3-101-122 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

White Hart Inn Yard, Southwark, c1881. View of south London galleried coaching inn, showing 'the great extent at one time of this Inn, and the depth of its fall from its "most high and palmy state."...the reader will not forget that Dickens, in the Pickwick Papers, gives a picture of the Inn as it was in the coaching days. It was here that the bland Pickwick met his future servant and companion, Sam Weller.' Description by Alfred Marks. Signs read: 'H. Spencer, Bacon Dryer; To Let - Capital Stabling...Four Stalls & Loft. Apply to M. E. P. G. Rogers, Estate Agent & Surveyor'. The reference mentioned by Marks is also included by Edward Walford in Old and New London. "A double tier of bedroom galleries, with old clumsy balustrades, ran round the two sides of the straggling area, and a double row of bells to correspond, sheltered from the weather by a little sloping roof, hung over the door leading to the bar and coffee-room".