“with a phisnomy much resembling the ‘Saracen’s Head,’ without Newgate,” alluding, of course, to the figurehead on the sign-board of the inn.

THE SIGN OF THE SARACEN’S HEAD

It goes without saying that the famous Pepys knew the house, and we have the following entry in his diary as confirmation: “11 Nov. 1661. To the wardrobe with Mr. Townsend and Mr. Moore and then to the ‘Saracen’s Head’ to a barrel of oysters.” How Bob Sawyer and Benjamin Allen would have revelled in that occasion!

The inn and the church were both victims of the Great Fire in 1666, but both were rapidly rebuilt on the old sites. From the time the original inn was erected in the 12th century, until the last of its race on the same site was demolished in 1868, doubtless there had been more than one Saracen’s Head, and through this long stretch of years it was a favoured resort of all sorts and conditions of men.

In 1672, John Bunyan, after his release from Bedford Gaol, paid frequent visits to London by coach to the Saracen’s Head, and it is recorded that he spent several nights within its hospitable walls; and we are told that Dean Swift made the inn his headquarters in 1710, on his visits to London from Ireland. An even more famous man, in the person of Horatio Nelson, at the early age of twelve years, stayed a night there prior to making his first voyage in a merchant ship in 1770. Many years afterwards, when he had become world-famous as Lord Nelson, the proprietor of the hostelry, in honour of the early event, named his smartest coach after the admiral.

These are a few bare facts worth recording of an inn which was the most prominent of the coaching inns of London, as it was one of the largest and most flourishing. At one period of its history, coaches started from it for almost every large town in England and Scotland, and over 200 horses were kept in readiness for the purpose.

During the years 1780-1868, the inn had been managed by three generations of the Mountain family, the most notable member of which, owing perhaps to the coaching era then being at its height, was Sarah Ann Mountain, who succeeded her husband in 1818. Innkeeping in those days was one of the most ancient and honourable of professions, and Mrs. Mountain was evidently an ornament to the calling. She was a keen competitor in the business of coach proprietors, and set the pace to other coach owners by putting on the first really fast coach to Birmingham, which did the journey of 109 miles in 11 hours. At that time thirty coaches left her inn daily, amongst them being the “Tally Ho!” the fast coach referred to, whose speed was, we are told, the cause of the furious racing on the St. Albans, Coventry and Birmingham roads up to 1838. At the rear of the inn, Mrs. Mountain had a busy coach factory, and sold her vehicles to other coach proprietors. One of her advertisements announced that “Good, comfortable stage-coaches, with lamps,” could be purchased “at 110 to 120 guineas.”

It was at this period of its prosperity that Dickens made the Saracen’s Head a centre of interest in his novel, Nicholas Nickleby. Ralph Nickleby, being anxious to find employment for his nephew Nicholas, called upon him one day and produced the following advertisement in the newspaper:

“Education.—At Mr. Wackford Squeers’ Academy, Dotheboys Hall, at the delightful village of Dotheboys, near Greta Bridge, in Yorkshire, Youth are boarded, clothed, booked, furnished with pocket-money, provided with all necessaries, instructed in all languages living and dead, mathematics, orthography, geometry, astronomy, trigonometry, the use of globes, algebra, single stick (if required), writing, arithmetic, fortification, and every other branch of classical literature. Terms, twenty guineas per annum. No extras, no vacations, and diet unparalleled. Mr. Squeers is in town, and attends daily, from one till four, at the Saracen’s Head, Snow Hill. N.B.—An able assistant wanted. Annual salary £5. A Master of Arts preferred.”

“There!” said Ralph, folding the paper again. “Let him get that situation, and his fortune is made.”

After some little discussion, Nicholas decided to try for the post, and the two men set forth together in quest of Mr. Squeers at the meeting place announced in the advertisement.

Before Nicholas and his uncle met Squeers, Dickens proceeded, in one of his very picturesque passages, to give a description, first of Snow Hill and then of the Saracen’s Head:

“Snow Hill! What kind of place can the quiet town’s-people who see the words emblazoned, in all the legibility of gilt letters and dark shading, on the north-country coaches, take Snow Hill to be? All people have some undefined and shadowy notion of a place whose name is frequently before their eyes, or often in their ears. What a vast number of random ideas there must be perpetually floating about regarding this same Snow Hill. The name is such a good one. Snow Hill—Snow Hill, too, coupled with a Saracen’s Head: picturing to us by a double association of ideas something stern and rugged! A bleak, desolate tract of country, open to piercing blasts and fierce wintry storms—a dark, cold, gloomy heath, lonely by day and scarcely to be thought of by honest folks at night—a place which solitary wayfarers shun, and where desperate robbers congregate; this, or something like this, should be the prevalent notion of Snow Hill, in those remote and rustic parts, through which the Saracen’s Head, like some grim apparition, rushes each day and night with mysterious and ghost-like punctuality; holding its swift and headlong course in all weathers, and seeming to bid defiance to the very elements themselves.”

The reality, he goes on to say, was rather different, and presents the true picture of it as it really was, situated in the very core of London, surrounded by Newgate, Smithfield, the Compter and St. Sepulchre’s Church—

“and, just on that particular part of Snow Hill where omnibus horses going eastward seriously think of falling down on purpose, and where horses in hackney cabriolets going westward not unfrequently fall by accident, is the coach-yard of the Saracen’s Head inn; its portal guarded by two Saracens’ heads and shoulders—there they are, frowning upon you from each side of the gateway. The inn itself, garnished with another Saracen’s Head, frowns upon you from the top of the yard; while from the door of the hind boot of all the red coaches that are standing therein there glares a small Saracen’s Head, with a twin expression to the large Saracen’s Head below, so that the general appearance of the pile is decidedly of the Saracenic order.

“When you walk up this yard, you will see the booking-office on your left, and the tower of St. Sepulchre’s Church, darting abruptly up into the sky, on your right, and a gallery of bedrooms on both sides. Just before you, you will observe a long window with the words ‘coffee-room’ legibly painted above it; and, looking out of the window, you would have seen in addition, if you had gone at the right time, Mr. Wackford Squeers with his hands in his pockets.”

THE SARACEN’S HEAD, SNOW HILL
From an old