The Unicorn Hotel

During the late Middle Ages, inns were required to show an easily recognisable sign to allow them to be distinguished by those who couldn’t read .... hence The Unicorn ... although there was probably an inn here long before. 

For many years in the mid to late 1700s the Unicorn was famous for a character known as "Old Boots";

"Among the infinite variety of human countenances, perhaps none ever so much excited astonishment and popularity as that of Old Boots, whose portrait has often been engraved. This extraordinary person was favoured by nature with a nose and chin so enormously long, and so lovingly tending to embrace each other, that he acquired by habit the power of holding a piece of money between them. Being a servant of the Unicorn Inn in Rippon, Yorkshire, it was his business to wait on travellers who arrived there, to assist them in taking off their boots. He usually introduced himself in the room with a pair of slippers in one hand and a bootjack in the other. The company in general were so diverted with his odd appearance that they would frequently give him a piece of money on condition that he held it between his nose and chin. This requisition he was always ready to comply with, it being no less satisfactory to himself than entertaining to them."