Residences & Lodgings

The Hôtel d'Angleterre at Calais with its proprietor Monsieur Dessein, which appears at the beginning of Laurence Sterne's Sentimental Journey (1768), is by no means a fictitious space but was a well-known institution, popular among English travellers to the continent, who praised the quality of accommodation, architecture, and service.

The late-seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were a veritable ‘golden age’ of the inn. Inns, where coaches arrived and departed, were nodal points of the transport system. They offered rooms to stay overnight, food, and stables, and were often huge purpose-built business complexes with shops and storage facilities, situated alongside major roads in the provinces, and town centres, and in cities.