The Tabard Inn, Southwark, around 1850

The Tabard was established in the medieval period on Borough High Street in Southwark. It is famous as the place owned by Harry Bailey the host in Geoffrey Chaucer's Canterbury Tales, and is described in the first few lines of Chaucer's work as the location where the pilgrims first meet on their journey to Canterbury:

Bifel that in that seson on a day,

In Southwerk at the Tabard as I lay

Redy to wenden on my pilgrymage

To Caunterbury with ful devout corage,

At nyght was come into that hostelrye

Wel nyne and twenty in a compaignye

Of sondry folk, by aventure yfalle

In felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,

That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde;

The chambres and the stables wolden wyde,

And well we weren esed atte beste.

The inn was destroyed by fire in 1676 but was rebuilt and renamed The Talbot. It profited from the coaching trade and was renowned as a coaching inn in the days of Charles Dickens. However, it fell into disuse with the arrival of the railways and was converted into stores. It was demolished in 1873.

The site of the Tabard is next door to the The George (itself one of London's oldest public houses) in Talbot Yard (to the west of Borough High Street). In 2004 the site was marked with a blue plaque describing the historical significance of the Tabard Inn.