A Wayside Tavern

Name: A Wayside Tavern
Rating: 4.23 (388 reviews)

by Norah Lofts

First published 1980

Amazon

4.1(388)

An English roadside inn becomes the fixed point of a story that stretches across many centuries. Lofts moves from the end of Roman rule through later migrations, medieval travel, Tudor religious change, Georgian smuggling and the modern world, following the people who own, work in or pass through the same strategic place. Each episode belongs to its own generation, but the road and building preserve patterns of danger, hospitality, commerce and rumour.
Because the tavern stands on a route rather than inside a court, national history arrives through travellers, soldiers, officials, fugitives and changing forms of transport. The structure allows Lofts to show how an apparently ordinary site can accumulate layers of occupation long after the people who created them have been forgotten. The novel turns continuity of place into a history of England from below, with each period leaving material and remembered traces for later inhabitants.

Historical Periods

Viking Age793–1066 CE Smuggling on the Georgian Coast1714–1830 CE Henrician Reformation1530–1547 CE World War II1939–1945 CE End of Roman Rule in Britain383–410 CE