Pub London's pubs had closed. The closures have been ascribed to factors such as changing tastes, rise in the cost of beer due to applied taxes and the increase in the Muslim population. Inns and taverns feature throughout English literature and poetry, from The Tabard Inn in Chaucer's "Canterbury Tales" onwards. The highwayman Dick Turpin used the Swan Inn at Woughton-on-the-Green in Buckinghamshire as his base. Jamaica Inn near Bolventor in Cornwall gave its name to a 1936 novel by Daphne du Maurier and a 1939 film directed by Alfred Hitchcock. In the 1920s John Fothergill (1876–1957) was the innkeeper of
The Fleece Inn chalking "witch circles" on the floor in front of each hearth to prevent witches from getting in through the chimneys. There are also "witch marks" on the inside of the door, to keep evil spirits out. The BBC used The Fleece Inn and the surrounding village green for its 1994 production of Charles Dickens' novel Martin Chuzzlewit; the pub was renamed the "Blue Dragon" for the duration of shooting The Fleece Inn The Fleece Inn is a public house in Bretforton, in the Vale of Evesham, Worcestershire, England: the half-timbered building, over six hundred years old, has been a pub