused of all weeds.
Sometimes we see a pictorial representation of the Tobacco plant, but most
usually it occurs in the form of Tobacco rolls, representing coils of the
so-called spun or twist tobacco, otherwise pigtail, for the sake of ornament,
painted brown and gold alternately. Decker, in his " Gull's Hornbook," mentions
Roll Trinidado, leaf, and pudding tobacco, which probably were the three sorts
smokers at that day preferred. That it was used mixed may be conjectured from
the introduction to " Cinthia's Kevels," a play by Ben Jonson ; one of the
interlocutors says, — " I have my three sorts of tobacco in my pocket."