The Owl and The Bull
Among the large collection of glass negatives currently being scanned by KAS are several showing the interior of The Bull Hotel, Rochester (now The Royal Victoria and Bull Hotel) as it was a hundred years ago. At the time these photographs were taken several rooms were named for characters created by Dickens, since he not only dined and stayed here, but featured the inn in several novels, most notably in The Pickwick Papers published 1837.
Captions to our glass plates identify The Pickwick room, also those dedicated to Messrs Winkle and Tupman, who along with Augustus Snodgrass (what fantastic names Dickens uses) founded The Pickwick Club.
There is another link here with The Bull, for this well known Rochester Hotel had its own society, The Owl Club. Why was this so called? Perhaps clues lie within two of our glass plates, one of which...