The most singular instance of an inn retired from business must surely be that of the "Bell" at Dale, near Derby, but more singular still is the circumstance of its ever having become a public-house, for the building was once actually the guest-house of Dale Abbey. Since it ceased to be a village ale-house, some seventy-six years ago, it has become a farm.
[Illustration: THE "HEARTS OF OAK," NEAR BRIDPORT.]
The illustration shows the extraordinary features of the place: on the right-hand the farmhouse portion, which seems, by the evidence of some carving on the gable, to have been partly rebuilt in 1651, and on the left the parish church, surmounted by an eccentric belfry, greatly resembling a dovecote. The interior of this extraordinary and exceedingly diminutive church--one of the smallest in England--is a close-packed mass of timbering and old-fashioned, high, box-like Georgian pews. A little churchyard surrounds church and farmhouse, and in the background are the tree-covered hills that completely enclose this well-named village of "Dale," an agricultural outpost of Derbyshire, on the very edge of the coal-mining and ironworks districts of Nottinghamshire.
Should the ancient hermit, whose picturesquely situated, but damp, cave on the hillside used to be shown to visitors, be ever suffered in spirit to return to his rheumaticky cell, I think he would find the scenery of Dale much the same as of old, but from his eyrie he would perceive a strange thing: a gigantic cone-shaped mountain in the near neighbourhood, with spouts and tongues of fire flickering at its crest: a thing that fully realises the idea of a volcano. This is the immense slag-heap of the ironworks at Stanton-by-Dale, impressive even to the modern beholder.
Of Dale Abbey itself, few fragments are left: only the tall gable containing the east window standing up gaunt and empty in a meadow, and sundry stone walls of cottages and outhouses, revealing that once proud house.
The "Falcon" at Bidford, near Stratford-on-Avon, associated with Shakespeare, is now a private house, and the once busy rural "Windmill" inn at North Cheriton, on the cross-country coach-road between Blandford and Wincanton, retired from business forty years ago. It is remarkable for having attached to it a tennis-court, originally designed for the entertainment of customers in general and of coach-passengers in particular. Waiting there for the branch-coach, travellers whiled away the weary hours in playing the old English game of tennis.