Caption: "Drawing of The Tabard Inn, Southwark, London SE1, created just before it was demolished in 1873, and published in this volume in 1878." (Slightly edited.)

Southwark is now central London south of the Thames---and nowadays includes Camberwell and St. Olave.

You can descry the sign "Old Tabard".

This was not the original building, but a descendant in more or less the same place as in days when Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343--1400) lodged at The Tabard Inn and where the opening of The Canterbury Tales is set.

This not-so-old "Old Tabard" is Dickensian rather than Chaucerian---but despite 500 years, the differences are probably NOT that great---hostlers, street sweepers, barrels, wheels, gawpers.

The company of pilgrims assembles and the pilgrimage begins:

Bifil 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 weren wyde,
And wel we weren esed atte beste.
And shortly, whan the sonne was to reste,
So hadde I spoken with hem everichon
That I was of hir felaweshipe anon,
And made forward erly for to ryse,
To take oure wey ther as I yow devyse.

---The Canterbury Tales (1387--1400), General Prologue, Geoffrey Chaucer (c. 1343--1400).
See Harvard Geoffrey Chaucer: General Prologue, lines 19--34.

Credit/Permission: Artist WHP, 1873 (uploaded to Wikipedia by User:SlimVirgin, 2009) / Public domain.
Image link: Wikipedia: File:Tabard Inn.JPG.
Local file: local link: chaucer_tabard_inn.html.
File: Chaucer file: chaucer_tabard_inn.html.