It's not often you come across a village with two pubs, both
virtually next door to each other and both thriving, but I encountered such a
phenomenon on a visit to
Lenham - a village situated roughly halfway between
Maidstone and
Ashford. My visit last
Friday, was the first time in nearly
40
years that I have set foot in the village, although I passed quite close by, in
late
2020. That was when I was walking a section of the
North
Downs Way, the long-distance footpath that follows the line of the
North Downs.
On that particular section, the path runs just below the escarpment of these
chalk hills, just a few miles to the north of
Lenham village.
The reason me visiting
Lenham was to meet up with an old
friend I knew when we both lived in
Maidstone. That period in our lives was
nearly
40 years ago, and whilst we kept in touch, met up for the old drink and
even enjoyed a joint holiday to
Bamberg, Germany with a group drawn largely
from the ranks of
Maidstone CAMRA, those times were before the pandemic – a
moment that is much more defining for many, than people now realise.
Like me,
John no longer lives in the county town,
having moved to the
East Kent village of
Lympne. The latter is quite close to
Hythe, and lies
at the foot of the
North Downs, that range of chalk hills which traverse the county, as
anyone who has walked the
NDW long-distance pathway will know. Looking at the
map, I must have walked quite close to my friend’s house, back in
July 2019,
when I completed the
Wye to
Arpinge section of the trail. With
John living
in
East Kent and me residing in the west of the county, we decided to meet-up
roughly halfway.
Finding a suitable pub, that opened at lunchtime, and served
decent, good value food, rather than fancy, over-priced gourmet stuff, proved a
lot harder than I thought it would be. The task was made more difficult by many
rural pubs not bothering to open at all at lunchtime, even on a
Friday. This is
a topic worthy of blog post of its own, but fortunately the
Red Lion at
Lenham ticked
all the right boxes. It also turned to be a pub
John was not only familiar
with, but had used himself, on past occasions, for similar meetups with people he
knew from
Maidstone.
I was able to journey to the
Red Lion by public transport
with a choice of bus or train for the first section
(Tonbridge to Maidstone), followed
by bus for the latter stretch to
Lenham. I decided that the train would be more
reliable than the bus, for the journey over to
Maidstone and it also gave me time
for a quick wander around the county town. After going through something of a
rough patch,
post-Covid, Maidstone definitely seemed on it uppers. As well as
several new bars that have appeared, including a
Bavarian Bierkeller, plus a contemporary
bar-cum restaurant called the
Herbalist (part of the
Elite Pubs group), there
are plenty of interesting shops, which makes welcome change to the tattooists,
nail-bars, vape shops and
Turkish barbers, that now dominate many town centres.
The one thing the town is lacking though are
public toilets.
I gave up trying to find the ones located in
The Mall shopping centre, and in the end, somewhat
cheekily nipped into the
Society Rooms, one of two
JDW outlets in the county town.
(I pulled the same stunt on the return journey, calling in at the
Muggleton
Inn, on my way back to
Maidstone West station). The former
Spoons was
convenient, if you’ll excuse the pun, as the starting point for the
10X Stagecoach
service to
Ashford, via
Lenham.
Suitably relieved I boarded the single-deck bus, and enjoyed
a nostalgic journey out of
Maidstone, and along the
A20, a road I knew well, back
in my youth. The
M20 motorway now carries much of the east-west traffic, but it
was pure nostalgia seeing familiar sights, including a number of pubs I knew
from my youth, flash by the window. The bus arrived in the village
30 minutes or so
before
I was due to meet my friend, so I nipped into one of the cafes that I’d noticed
in
Lenham’s spacious village square, for a welcome cup of coffee before heading
over to the
Red Lion, where I found my friend already waiting.
It’s worth mentioning that
Lenham and I have some history, that
dates back to the summer of my first year at
university. I was back home in
Kent scratching around for a holiday job, when my former school-friend
Roy, noticed
an advert in the local newspaper, looking for cleaners at a nearby hospital. The
hospital turned out to be the former
Lenham sanatorium, a building dating from
the
1930s, and constructed high up on the
North Downs. Such establishments, with
their bright and airy, south-facing rooms, offering wide vistas across the
surrounding countryside, were used for the care of
tuberculosis (TB) patients. In
Lenham’s case the views were across the
Weald of Kent. This was how
TB patients
were looked after during the first half of the
20th Century, because
whilst there was no cure for
TB, the care that people with tuberculosis
received at these sanatoriums, helped ease their symptoms and prolong their
lives.
The discovery and development of antibiotics during the late
1930’s and early
1940’s, changed all that, and today tuberculosis is no longer
a disease to be feared. Alternative uses were found for sanatoriums, including
that of isolation hospitals, where patients with highly contagious ailments
were confined, whilst undergoing treatment. I was incarcerated in such a place as
a child aged six years, after developing meningitis, but my stay was at
Ashford
Isolation Hospital, rather than
Lenham.
I don’t remember that much about it, apart from patients
being place in individual rooms, rather than wards. The rooms were separated by
large glass partitions, so that you could see through into several adjoining
rooms. There was a young lad, of a similar age, in the far room, so he and I
communicated by sign language, and trying to make each other laugh. Long story
short, and to my parents’ immense relief I made a full recovery, and it was a
relief to me too, as I later discovered there was concern that I might not have
been able to walk again.
I don’t know what happened to the isolation hospital at
Ashford,
except that it is no longer there, but at the time of my summer holiday cleaning
job,
Lenham Hospital had morphed into a residential home for people with
learning difficulties, or possibly with more severe mental disabilities. Sadly,
Lenham was sometimes used as a place for severely disabled children that parents
found too difficult to handle. The cleaning job wasn't particularly hard and the company that
employed
Roy and I, picked us up in
Ashford each morning, and then drove us
over in a mini bus, to
Lenham. They then returned us to
Ashford at the completion
of our shift. Sometimes we were able to escape, as it were, to the village
because the hospital operated its own minibus transfer down into
Lenham, mainly
for the benefit of full-time staff, or people who perhaps needed to get to the
bank or post office or, as my friend and I did on occasion, visit the pub.
There were two pubs in the village back then, and I’m pleased
to report that the
Red Lion, plus the
Dog & Bear are both still trading. As
mentioned, it was at the former inn that I met my friend last
Friday, but back in
the mid
1970’s, the
Red Lion belonged to
Whitbread Fremlin’s and at the time only
sold pressurised
Whitbread Trophy beer. The
Dog & Bear, on the other hand,
was owned by
Shepherd Neame, which meant it sold hand-pulled, cask-conditioned
bitter and mild, produced at the
Shep’s brewery in
Faversham. Roy and I had
recently become interested in so-called
“real ale” and as a result had both joined
CAMRA. We naturally gravitated towards the
Dog & Bear where the legendary
landlord, known as
“Squirrel”, sold one of the best pints of
Shepherd Neame bitter
imaginable. The beer wasn’t known as
"Master Brew" back then, even though
Shep’s
referred to themselves as
“Master Brewers.”
I’m afraid we’re going to have to leave things there, for
the moment, as I’ve obviously waffled on, far too long. I thought it important though
to describe the relatively short period of my life where I became quite well acquainted
with Lenham village and its two pubs. Next time you can read how these two
village inns have not only managed to survive into the 21st Century,
but how they are both thriving in their own individual ways. Until next time, then.
