PUB HISTORY

THE WHITE HART INN LENTON

IN the Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, coffee-houses were
extremely popular, and the custom grew up of establishing these delightful
rendezvous at some little distance from centres of industry and surrounding
them with gardens, bowling greens, and other means of diversion in order to
attract the young folk of the neighbouring towns to visit them forrecreation and refreshment.

The White Hart at Lenton began as one of these coffee-houses, and was known
to bygone generations as the Lenton Coffee-house. The excursion to its
charming bowling green across Nottingham Park, beside the then limpid waters
of the River Leen, must have been exceedingly pleasant.

Probably the mounting-blocks before the front door of the inn have something
to do with this period of its history. At any rate, they are noteworthy
examples of a type of relics of the past which are rapidly vanishing from our midst.

When the coffee-house changed its name to the White Hart I cannot say, nor
can I explain why the White Hart, which was the badge of King Richard II.,
was chosen as a sign for the inn.

It was to this house, according to an extraordinary and improbable story,
that the "executioners" of Thomas Paine, together with their friends,
retired after hanging that unfortunate man on the arm of a tree in the
village on 12 February, 1793.

Paine, by his republican views and by his book, "The Rights of Man," had
made himself very unpopular at that critical period when the energies of the
whole of the more thoughtful portion of the population were devoted to the
prevention of a repetition of the scenes of the French Revolution in England.

It is recorded in Godfrey's "History of Lenton" that Paine was captured by
an exasperated mob at Lenton and, after a mockery of a trial in the prison
behind this inn, was condemned and executed. As Paine was at that time in
France, however, and died many years later in America, the trial and
execution recorded doubtless had an effigy as the victim.



BOWLING GREEN OF THE WHITE HART AT LENTON



THERE is little in this pleasant and secluded garden to remind us of the
ghastly events which have taken place within the building overlooking its
greensward, for in the building shown in this picture was situated the
prison of the Court of the Honour of Peveril, a prison which had an awful
reputation.

The Court of the Honour of Peveril took cognisance, amongst other matters,
of small debts, and took no trouble to find out whether it was possible for
a debtor to discharge his liabilities or not. In its eyes, if a man was
proved to be indebted, he must discharge his liabilities or go to prison.

No provision whatever was made for clothing or feeding the unfortunate
prisoner, and he was simply locked up and left destitute, to beg from chance
passers-by for means of keeping body and sold together.

Until 1316 the court, which in those days was almost a royal court and took
into its purview very serious matters indeed, was held in the mysterious
Chapel of St. James in Nottingham-which may have stood where Dorothy Vernon's
house stood until recently.

Then, as if to mark the degradation of the powers of the court, it was moved
first to the Shire Hall, then to Basford, and last of all to the White Hart,
where it survived until 1849.

Blackner, in his history of Nottingham, tells a heartrending story of a
prisoner confined within this dungeon, and I. think probably this story had
something to do with the closing of the prison

I would like to thank Ray Clayton for this report