Here we have an old inn which was purely picked because it was, like Shakespeare, from Stratford-On-Avon. However there is actually a connection between him and this hostelry.
As it says on the back of the card, "at the time when "Shakespeare was born (1564) this fine timber framed structure was in all probability the mansion of a prosperous Stratford merchant". Today we are fairly sure that the building dates back to 1450. It became an inn in about 1560. The card says it was called The King`s Head, but it seems to have been instead either The King`s Hall, or the King`s House. I have not been able to find out the connection with a King, but would it be called that if there were not?
Now the card muses that "it is quite conceivable that the great poet himself drank his ale or sack here." And it is indeed, for the brewer, and owner, a Mr. Robert Perrott, had a grand-daughter, who married a young man called Richard Tyler in 1588, and this Richard Tyler was a good friend of William Shakespeare.
The card continues musing how Shakespeare "gazed at the fine mural paintings in what was then the bar parlour. These wonderful frescoes, depicting scenes from the Apocryphal story of Tobit, were only discovered by accident in 1927." Now you may think there is an error here, thinking it ought to read Tobias and the Angel, and indeed this is quoted on several websites to do with the Inn. However technically the card is correct, because Tobias, who meets an angel without realising he is one too, was the son of Tobit.
Now these frescoes were done for another Mr. Perrot, which leads us to a sadder story, for he only enjoyed them a few years, before he, and almost all his family, died of plague in 1564. For what you may not know is that in that year, Stratford-upon-Avon had a really bad outbreak, losing very nearly a third of its current population, but somehow not touching a little newly born boy, who was christened William on April the 26th, 1564.
In our original Wills reference book part IV, this set is described as
OLD INNS. Large cards, size 79 x 62 m/m. Fronts printed by letterpress in colour, Backs in grey, with descriptive text. Home issue.
280. 40. "A Series of 40". Fronts greyish-brown, with white border. Issued 1936
281. 40. "Second Series of 40". Fronts light brown, with white border. Issued 1939
It has shrunk a bit in our World Tobacco Issues Indexes, to just
OLD INNS. Lg. Nd.
1. A Series of 40".
2. "Second Series of 40".