Description:This postcard view shows the George Borrow Bar, also known as the Stable Bar, in the Swan Hotel on Greengate Street, Stafford. On the left just out of shot of the camera are stairs to the Hay Loft.
The Swan Hotel was originally built as two private town houses in the seventeenth century, joined by a central archway. The buildings were converted into a coaching inn in 1752 and a Georgian front was later added.
The Swan was patronised and written about by George Borrow and Charles Dickens. George Borrow described the Swan in the early nineteenth century as 'a place of infinite life and bustle', but by the middle of the century the advent of the railway had brought the Swan, like other coaching inns, into a decline. Charles Dickens stayed at the Swan at this time, when he found himself stranded between trains in Stafford; in contrast to Borrow he compared the inn to the extinct Dodo.
On the reverse of this postcard there is the following statement: ”It was in 1825 that George Borrow, after whom the Borrow Bar is named, worked as an Ostler at the Swan Hotel, Stafford. He recorded some of his reminisces in one of his famous works, Romany Rye”.
This postcard was franked in Manchester on 4 October 1954 and it was sent to an address in Waterfoot, Lancashire.