Welcome to the smallest town in Britain, and the oldest pub in Kent

Spoiler alert, this post is a prelude to the one that will come next, so don’t expect too much detail regarding either the pubs, or the beers I found on sale there. All will be revealed, in the next article.

Well, its “Explore Pub Friday” once more, and yet again I was in a quandary. My original plan had been to knock off the remaining two or three miles of the official route of the North Downs Way, a task I've been attempting for some time now. However, after being thwarted by weeks of heavy rain, followed by the recent spell of cold weather I was beginning to think that mother nature herself was conspiring to impede my progress. The section of the official NDW route that I missed, was a distance of just under two miles once the links between the path and the main road are taken into account. My thrice-postponed plan had been, to take a bus to Knockholt Pound, from Orpington railway station, complete the walk as far as Knockholt village, and then take another bus to a country pub, for a spot of lunch and a couple of pints.

I shan’t reveal the name of the pub or its location, but it’s a place I have never been to before, and one that I expect most members of West Kent CAMRA have not been to either. Following this lunch stop, I would then catch a third bus back to Orpington, for the train home. It was the potential of waiting around in the cold, for late-running buses, that scuppered Friday’s walk, rather than anything else, although having studied route maps and obtained bus times, I intend to put this one to bed, once the temperatures improve and the prospect of more heavy rain, recedes.

With the walk postponed, I began looking around for other options. Knowing that a strike by train drivers would affect rail services on 3^rd February, next Friday, I decided to reserve that particular day for a location that is reachable by bus, rather than rail. So, with this in mind, it seemed sensible to take advantage of a day when the trains were running and go somewhere further afield. But where?

 I spent ages looking for somewhere with a with real character, and potentially some different beers, although that last factor was the most important one. Slightly bereft of ideas, I looked to CAMRA’s National Inventory List for guidance, working on the premise that success was more likely with those pubs listed with interiors of regional importance, rather than the far scarcer listings of pubs with a nationally important interior. I was surprised to find quite a few Kentish pubs falling in to the regionally important category, and secretly pleased when I realised, I’d already been in quite a few of them.

In the end I chose the settlement of Fordwich, a few miles to the north of Canterbury, where as well as the inventory listed Fordwich Arms, there was another pub with an interesting history, called the George & Dragon. I’d heard of Fordwich, although that was about it, as despite living for most of the 67 years in Kent, I had never set foot in the place. So, a quick potted history of Fordwich, as I know how much some of my readers enjoy learning about the past!

Fordwich is an ancient settlement, that lays claim to the title of England’s smallest town. It was described in the Domesday Book as a small burgh, although I’m not sure what a burgh is, or was. Fordwich became a town in 1184, when King Henry II granted it a Merchant Charter, reflecting its importance as the de facto port for Canterbury. During the 13th century, Fordwich became a "limb" (subsidiary), of the Cinque Ports, due to its proximity to Sandwich, but despite its status, the town has never boasted more than a few hundred inhabitants.

So much for the history, but what about the geography, and was I easy to reach by public transport. The answer was yes, as Fordwich is just a short walk from Sturry station, which itself is just one stop down the line from Canterbury West. Even better were the direct hourly trains, from Tonbridge, and a journey time of around 65 minutes. The line from Ashford to Canterbury via the Stour Valley, is well known to me, but not so the stretch northwards towards Thanet. Sturry village, which again I am unfamiliar with, is larger than neighbouring Fordwich, due to recent housing developments, and has become something of a dormitory village for Canterbury.

A little more research on What Pub, revealed another historical pub nearby, in the shape of the Olde Yew Tree at Westbere, just over a mile away, from Sturry. The Yew Tree was built in 1346, and claims to be the oldest pub in Kent, so I now had the opportunity of visiting three historical pubs, all full of character, and all within easy walking distance of each other. That wasn’t quite true with regard to Westbere, a small village just off the busy A28, Canterbury – Margate road, and it was the heavy traffic along that road that persuaded me to take the bus, to and from Sturry station.

There was a pavement on either side of the highway, but much as I enjoy walking, a busy "A" road, with a constant stream of traffic, and possessing all the charms of suburbia, persuaded me make full use of my bus pass instead. Westbere is accessed by a narrow, winding road leading off from the A28, and overlooks the lakes of the same name. These were originally created for extraction of gravel, laid down by the Great Stour river that runs through the valley. The Yew Tree pub is at the far end of the village, close to the church. Much of the surrounding countryside is wooded, which meant I didn’t catch a glimpse of the river, although I obviously found the pub.

