Cleveland Tontine Inn
Introduction
The photograph on this page of Cleveland Tontine Inn by Mick Garratt as part of the Geograph project.
The Geograph project started in 2005 with the aim of publishing, organising and preserving representative images for every square kilometre of Great Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man.
There are currently over 7.5m images from over 14,400 individuals and you can help contribute to the project by visiting https://www.geograph.org.uk
Cleveland Tontine Inn
Image: © Mick Garratt Taken: 16 Oct 2005
Viewed from the south. The inn was built in 1804 to provide a convenient staging post at the junction of the roads between Thirsk and Guisborough and Yarm. The inn was financed by a tontine scheme wherein subscribers paid money into a fund and, as each person died, his share was divided amongst the remainder. Basically last one alive takes all. Tontine schemes were eventually banned in Great Britain (and the USA) because of the incentive for subscribers bump each other off. This has indeed been the subject of a plot by Robert Louis Stevenson and his stepson Lloyd Osbourne in 1889, The Wrong Box (made into a film in 1966). The inn nowadays is the home of the excellent McCoys restaurant.
Images are licensed for reuse under creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0
Image Location
Latitude
54.386369
Longitude
-1.319364