If you to want to see the
sort of Inn that our coaching forbears knew seek the
pleasant Waveney Valley, which divides Norfolk and
Suffolk, and stop at the Swan at Harleston.
It
is a dignified old house, with a magnificent sign
swinging before it's mellow brick front from an
elaborate and very beautiful wrought iron support
and the oldest inhabitants of Harleston will tell
you they can recall little change in the Swan in
their memory goes back to the early days when
coaches ran regularly to Norwich and Bury, Before
the railway came to disturb the peace of the Waveney
valley.
But
the Swan memories go back a deal further than the
coaching days, King Henry VIII was not long dead
where the oldest part of the building was erected by
one Robert Cook would have had some tales to tell in
his new Inn, for he was lucky to be alive to build
it, since but a couple of years before he had been a
rebel mixed up in Kett's rebellion and had only just
obtained a pardon for his "treasons and misprisions
of treasons" as the legal phrases put it.
For
the remains of Robert Cooks inn, you must look to
the two wings that enclose the picturesque courtyard
at the back, the front that he built to face
the main street vanished two hundred years or more
to make room for the existing main block. This must
have been erected very early in the 18th century,
probably in Queen Anne's time, and a very noble
building it is too, typical of the finest old
english inn, a place in which life of a market town
centred for generations.
Three storeys high, this block contains the best and
the formal rooms. A graceful broad staircase leads
to the top floor, and the staircase banisters are
very attractive. On the first floor a series of
lofty well proportioned rooms faces the street, the
corridor behind being lighted by an attractive
window, above the entrance archway, which gives a
picturesque view of the inn yard. It is suggested
that through this window, luggage from the top of
the coach would be unloaded direct to the first
floor.
On
this floor is the Assembly Room, so Characteristic
of the 18 century inn. Here were held banquets,
balls and formal functions of the neighbourhood in
former days. This room divided by a movable
partition into two is panelled throughout in the
heavy style of the earliest Georgian period. One
window gives access to the balcony over the entrance
archway, a balcony whose railings are a fine example
of the 18th Century smiths craft. Flanking the
Assembly Room on either side are chambers simply
panelled above the fireplaces. Now they are
bedrooms, but they would have served as rooms where
the assemblies were being held.
On
the floor above are lofty bedrooms, one still
retaining the old fire grate adorned with the Prince
of Wales feathers. Indeed so many things in this
part of the swan testify to it's spacious and
luxurious past.
The
old wings of the inn, the 16th century part, tell
the same story. in that on your right as you enter
the yard is the old bar, a snug room, the rest of
this wing is entirely occupied by the kitchen
quarters, with a big airy game cellar adjoining.
The
Swan was well served with cellars. In one under the
main block, approached through quaint little gates
down a broad stairway are many patches of Tudor
brickwork to tell of Robert Cooks days.
The
Swan must have done a big wine trade in it's time
indeed a mid nineteenth century landlord still
remembered, one Godfrey Neal Youngman's was one of
the biggest wine merchants in the neighbourhood.
Among the other Swans activities then was that of
providing headquarters for a thriving Savings Bank
of 600 depositors owning £15,000.
But
the old inns attractions are not all in its
building. Go out through its picturesque yard, where
you may still see a mounting block by the stables.
For
such is the charm of the Swan that you feel that
nothing has happened to break the continuity of it's
peaceful history. A fine new inn, it began in 1551
and a fine old inn it remains nearly four centuries
later. |
