The George Inn

The George or the George Inn is a so-called public house in London , which was built in the late Middle Ages on Borough High Street in Southwark and is now owned by the National Trust . It stands about 250 m south of the Thames at London Bridge . It is the only remaining relaxing inn in England with wooden columned galleries.

history

An early map of Southwark around 1543 clearly identified the house as "George". At that time it was still called George and Dragon , named after the legend of St. George's fight with a dragon . There were many such inns in this part of London at the time. Probably the best known was The Tabard , where Geoffrey Chaucer began writing his Canterbury Tales in 1388 . After a disastrous fire that destroyed large parts of Southwark and the George in 1677, the inn was rebuilt. (The tabard was also affected by the fire, was also rebuilt, but completely demolished in the late 19th century.)

In the absence of permanent theaters, the Elizabethan Theater's first theatrical performances took place in the inns or their courtyards (see Inn-Yard Theater ). In later years the Great Northern Railway used the George as a depot and tore down two front areas for this. For this reason only the south facade is completely preserved today.

The English writer Charles Dickens was a guest here and mentioned this in his socially critical serial novel Little Dorrit .

description

As was customary at the time, the building is partly half- timbered. The ground floor is divided into several connected taprooms. The "Parliament Bar" was used as a waiting room for carriage travelers. The middle bar was the coffee bar (today one would call it a café ), which Charles Dickens also liked to visit . The sleeping quarters, now converted into a restaurant, were on the upper, column-lined floor.

The George Inn is one of the only remaining relaxation inns in London and is the only remaining pillar-built inn. At the time, the White Hart (demolished in the 19th century) was located in the northern neighborhood and The Tabard was only a few meters south in today's Talbot Yard . The George is classified as a Grade I building on the Statutory List of Buildings of Special Architectural or Historic Interest . The tradition keeper of the CAMRA also keep the house on their list of the "National Inventory of Historic Pub Interior".

literature

The London “Beer Writer” Pete Brown (* 1968) describes the history and the historical surroundings of the pub in his book Shakespeare's Local: Six Centuries of History Seen Through One Extraordinary Pub ISBN 978-0230761261
Bertram Waldrom Matz The George Inn, Southwark , Chapman & Hall , London 1918