Inns 5: Completely Disappeared Inns

Lastly, I explored one or two sites along Watling Street where once there were inns of some sort, but now they are gone.

I referred earlier to the old White Horse in Hockley and the Flying Fox . Between these on the road, Harper, writing in 1902, referred to an impressive redbrick house, set back off the road to the left, and which had once been the Peacock Inn. I looked out for the building, hoping see another old inn. The most likely candidate was Checkleywood Farm -  but the building didn't really match Harper's description, and could easily have been built more recently than 1902. The best that could be said was that it might have been built on the footprint of the old Peacock. I wrote this off as a completely disappeared inn.

Ogilby's map has an inn, the sign of the Man & Boy Bush, at the right, on top of a hill some two miles north of Towcester. I found this spot, where a bridle way leaves the road to the right - and which is suggested here to be a junction with the much-older Oxenford Way. The present-day road is in a shallow cutting, probably a turnpike age improvement. A copse above the road on the right has some humps and bumps, a rectangular form suggestive of a building's foundations. Might an archaeological dig here reveal the Man & Boy Bush?