3-053-718 - The Print Collector/Heritage Images

The Old Tabard Inn, Southwark, [south London], 1873. 'This ancient hostelry, though not the veritable tavern in which Chaucer's Canterbury Pilgrims were assembled 500 years ago, stands doubtless on the [same] site...Stowe mentions the old "Tabarde" as still standing in 1598...in 1676 the borough was the scene of a terrible conflagration...as the Tabard stood nearly in the centre of this area, and was mostly built of wood, there can be little doubt that the inn actually visited by Chaucer's pilgrims perished. It was...almost immediately rebuilt...and although, through the ignorance of the landlord or tenant, or both, it was for a time called, not the "Tabarde," but the "Talbot," there can be no doubt that the present inn, whose quaint old timber galleries and not less quaint old chambers are now destined to come to the hammer, is substantially the same inn and hostelry as that commemorated by our great early poet. In Urry's edition of Chaucer, published in 1721, there is a view of the "Tabarde," as it then stood, the yard...opening upon the street; and it is constantly mentioned in books of...the last century as a place where carriers' waggons from the south of England put up, and to which visitors to London...resorted in great numbers'. From "Illustrated London News", 1873.