Banging the beat for the New Drum

I had planned to bring you highlights of the two remaining Tonbridge pubs that I has still to visit, before the year was out, but unfortunately that obligation didn’t materialise. However, what difference does a few days make, especially as the time strictures set for this task were set by me, and it’s a sorry state of affairs if I can’t break my own rules. I have actually visited one of the outstanding pubs, and whilst I’d originally planned to visit the remaining one today, something came up that prevented me from fulfilling this obligation.

So, let’s look at pub No. 14 which, according to my phone, I called in at on Sunday 4^th January. That pub was the New Drum, tucked away down the steep narrow side street that is Lavender Hill.  Why did the Victorians choose such picturesque names for their streets of two-up, two-down houses? That’s a question for another time, but the pub in question started life as two adjoining Victorian terraced cottages that were knocked through into one, sometime in the late 19^th century.

Known today as the New Drum, it began life as simply the Drum, but when I first became acquainted with it, in the early 1980's. It had recently been modernised and was then called the Victoria Tavern, and I was taken there by a work colleague, so lived nearby. I found the place a bit too modern for my liking, although as things turned out, the Victoria didn’t keep that name for long, as a year or so later, the pub changed hands. It's new owners were an elderly couple named Tom and Margaret. With the new owners, came a new name; Uncle Tom's Cabin - probably one of the daftest names for a pub I've come across, but one that seemed to have stuck over the years.

I have a particular soft spot for what became known as the Cabin or just plain, Tom's, as for the six or seven years between my moving to Tonbridge and the birth of our son, Tom's was very much my local. I wasn't in there every night, or even every other night, but one session I never missed was Sunday lunchtime. I would take our dog for a long walk on a Sunday morning, and then invariably end up in the Cabin, joining a very erudite bunch of regulars who, like me, were all thirty somethings.We'd have a laugh and a joke, whilst at the same time putting the world to right.

As well as the above, we would consume several pints of beer, chosen from an ever-changing list (Tom's was a free house). There was also a weekly meat raffle, so it was an added bonus if I could return home in triumph, with a joint of meat ready for the following Sunday's roast. Tom and Margaret were succeeded by another couple, Richard and Joan, who for a while obtained their beer from the Crown Brewery (former South Wales Clubs Brewery) of Pontyclun. Disappointingly the Welsh beers were not to the taste of the locals (including me, and not long afterwards, the pair switched their beers supply to Greene King. The Suffolk company was not particularly well represented in the South East at the time, and their beers were a welcome addition to the local scene.

Things continued in much the same vein as before, but my pub-going started to tail off following the birth of our son Matthew in late 1991. Eventually yet another change of hands saw experienced licensee Tony, who also ran a pub in Goudhurst, buying the pub and putting his son Matt in charge. The father and son team made some welcome changes, which opening the pub up and extending it even further backwards. They re-named it the New Drum; a far more sensible name than its previous one!

The downside, so far as I was concerned, was that Matt was an out and out sports fanatic and, no matter what time of day or night one visited the pub, there would be sport of some description showing on one of the all-pervasive television screens. Somewhere along the line, the New Drum changed from being pub that majored on cask to being one that was keg only, but with my pub going severely slimmed down, it wasn’t a situation I was acutely aware of. I’m also uncertain as to why cask was dropped from the line up on the bar, although I imagine it might have been due to change in the make up of the pub’s regulars.

Over the course of the next 30 years, I popped in occasionally, primarily to see whether or not cask had made a comeback – it hadn’t, so when I stepped inside the New Drum last Sunday, on a freezing cold, early January afternoon, I wasn’t expecting much in the way of change. What I did notice was the line-up on the bar of a couple of Jeremy Clarkson’s, finest Hawkstone beers. I ordered a pint of Premium, and once poured, took my glass over to a convenient table, close to the welcoming log burner.

I wasn’t sure whether it was Matt who served me, as people obviously change over the years, but a little later on, when he wandered over to place a few more logs into the wood burner, it was definitely the aforementioned gentleman, as he stopped to ask how I was. We chatted about a number of things, but primarily about Hawkstone. Matt told me that the beers were selling remarkably well, especially the IPA. Although obviously a keg beer, I was tempted to try it, and I may well do so, the next time I see it on sale.

Although the pub was quiet, that particular day, Matt confirmed that trade was generally good. With the log burner providing some welcoming warmth, there was a nice atmosphere within the pub, although I have to say that with Premier League football on one screen, and horse racing on the other, nothing much has changed, in that respect. The moral of this tale is to always give pubs you are uncertain about, another chance. You might be pleasantly surprised, as indeed I was.