As you might imagine, I’ve seen more than my fair share of
changes over the past
fifty years, and nowhere is this more true than when it
comes to the nation’s pubs. Not all of these changes were good, in fact the
majority were the opposite, but to be fair most were the result of changes in tastes,
fashions and society in general. I spent my formative years living in
East Kent, and the pubs
I knew in my youth were a mixture of both town and country ones. When I first
started drinking, most of the pubs I visited were real in the sense that they
were unspoilt
"pubby" type pubs, even though most of the beer sold in
them was not, certainly in the
CAMRA accepted meaning of the word. Most of the
beer
was cask-conditioned back then but served by
"top-pressure" a dispense system unacceptable to the
Campaign for
Real Ale.
I look back on those days with a considerable amount of
nostalgia. Life in general was much simpler then, with far less restrictions,
rules and regulations. Landlords were free to police their own pubs, without
interference from, or
"sting operations" by the likes of trading
standards officials, the police, or public health inspectors. Licensees were
also much more free to run their own businesses as they saw fit, rather than as
the owning brewery or pub company dictated to them.
It’s hard to recall the first time that I set foot in a pub
on my own, although I do recall visiting pubs with a handful of school friends.
This was in the
Ashford area of
East Kent, where I lived at the time. What
seems remarkable now, is that as seventeen-year-olds we had no trouble getting
served in these pubs. We were accepted by landlords and locals alike and
sometimes took on some of the latter at darts, even though we invariably lost! What most of these places had in common was the fact that
they still functioned as traditional pubs, acting as focal points for the
communities they served. Most had separate public and saloon bars, the former
particularly appealing to my friends and I as we several of us were aspiring
dart players. Beer was inevitably cheaper in the
public bar, the furnishings
fairly basic, with lino or tiled floors being the order of the day. The
saloon
bars, on the other hand, tended to be more comfortably furnished and were
earmarked as places where one could go to on a date, should we manage to find
and persuade
"Miss Right".
Unfortunately, there was no
Miss Right in the small village
of
Brook, where I lived with my parents and sister, although there were one or
two living in nearby
Wye. That’s another story and one for another day, as I
want to continue with the theme of unspoilt pubs, and those I remember from my
late teens and early twenties. I’m fortunate to belong to a generation that was
lucky to have known this world unspoilt of pubs, even though it was soon to
disappear.
There might have been an absence of suitable girlfriends in
Brook, but this small village nestling at the foot of the
North Downs,
overlooking the gap made through these hills by the
river Stour possessed a
classic, two-bar pub called the
Honest Miller. From the time I turned
18, and
was old enough to drink, to the time I left the family home to go to
university, this lovely old pub was the place where I spent many an evening. I’ve
written a lengthy treatise on the pub, but it’s one which, for various reasons,
I have never published. I fully intend to rectify this, although I will do so
as a separate post. In the meantime, here’s an exert from an article I released
14 years ago, and it concerns a long-closed pub that I was lucky to have
visited, shortly after my
18th birthday.The
Woodman’s Arms at
Hassel Street, near
Hastingleigh high up on the
North Downs between
Ashford and
Canterbury, was a
classic pub that has long since disappeared. I only had the pleasure of
visiting it once, and having just turned eighteen regrettably did not,
appreciate the finer points of this time-warp village inn, at the time.
The pub was brought to my attention after it featured
on the local television "news magazine", programme "Scene
South East". This was back in the days of "Southern
Television" the ITV franchise for the south. Southern were based in Southampton,
which meant a distinct bias towards Hampshire, leaving Kent and Sussex lucky to
get a mention. The only exception to this was on Friday evenings when the
aforementioned programme was broadcast from the company's rather
secondary studio in Dover.
What had caught the presenter’s eye was the fact
that the Woodman’s Arms did not have a bar, something which, even 50 years ago,
was highly unusual. Instead, drinkers sat around a table in what
appeared to be
the licensee's front room. Having seen the pub featured on the programme, I
decided to check it out for myself. So, one evening in June, I set off on my
motorbike, in search of this highly unusual pub. Hassel Street was only a few miles away from my home
village of Brook, but being tucked away amongst the maze of narrow lanes that
lie at the top of the North Downs it took a bit of finding. I eventually succeeded
and found the pub located half-way down a “No- Through Road”. From what I
remember, it was an unassuming, white-painted building which was considerably
older inside than it looked from the outside.
