Ferry Inn

The Ferry Inn sits across the River Durran from the town of Morton, joined to it by the Dukes Ferry, which is operated by the Inn. It is one of very few dwellings on the south bank of the river (owing to that areas historic use as a graveyard, see Funerary Rites in the Moran Duchy for more detail on this).
The current Inn buildings range in date over the last 400 years and cover a substantial area for in addition to the inn itself, there is a wagon yard, extensive stabling and paddock for both livestock en route to the Stockyard and for pack and draft animal. Many travellers or visitors to Morton from the south will leave their mounts stabled at the Inn and cross to Morton, to do their business on foot.

History

Records exist of an inn at this location from the earliest days of Morton's existence, when the crossing of the Durran was by ford rather than farry - in those days, the river was somewhat wider and shallower at this point, and though it can still be forded at times in the dryest seasons it is the ferry that all bar the drovers (who swim their herds across) will use. But I digress - the inn had a steady history of trade and marked out for itself the area it currently occupies as the south bank became increasingly used as a graveyard remaining in the possession of its founding family for the first three centuries of its use.
At that time it became the headquarters of a plot by the then Duke's younger brother to gain power and, though the plot came to nothing, the landlords family was heavily implicated and the inn was confiscated into the Duke's estate as too critical a piece of infrastructure to be under another's control. It was in the years following this sequestration that the ferry became established, initially using punted barges to cross the river and gradually evolving in form and operation to become the sight we see today. In the mean time, after a period of short tenancies it came to be occupied by a family descended from one of the Duke's stewards who, towards the end of the Covrin Wars, when the Duchy was in dire need of cash, made the Duke an offer he could not refuse - 500,000 Dukes (of the debased currency of the day, equivalent to 200,000 dukes of the currency now in use) to but the inn and its lands outright. Many rumours circulated and tales were told of how they could have come to such a prodigious sum - but, no matter, they had it; they handed it over and the inn had returned into private ownership.
Over the next few decades the operation and ownership of the ferry itself came under the inns control - a matter of some concern to those involved in securing the town's defences but the family are generally believed to be loyal and have built up significant property interests in the town.

Type

Inn

Landlord

Hallack Onya Caddock is the current landlord and owner of the ferry inn. An expansive, if somewhat nervous character he is now in his late forties and suffers greatly from trying to decide which of his children should be his heir. Cadu has the customer skills and presents the very archetypal image of an innkeeper but money runs through his fingers like water; Amry knows the price of everything but the value of little and though she can deal with the accounts and suppliers is a terrible judge of character while Caddock is only interested in the ferry and new mechanisms to improve it. If only his beloved Enna was here to guide his decision, but alas she passed away of The Shaking Sickness five years since.