Right...a bit of a mystery wrapped in a conundrum.....I live quite near one of our favourite eating places, the Bulls Head, Meriden....and have gathered a few pics of this place over the years....and understand that it changed identity and postion over the years..starting out as Darlaston Hall, then moving further along the road, nearer the village green...to it's present location....and obviously changing the building form somewhat.....
So that was OK....BUT, yesterday, my old mucker Graham Knight posted this first print of The Bulls Head....and it looked nothing like the previous two!!! I am very puzzled....especially by the lovely little church like building with little spire next to this ;new mansion-like house....anybody help me here???
This is a bit of the story from the history books...
But the most famous of the Meriden inns in the 18th century was the 'Bull's Head', 'called by the country People The Handsomest Inn in England'. Guide-book writers of the period frequently remark on its magnificence, though that captious traveller, the Hon. John Byng, found it in 1789 'a most blackguard stop'. Queen, then Princess, Victoria stayed there in 1832. The original Bull's Head was the large Georgian mansion now called Darlaston Hall, which is said previously to have been a seat of the Earl of Aylesford. It ceased to be an inn about the middle of last century, though another inn in the village continues the name.
The London road, turnpiked in 1821, enters the parish down a steep hill from the east. Its original course, which was still steeper, can be traced in the fields to the right and comes out at the beginning of the village, by the Queen's Head Inn. It was probably abandoned soon after 1785 when the Inclosure Act empowered the Earl of Aylesford to divert the road. From the same Act dates the straight line of road from the west end of the village towards Hampton in-Arden and the present course of the road to Berkswell as far as Four Oaks.