According to “Kent Pubs”, a guide to published by Batsford in 1966, the
Woodman’s dated back to 1698, and had three rooms. One was a side room, that
doubled up as a children’s room, one was for darts whilst the third acted as
the bar-parlour. It was the latter that I made my way into, and I do vaguely
remember there being a darts room to the left of the entrance. As shown on the
television programme, the room was plainly decorated and simply furnished.
There was a table, complete with tablecloth, in the centre of the room, and
along one of the walls, was a dresser on which were placed various bottles of
wines, spirits and bottled beers, plus a selection of glasses. Pushed up
against the other three walls were some hard wooden chairs, occupied by about
half a dozen or so customers.
Walking in, I could see no evidence of any beer
pumps, so I enquired as to whether the pub sold draught beer. I was told that
it did but, feeling very conscious of the lull in the conversation, decided to
opt for just a half of bitter. The landlady retrieved a half-pint mug from the dresser
and disappeared down some wooden stairs to the cellar below. The beer was
almost certainly cask Whitbread Trophy from the former Fremlin’s Brewery
in Faversham.
When the landlady returned with my drink, I made some
half-hearted attempts at conversation but felt increasingly awkward and out of
place. I had only recently reached the legal drinking age and was a somewhat
shy and slightly introspected youth, who had still not properly acquired the
necessary social skills to be able to mix well with different age groups.
Most of the clientele seemed to know each other, and whilst they were not
unfriendly, I quickly decided that one swift half was enough. This was a great
shame as this turned out to be my only visit to the
Woodman’s.
Not long afterwards I went off to university, and apart from
short visits to see my parents, during vacation time, never returned to live at
home on a permanent basis.
I am not certain exactly when, or indeed why the
pub closed, but one possible clue to its demise is again given in “Kent Pubs”.
The landlord of the Woodman’s worked as a postman in the mornings, which
suggests that his main income came from delivering letters rather than serving
pints. This indicates that the pub may not have been viable on its own, and
given its isolated position, it is perhaps easy to see why.
The
Black Bull at
Newchurch, on
Romney Marsh was a similar pub,
with beer that was served straight from the cask, kept on shelving behind the
bar. It was a
Whitbread house when I first knew it, having called in with a
school friend. Both of us had motorbikes, and had spent much of the summer
(when we weren’t working), exploring some of the local pubs. The bar, where the
beer was kept, was rather
“posh” – presumably the
“Saloon”, but to the left of
the entrance, and along a corridor, there was a really basic room, complete
with a stone floor, where one could play darts.
Sometime afterwards,
Shepherd Neame acquired the pub from
Whitbread,
and the
Black Bull held on for quite some time after those mid-seventies,
summer time visits. It was around long enough for me to take the present
Mrs PBT’s there, whilst
honeymooning at the
Mermaid Inn, in nearby
Rye. She was not impressed, and after
removing my rose-tinted spectacles, I could see why. There was an unkempt look and feel about the place which, with hindsight may have hinted at the pub’s imminent demise,
but despite this I was saddened to learn of the pub's closure, not long afterwards.
Given the
Black Bull’s isolated position, with very few chimney
pots nearby, and the lack of a car-park – customers had to park on a narrow road and
close to a bend, it’s closure was perhaps inevitable. I’m not even sure that
the pub had a kitchen, although the aforementioned
“Kent Pubs” does state that snacks
were available. Perhaps the final line in the Black Bull’s entry, says it all. “The
village still uses the house, but Major and Mrs Kely, retired here after
service in the Far East, also attract the more sophisticated drinker.”
Half a century ago, it wasn’t unusual to find retired
service personnel behind the bar, although they invariably seemed to be of a
certain rank. One particular notice, that appeared on the wall of both bars of
the
Bybrook Tavern, on the outskirts of
Ashford, was the source of much
amusement to my friends and me. It read,
“Shirts will be worn!” An obvious reference
that the former
major, who ran the pub, didn’t take kindly to half-dressed
builder types, propping up the bar in his pub. My father would have described such wannabe artisans, as
“sweaty oafs”, a term that still tickles me to this day, and on
that note, we shall draw this article to a close.
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