Novel Inns
Characterful locals and literary locations in the Pub Guide
You've read the book and seen the film. Now sup in the local where the action happened. Or not. The AA 'Pub Guide 2008' has loads of hostelries linked with authors and their works.
Many pubs claim to having served William Shakespeare. It is reputed that his parents held their wedding reception at the King's Head in Aston Cantlow, after they were married in the village church in 1557. The Rhydspence Inn in Herefordshire apparently inspired William while penning 'Much Ado About Nothing'. But it's a long way from the play's setting in Messina in Sicily.
Legend also has it that William contracted his fatal illness after stumbling home in the pouring rain after a drink at the Bell in Welford-on-Avon. Could it have been the pork scratchings?
Two London locations evoke the world of Charles Dickens. The George Inn is the only remaining galleried inn in London - William Shakespeare was among its earlier clientele. Dickens, following in his footsteps, mentions the Southwark building in 'Little Dorrit' (1857).
Charles also propped the bar at the Grapes in Limehouse, east London. The pub appears, thinly disguised, as The Six Jolly Fellowship Porters in 'Our Mutual Friend' (1865).
Moving to the West Country, Richard Doddridge Blackmore wrote some of his Exmoor romance 'Lorna Doone' (1869) at the Rising Sun Hotel in Lynmouth, Devon. Samuel Taylor Coleridge stayed here too.
In Dorset, Thomas Hardy often referred to the Acorn Inn in Evershot as the Sow and Acorn. It appears in 'An Indiscretion in the Life of an Heiress' (1878), 'The First Countess of Wessex' (1889), and most famously in 'Tess of the D'Urbervilles' (1891).
Daphne Du Maurier's 1936 'Jamaica Inn' is set in the lonely upland of Bodmin Moor. It's a tale of wreckers and smugglers in early 19th-century Cornwall, and is inspired by the 18th-century inn of the same name in Bolventor. This Jamaica Inn has a Smugglers' Museum, while the Daphne du Maurier room honours the writer.
Fans (and there are many) of Colin Dexter's Morse will need no introduction to the inspector's haunts. Many pubs in and around Oxford featured in the novels and in the television episodes during the 1980s and 90s.
The popular Turf Tavern in Bath Place was a location in the episodes 'The Silent World of Nicholas Quinn', 'Service of all the Dead' and 'The Settling of The Sun'. Just over a mile north of the city centre in Lower Wolvercote is the 17th-century Trout Inn. The riverside pub starred in 'The Wolvercote Tongue' and 'Second Time Around'.
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