An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

68 AUTOBIOGRAPHY The present Coffee-room, my old fellow frequenters of the house will remember, had been long divided off into two rooms, neither being big enough to be of any particular use : and in the operation a grand old settle, or open fire– place, had been bricked up, so as to square the room. This was re-discovered when we pulled down the lath and plaster, and has been tenderly restored. It is extremely inconvenient and draughty in the wiu ter ; but visitors will, I know, cheerfully put up with the inconvenience when they re– member their ancestors had to do precisely tbe same. Then, again, we found the Ladies' Waiting-room, which opens out of the Courtyard, had also been divided iuto two rooms by a partition, and the fi.ue panelling bad been canvassed and papered over. More than tbis ; wheu the pauels were exposed, we found in them a binged shutter, and on opening it the very fine oak-framed window looking down the yard, and dated about 1480.* Of course, we at once re-opeued it, and restored the other window (a hideous modern tl.iiug), to match it, thereby, I think it will be admitted, gettiug as handsome a room as there is in the city. Upstairs in the fine old attic, where I make my own lair when I am in Norwich, with it great oak beams and rude oak-planked floor, we found a very interesting chimney piece with a depressed arch in narrow bricks quite perfect.t I bad, however, two great disappointments, one in the non-appearance of the guaranteed ghost, aud the other in the cellars. "Every one knew" that the Maid's Head cellars extended right away underground to the Bishop's Palace, and that there were several bricked up arches containing the hidden skeletons of nuns, and I naturally looked forward with great interest to re-opening all this, and recouping some of my expeuses by selling a nun's skeleton to Madame ,Tussaud. I need hardly say that the discovery at once of the capital of a orman pillar built into the wall excited my bighest hopes; but they were not justified. We· founc. nothing else, except that the floor of the room above was supported on a column formed of worked stones. with mouldings of all sorts and dates, and that there were one or two stoue arches in sit1t. Though I began by taking the responsibility of runuing the old Inn more as a joke than anything else,- I have found it rather more than a joke as far as money matters are concerned, though I dou't regret it. Anyhow I have made myself what I consider (and I hope my customers will think the same) a comfortable old worl<l corner. Agaiu, the position of autocrat of the coffee-room table is not an unpleasing one. The Proprietor, who does not care two straws whether guests come or go, cau rid the room of bores and "bounders•· in a very summary and effective •Later I now think. +This room is now absurdly shown to American and other visitors as the ,·nom in which Queen Elizabeth slept, whereas nothing is more certain than that she ,.taycd in the Close. That the inn was not called after her is equally clear from its being mentioned in the Paston Letters (iii., p. 65) in 1472.