3-101-145 - "Royal Academy of Arts, London"/Heritage Images

The "Old Bell," Holborn, inner courtyard., c1884. Galleried coaching inn in London. 'The house is said to date from the early part of the 16th century, though, of course, the present building is comparatively modern. The "Old Bell" has been a favourite with more than one novelist. Mr William Black has introduced it in his Strange Adventures of a Phaeton, where he speaks of "the Old Bell Inn in Holborn, an ancient hostelry which used, in bygone times, to send its relays of stage coaches to Oxford, Cheltenham, Enfield, Abingdon, and a score of other places. Now from the quaint little yard, which is surrounded by frail and dilapidated galleries of wood, that tell of the grandeur of other days, there starts but a solitary omnibus, which daily whisks a few country people and their parcels down to Uxbridge, and Chalfont, and Amersham, and Wendover".' Description by Alfred Marks.