More on the Yew Tree in the next post, along with what I found when I made the short walk, in the opposite direction, from Sturry station, towards the ancient port of Fordwich. What I will say is the housing density, is much greater in Fordwich, than in Westbere, although many of the houses and buildings are of a similar antiquity.

How many different pubs did you visit last year?

Veteran blogger the Pub Curmudgeon recently published a post establishing that last year, he visited 128 different pubs. He went on to say that whilst this figure was considerably more than in the previous two years of lock-down, it was still less than the totals achieved in the four years preceding the pandemic. In order to try and gauge the experiences of others, Curmudgeon went on to conduct a Twitter poll on how many different pubs people had visited over the year. The poll attracted 511 votes, with the results divided into four separate bands, depending on the number of pubs visited.

You can see a detailed breakdown of these figures over at Curmudgeon’s blog, but what is interesting was his attempt to tie them in with, not just his own experiences, but with those of others. These were people who he either knows personally or is familiar with via his blog. The post included an interesting piece about how he became interested in pubs, after visiting them first with his father and former school friends, and then how his pub going experiences widened during his student days, at university.

During Mudge’s early years, a major factor in his choice of pubs was the ability to sample different beers, and this certainly mirrors my own experiences. With the tied house system very much the order of the day, and only a small number of nationally distributed beers available, one had to travel in order to find certain brews, and that was all part of the fun. My own pub visits had a similar motivation, back in the day.

As the beer scene changed, and brewery ownership of pubs became less prevalent, the close-knit connection between local ales and local pubs began to break down, and with far more beers distributed across the country, it is now not uncommon to walk into a free house, or an outlet owned by one of the national pubcos and be totally surprised at what is waiting on the bar.

The uncertainty of not knowing what beers you might come across, led to Mudge becoming more interested in the pub itself, rather than the beers it stocked; a position I can certainly empathise with. I am also in complete agreement with his quest to seek out pubs that feature on CAMRA’s National Inventory, and have been visiting as many of these unspoiled gems as I can.

The post attracted a healthy number of comments, with correspondents revealing the number of pubs they’d visited during 2022. Some of the figures were in the stratosphere, but these were largely confined to people who “tick” the CAMRA Good Beer Guide, (the ticking is usually achieved by marking the pub off in the guide, with a coloured highlighter pen). This group go out of their way to visit and “tick” off as many GBG pubs as possible, but it does require a certain type of individual with the drive, dedication, and the time necessary to complete this pursuit. The rest of us will have our own reasons for choosing pubs to visit, which more often than not will be centred around the places we frequent over the course of a normal year, interspersed with holidays, excursions or even the odd business trip.

So, with no bragging rights about numbers, or a desire to impress, I was more than happy with sharing my total with  the others who’d responded to Mudge’s post. In total, I visited 81 different pubs last year, which was a lot more than I initially thought. It took me a while to total this amount up, as I don't normally record the pubs that I visit over the course of a year. I resorted to checking back on my blog, as this is as good an indicator as any, but it did entail quite a bit of trawling back through the 123 posts that I published last year.

Like the other correspondents, I’d obviously visited some of these pubs on more than one occasion, either because they were local to me, or because they were places, I'd been to before and wanted to return to. Apart from local pubs, a pattern did emerge regarding my visits, with the numbers being boosted by days out to locations such as Bath, Cambridge, London, and Sheffield, along with several bus trips, either undertaken alone, or in the company of local CAMRA members. The latter were specially organised outings, jokingly referred to as “old codgers” bus trips. There was also a short family break to Barry Island, in South Wales, which resulted in a few more pubs being ticked.

Breaking down the figures, I'm pleased to report that 28 of the 81 pubs, were places new to me, meaning they were places I'd never set foot in before. This reveals my spirit of adventure and discovery is still alive and kicking, although I'm not sure whether I'll beat that total this year. January hasn’t got off to a particularly good start, with only a half dozen visited so far. We've also booked a lengthy foreign holiday for later in the year which will obviously impact, negatively on pub going opportunities in the UK.

Counting up the numbers remains an interesting exercise and is also a bit of fun. Fortunately, I don't have deadlines to meet or targets to achieve, and I'm rather glad that I don't. Instead, I can just enjoy stepping into new pubs, in different parts of the country, as and when the mood takes me, so to end, here are my top ranking “ticks” from 2022.

In no particular order, the pubs are – Larkin’s Ale House – Cranbrook; Star Inn – Bath; Fat Cat – Sheffield; Free Press – Cambridge; Nelson Arms – Farnham; Waterworks – Rye.

In addition, there were a few “also rans”  that came in slightly lower down the list, and these were – Bell – Bath; Bull – Benenden; Bath Hotel - Sheffield.