The Manor House Hotel, The Royal Stag (plus the shop next door now The Bridge) and possibly the Morning Star all figure in Jerome's account of how he and his friends searched for places to stay in Datchet for the night, written in 1888. He was clearly writing from personal experience of the village but was of course taking artistic licence. In his introduction to the famous comic novel, Jeremy Nicholas of the Jerome K Jerome Society says:

Keeping this proviso in mind, the episode set in Datchet revolves around the supposed fact that there are no beds to be had because everywhere is already full. It was an entirely plausible scenario, as Jeremy Nicholas goes on to describe:

The three men at first reject the Stag because it has no honeysuckle over the door and also the Manor House (hotel) because they didn't like the look of a man who was leaning against the front door, but on being told these are the only two inns in the place they decide to forego such niceties. Returning to the Stag, the landlord tells them he hasn't got a bed vacant in the whole house; in fact he is already putting two or even three gentlemen in the same bed. When they suggest they could manage in the billiard room he replies, Very sorry sir, three gentlemen sleeping on the billiard table already and two in the coffee room.

Back at the Manor House, accurately described as just opposite, and deciding not to take any notice of the man at the door with red hair and ugly boots, they were met by the landlady telling them they were the fourth party she had turned away in the last hour and a half. As to their suggestions of, stables, billiard room or coal cellars, she laughed them all to scorn; all these nooks had been snatched up long ago. If they didn't mind roughing it - she would not recommend it, mind - there was a little beer shop half a mile down the Eton Road.

This may be pure invention, but it is tempting to identify the next place with the Morning Star, which was a beershop at the time rather than an inn. It is at least in the right direction from the other two and all distances are wildly exaggerated to spin out the friends' tribulations. Having rushed, panting, into the bar, they found that the people in the beershop were rude; they merely laughed at us. There were only three beds in the whole house and they had seven single gentlemen and two married couples sleeping there already. A kind-hearted bargeman however, thought we might try the grocer's next to the Stag. That would have been an accurate observation of Wilkinson's general stores, now The Bridge. Needless to say, the shop was full and more miles were trudged in search of non-existent rooms until a boy took them home to his mother's cottage, where they finally spent an uncomfortable night in child-sized beds. The episode finishes with We were not so uppish about what sort of hotel we would have next time we went to Datchet.

Although the landlords and landladies in the novel are caricatures, we do know who the proprietors of all the places mentioned really were. Kelly's street directories list names and addresses for private residents and commercial premises. In 1887 Arthur Druce was licensee at the Manor Hotel, Stephen Eagles at the Royal Stag and Thomas Skelton at the beershop, which later became our Morning Star. Jerome's visits are likely to have been in the summer when the village's population was swelled by visitors, but census figures show that the population was rising rapidly exactly at the time he was writing: from 920 in 1841 the figure gradually rises to 990 by 1871 (70 in thirty years) and then suddenly to 1200 in 1881 (210 in ten years). Surprisingly, the arrival of the railway in 1848 made almost no difference to the size of the population and it was not until the fashion for river sports took off that Datchet boomed, although the presence of the railway was then a crucial factor. Farmland was being sold specifically for housing by the mid-1870s as this extract from an auction catalogue shows:

Houses in the Avenue and Montagu Road were built by developers on this very large plot and the original Green Lane cottages on another, while Club Buildings at the far western end of the village were purpose-built apartments for renting out during the season. The Manor Hotel underwent the first of its many extensions in February 1888; a case of fictional high demand being very close to the facts at the time.

Developers who bought this large area created the Avenue and Montagu Road with their variety of desirable residences, while the original working class cottages in Green Lane were built on another plot sold at the same time. To cater for visitors, Club Buildings (at the far western end of the village) provided apartments for seasonal lettings while the first extension to the Manor Hotel was begun early in 1888. Since that was the same year that Jerome wrote Three Men, it is likely that his fictional picture was very close to the truth in this suddenly popular riverside village.

Janet Kennish