Lenham, a village in mid-Kent

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 20^th 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 21^st Century, but how they are both thriving in their own individual ways. Until next time, then.