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The Trip to Jerusalem Inn
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IT is very difficult indeed to write anything authentic about this very well-known and picturesque hostelry, for the traditions associated with it combat the known facts.
It has certain rock-hewn chambers in its rear which are of undoubted antiquity, and the probabilities are that within these chambers was matured the beer brewed for the use of the garrison and the dependants of the great mediaeval fortress-palace of Nottingham Castle.
Brewhouse-yard itself was an extraordinary little area. It was legally outside the jurisdiction of the town, and consequently was very much less carefully policed than was the rest of the neighbourhood. The result was naturally that it became a sort of bolt-hole for all the ne’er-do-wells of the neighbourhood, and its reputation gradually became exceedingly unsavoury—a condition of affairs which is now mercifully rectified.
In a plan of 1670 a small building appears which may represent the present inn, and in 1760 an inn called "The Pilgrim" is referred to as being situated in Brewhouse-yard, and as being the resort of a curious semi-political, semi-religious body called the Philadelphians, whose particular shibboleth (by which they hoped to reach heaven) was to refer to each other as "Brother Pilgrim."
By a series of curious legal chances Brewhouse-yard came under the jurisdiction of a court held at Cotgrave, which was under the headship of the Prior of the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, and I think that some nickname concocted from " The Pilgrim" and this Order of St. John of Jerusalem is the origin of the present name of the inn.