WHITE HART INN YARD, SOUTHWARK, ca.1881

From: Henry Dixon & Son

RA Collection: Art

According to Alfred Marks in the letterpress preface to these photographs, "No one can stroll through Southwark without remarking the great Inn yards which give a character of its own to Borough High Street... probably no London suburb at any time contained so may great Inns as Southwark." Southwark, at one end of London Bridge, saw all the traffic to the boroughs north of the Thames and all that going to the counties of Kent and Surrey and beyond. It was the site of a large market, the starting place for pilgrims to Canterbury and convenient for audiences at the nearby Globe Theatre. All of which accounts for the number of inns in the district. However by the time of this photograph, many of the inn yards were redundant. Road had been replaced by rail. So the yards, which once accommodated wagons and travellers, were now falling into disrepair or being built upon, whilst the inns became simple taverns. In 1881, Marks wrote "that, since the destruction of the "Oxford Arms" and one or two galleried inns elsewhere, the Southwark Inns are, with the exception of the "Old Bell," in Holborn, the only Inns of the old type left in London." With regard to the White Hart, as trade diminished, parts were let as tenements and as premises for bacon-drying. The inn was finally demolished in 1889.