The King’s Head was another of the many inns once to be found in the Borough. Their great number is easily explained by the fact that London Bridge was then the only bridge from south to north, and _vice versâ_, and that therefore the traffic of horses and men had to pass through Southwark—of course, necessitating much hotel accommodation. The King’s Head was a great resort of big waggons, for the loading of which a large crane stood in the yard, in consequence of which one side of the yard had a gallery to the second floor only, the crane occupying the space of the lower one, whilst on the other side there were galleries to the first and second floors.
The Old Bell in Holborn, recently pulled down, bore the arms of the Fowlers of Islington, the owners of Barnsbury Manor and occupiers of lands in Canonbury. In its galleried yard the boys used to meet to go in coaches to Mill Hill School.
The Oxford Arms stood south of Warwick Square and the College of Physicians, and is mentioned in a carrier’s advertisement of 1672. Edward Bartlet, an Oxford carrier, started his coaches and waggons thence three times a week. He also announced that he kept a hearse to convey ’a corps’ to any part of England. The Oxford Arms had a red-brick façade, of the period of Charles II., surmounting a gateway leading into the yard, which had on three sides two rows of wooden galleries with exterior staircases, the fourth side being occupied by stabling, built against a portion of old London Wall. This house was consumed in the great fire, but was rebuilt on the former plan. The house always belonged to the Dean and Chapter of St. Paul’s, and the houses of the Canons Residentiary adjoin the Oxford Arms on the south, and there is a door from the old inn into one of the back-yards of the residentiary houses, which is said to have been useful during the riots of 1780 for facilitating the escape of Roman Catholics from the fury of the mob, by enabling them to pass into the residentiary houses; for which reason, it is said by a clause always inserted into the leases of the inn, it is forbidden to close up the door. John Roberts, the bookseller, from whose shop most of the libels and squibs on Pope were issued, lived at the Oxford Arms.