[Gutenberg 43865] • The Old Inns of Old England, Volume 1 (of 2) / A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own Country

Excerpt from The Old Inns of Old England, Vol. 1: A Picturesque Account of the Ancient and Storied Hostelries of Our Own Country

It is somewhat singular that no book has hitherto been published dealing either largely or exclusively with Old Inns and their story. I suppose that is because there are so many difficulties in the way of one who would write an account of them. The chief of these is that of arrangement and classification; the next is that of selection; the last that of coming to a conclusion. I would ask those who read these pages, and have perhaps some favourite inn they do not find mentioned or illustrated here, to remember that the merely picturesque inns that have no story, or anything beyond their own picturesqueness to render them remarkable, are - let us be thankful for it I - still with us in great numbers, and that to have illustrated or mentioned even a tithe of them would have been impossible.