The inn was located on the south bank of the
Thames, just north of where the two
Roman roads of
Stane Street and
Watling Street merged. It stood near the
Manor of Southwark, controlled by the
Bishops of Winchester. Also known as the Liberty of Winchester, the manor lay outside the jurisdiction of the
City of London. Activities that were forbidden within the City of London and the
county of Surrey, including
prostitution and
animal baiting, were permitted within Southwark, which thus became medieval London's entertainment district. In those times, the Tabard would have been filled with pilgrims, drunks, travellers, criminals, and prostitutes (colloquially known as the "Winchester Geese"). Chaucer wrote that the Tabard was the location where the pilgrims first met on their journey to Canterbury in the 1380s. The inn's proprietor was a man named Harry Bailey: Bifel that in that season on a day,In Southwerk at the Tabard as I layRedy to wenden on my pilgrymageTo Caunterbury with ful devout corage,At nyght was come into that hostelryeWel nyne and twenty in a compaignyeOf sondry folk, by aventure yfalleIn felaweshipe, and pilgrimes were they alle,That toward Caunterbury wolden ryde;The chambres and the stables weren wyde,And well we weren esed atte beste; The
antiquary John Stow wrote in his
Survey that by the 16th century it was among several inns at this location in Southwark: "many fair inns, for receipt of travellers, by these signs: the Spurre, Christopher, Bull, Queen's Head, Tabard, George, Hart, King's Head" &c. Following the
Dissolution of the Monasteries in the mid-16th century, "the Tabard of the Monastery of Hyde, and the Abbot's Place, with the stable and gardens thereunto belonging" were sold to John and Thomas Master. The goldsmith
John Mabbe (died 1582) acquired the inn. His son Robert Mabbe pledged a share of the inn to the goldsmith
Affabel Partridge for a loan. The layout of the Tabard Inn was described in a lease in 1540, and in a legal dispute, Partridge
v. Mabbe, in 1601. Named rooms in 1601 included a parlour, the dark parlour, a hall, the chamber called the "flower de luce", a kitchen, the cook's lofts, and oven house. ==Destruction and replacement==