White Hart Inn Yard, Southwark, ca.1881

From: Henry Dixon & Son

RA Collection: Art

The letterpress accompanying the photographs gives the following description.

"The first [photograph] represents the yard nearest to the street, the other the inner yard of the "White Hart," the most famous, next to the "Tabard," of the Inns of Southwark. Together, they show the great extent at one time of this Inn, and the depth of its fall from its "most high and palmy state." To the "White Hart," Taylor, in his Carriers' Cosmographie, allots by far the longest list of carriers. Although according to Mr Rendle, no part of the Inn as we see it is 200 years old, the "White Hart" dates back to the year 1400. Here, half a century later, in 1450, Jack Cade, at the head of the commons of Kent, established his head-quarters: "The Kentish capteine being advertised of the king's advance, came first into Southwarke, and there lodged at the "White Hart." (Holinshed.)

Shakespeare, in Henry VI., pt.2, act iv., sc.8, makes Cade say: "Hath my sword, therefore broke through London Gates, that you should leave me at the "White Hart", in Southwark?" One of the Paston Letters contains a vivid narrative of the rough doings at the "White Hart," while occupied by Cade.

To come much nearer to our times, the reader will not forget that Dickens, in the Pickwick Papers, gives a picture of the Inn as it was in the coaching days. It was here that the bland Pickwick met his future servant and companion, Sam Weller.

It is only fair to mine host of the "White Hart" to say our views show nothing of what belongs to the exisiting tavern, which is very clean, very properous, and to the lover of the picturesque, very uninteresting

The reference mentioned by Marks is also included by Edward Walford in Old and New London"The yard presented none of that bustle and activity which are the usual characteristics of a large coach inn. Three of four lumbering wagons, each with a pile of goods beneath its ample canopy, about the height of the second-floor window of an ordinary house, were stowed away beneath a lofty roof which extended over one end of the yard; and another, which was probably to commence its journey that morning, was drawn out into the open space. A double tier of bedroom galleries, with old clumsy balustrades, ran round the two sides of the straggling area, and a double row of bells to correspond, sheltered from the weather by a little sloping roof, hung over the door leading to the bar and coffee-room. Two or three gigs and chaise-carts were wheeled up under different little sheds and pent-houses; and the occasional heavy tread of a cart-horse or rattling of a chain at the further end of the yard, announced to anybody that cared about the matter that the stable lay in that direction. When we add that a few boys in smock-frocks were lying asleep on heavy packages, woolpacks, and other articles that were scattered on heaps of straw, we have described as fully as need be the general appearance of the yard of the White Hart Inn, High Street, Borough, on the particular morning in question."