St. Mary's Hall is now the property of the Corporation of Coventry, and
seems to be the place where the Mayor and Council hold their meetings.
It was built by one of the old guilds or fraternities of merchants and
tradesmen The woman shut the kitchen door when I approached, so that I
did not see the great fireplaces and huge cooking-utensils which are said
to be there. Whether these are ever used nowadays, and whether the Mayor
of Coventry gives such hospitable banquets as the Mayor of Liverpool, I
do not know.
We went to the Red Lion, and had a luncheon of cold lamb and cold
pigeon-pie. This is the best way of dining at English hotels,--to call
the meal a luncheon, in which case you will get as good or better a
variety than if it were a dinner, and at less than half the cost. Having
lunched, we again wandered about town, and entered a quadrangle of gabled
houses, with a church, and its churchyard on one side. This proved to be
St. John's Church, and a part of the houses were the locality of Bond's
Hospital, for the reception of ten poor men, and the remainder was
devoted to the Bablake School. Into this latter I peered, with a real
American intrusiveness, which I never found in myself before, but which I
must now assume, or miss a great many things which I am anxious to see.
Running along the front of the house, under the jut of the impending
story, there was a cloistered walk, with windows opening on the
quadrangle.
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