White Horse Alley

White Horse Alley  leaves Middletown’s main street at exactly 90 degrees from the way of travel along it. It runs alongside one of the eight inns which  are situated on the main street. There are four on each side, within crawling distance of each other.

The alley is eight feet wide, and at one time, before they closed it off with a thick stone wall, it led into a yard at the rear of the inn. You could ride the carriage right through to the rear of the inn and enter through the back door. Nowadays the alley  ends at the rear wall of the inn, forcing travelers to alight on the busy street and use the front door, even  during the dark hours.

This means that White Horse Alley is just over eighteen feet long, hardly any length at all considering the strange stories and superstitious carry on that the local people attribute to it.

The inn is named, not surprisingly, The White Horse Inn. It was in the main drinking and eating room of this inn that Old Tom, the only saddle smith in Middletown, turned to his fellow drinkers and made that now legendary announcement!
Ignoring the freshly poured tankard of warm ale on the bar in front of him for the duration of his brief statement - which was an event of some note in itself - he described, without undue embellishment, the events which he had unwittingly participated in on the previous evening shortly after relieving himself at the walled off end of the alley.

They say that the ensuing arguments could be heard from Maidens Hill all the way clear to the end of Dragons Lane, although Sid Potwasher, the bartender on that night, was later heard to swear on oath that during the whole ruckus only twenty or so clay tankards were smashed and Doc Lancit had had occasion to treat only eight broken heads after the fact. It is now generally accepted that the earlier claims to the vociferousness of the initial incident were greatly exaggerated. This is not to say that Old Tom’s announcement wasn’t a pivotal moment in the history of the legend of White Horse Alley as recorded exclusively by the town’s respected scribe, Tim Teller.