Part III
HISTORICAL RECORDS OF THE GEORGE INN
"Give me, oh! give me yesterday!" This bitter cry is on the lips of every lover of London, faintly heard amid the din made by the pickaxes of the demolishers and the cranes and the trowels of the contractors. But the wish can never be granted; at the most we can by hunting for it cherish for a moment an illusion, and here and there, in the few sanctuaries of antiquity and beauty that remain, cheat ourselves that time has run back and the serener past again is ours.—E. V. Lucas in Loiterer's Harvest.
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The earliest detailed records of the George Inn that we have encountered appeared in a lecture read at the General Meeting of the Surrey Archaeological Society held in Southwark on 12th May, 1858, entitled "On some of the Ancient Inns of Southwark," by George Corner, F.S.A. The lecture was printed for the authority by Cox and Wyman, Great Queen Street, W.C., 1860. As this document was no doubt the source to which many subsequent writers (including Timbs) went for their material, we quote the references to the "George" in extenso:—
This is one of the inns described by Stow as existing in his time, and it is mentioned at an earlier period, viz., in 1554, 35th Henry VIII., by the name of "St. George," as being situate (as it is) on the north side of "The Tabard." I have not been able to find any notice of this inn from the time of Stow until the seventeenth century, when two tokens were issued from the "George," which are in the Beaufoy Collection at the library of the Corporation of London, at Guildhall, and described in Mr. Jacob Henry Burn's catalogue of those tokens. The first is a token of "Anthony Blake, Tapster, ye
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