This survey plan may have been made by a local surveyor or by Lord Hardwicke's agent and sent to Soane's office. However, by 1792 Soane had four clerks and two assistants (as well as three pupils) so that one of them may have made this survey.

The Inn is now known as the Hardwicke Arms and is on a former Roman road (98 Ermine Way, Arrington). Listed Grade II, it had 'two principal building periods in C18'. A photograph (www.English Heritage Images of England 52684) shows it as a red brick, timber framed series of attached one and two storey buildings. In Soane's time it was a coaching inn which explains the coach house and the generous stabling. The brew house allowed the inn keeper to make his own beer that might then be drunk in the tap room while the kitchen, dairy and wine cellar would have served the dining room and parlour.

The Inn was owned by Philip Yorke who became 3rd Earl of Hardwicke in 1790. Soane had met Yorke when he was in Italy making his Grand Tour (1778-1780). He had been employed for buildings at Hamels Park, Hertfordshire from 1781 (q.v.) and at Wimpole Hall, Cambridgeshire from 1790 (q.v.). Soane's work at Wimpole included a gate and lodges on the Arrington Road, c.1794.

Adshead (op.cit above) wrote that 'Soane occasionally stayed at the inn, which was then known as the Tyger orTiger. The Tiger Inn appears to have been remodelled in 1723' whe, for example, the brewery was repaired.

Jill Lever