The Honest Miller, Brook

This article is the one I mentioned in the last post and is the one that has remained unpublished for almost as long as I have been writing this blog. It remains unfinished, for reasons that will become apparent towards the end of this piece, and it continues as an article that I would like to put to bed, sooner, rather than later.

The small village of Brook nestles at the foot of the North Downs, to the east of Ashford, overlooking the gap made through these hills by the river Stour. I spent my teenage years in the village, and it still retains particularly fond memories for me. Brook's main claim to fame is its unspoilt Norman church, which is also home to some remarkable medieval wall paintings. These had been discovered early in the last century after having been hidden by the Puritans, behind layers of whitewash, during the 17th Century. Attractive and historic the church plus its paintings may have been, but apart from the former family home, the place which holds the fondest memories for me is the village pub.

Brook is served by a single pub called the Honest Miller; a handsome, typically white-painted Kentish building with a weather boarded upper half, topped with a peg-tiled roof. It dates back to the reign of Queen Anne, although exactly when it became an alehouse is uncertain. Up until the late 1960's it served ales brewed at the Mackeson's Brewery in Hythe, but when I first started drinking there the beer was brewed by Whitbread Fremlin’s, initially at Maidstone, and latterly at Faversham.

I was fourteen when my family moved to the village. Neither of my parents were pub-goers, and besides money was somewhat tight. It therefore fell to my grandparents, on one of their trips down from London, to take me for my first visit to the Honest Miller. It was perfectly legitimate for both me and my sister to enter the pub as, despite its relatively small size, it possessed a children's room. I can still remember sitting in there, as a family, enjoying a drink and finding my attention being drawn to a strange-looking device sited in a corner, just below the ceiling. It turned out to be an early warning alarm, designed to give a four-minute warning of impending nuclear attack.

Fortunately, this device was never put to the test, although I wonder if it would have worked, and what use such a short warning period would have been, anyway. By the time I was old enough to drink (or to pass myself off as old enough to do so!), the children's room had been knocked through into the adjacent saloon bar. Even though the removal of the dividing wall had virtually doubled it in size, the saloon was everything a saloon bar should be - warm, cosy, comfortable, low-lit and intimate. It was also popular, particularly in term time, with students from the nearby Wye Agricultural College.

If the saloon bar was traditional, the public bar was doubly so. It had white-painted, rough-plastered walls, a low, plastered ceiling and a patterned floor of red and black quarry tiles, worn smooth over the years, and faded by the passage of time. The public bar attracted its own loyal band of regulars, who were always willing to take on all-comers at either darts or cribbage. In common with the saloon, it was heated by an open coal fire during the winter months, whilst during the summer, its thick walls ensured that it stayed cool, even during the hottest weather.

Although the saloon bar had a proper bar counter, the public bar just had a small serving hatch, set into a two-foot-thick wall. The serving area was situated behind this wall; the beer being dispensed straight from casks kept on a substantial wooden stillage. The latter was branded with the words “Mackeson & Co. - Hythe Ales”. From what I recall, the casks were 18-gallon kilderkins rather than the more common 9-gallon firkins that one normally sees today. The fact the casks were this size was an indication of the amount of draught beer the pub sold. It obviously had a reputation for the quality of its beer so imagine the look of horror on the landlord's face when, as a somewhat naive, and wet behind the ears seventeen-year-old, I asked for a pint of Whitbread Tankard.

I had asked for this heavily advertised brew  out of ignorance; an ignorance born of the fact that I knew virtually nothing about beer and hadn't a clue what was in the anonymous looking barrels stillaged behind the bar. To a man who prided himself on the quality of the cask ale that he kept, such a request must have been a personal affront to his dignity. "Are you certain you're eighteen?" he scowled at me, as he began pouring what was probably the only pint of that fizzy keg brew, he had served all week.

Not long after that incident, a story had featured on the local television news programme "Scene South East". The story concerned the launch of a new "local" beer. The launch also coincided with the closure of the old Fremlin’s Brewery in Maidstone, and the transfer of production to the former George Beer & Rigdens Brewery in Faversham. The beer was to be called "Whitbread Trophy". Of course, as I was later to discover, Trophy was Whitbread's replacement for a whole range of local cask beers which Fremlin’s had brewed at Maidstone, the best known of which were their Three Star Bitter, and County Ale.

This aside, on my next visit to the Honest Miller, I sidled up to the bar and asked for a pint of "that new beer called Trophy". I was somewhat surprised to witness the beer being dispensed straight from one of the very plain-looking metal casks which I described earlier and was concerned that I would not like it. I need not have feared though, as I soon discovered the beer to be extremely palatable, consisting of a well-balanced blend of malt and hops. At least I was in favour with the landlord now; I was drinking (and enjoying) his carefully nurtured cask ale, rather than that nasty, fizzy, insipid Tankard.

Less than six months after I was legally old enough to drink, I left home in order to go to university. Moving from a small village to live in a big city (Manchester) was something of a culture shock and, for a while, left me rather homesick. In particular I missed the evenings in the Honest Miller, so it was with a sense of eager anticipation that I looked forward to vacation time when I could, once again, visit this gem of a pub. I introduced several of my college friends to the Honest Miller, as well as several girlfriends. My involvement with CAMRA, which began in early 1974, saw me recommending the pub for the Good Beer Guide; its first appearance being the 1975 edition

I spent many a happy hour in the Honest Miller, varying my choice of bars to suit both my mood, the company I was with, and the occasion. One of my fondest memories is of sitting in the public bar early one Christmas Eve. Apart from a couple of people in the other bar, I had the place to myself. A welcoming coal fire was burning in the grate whilst, from behind the servery, the traditional Christmas service of Twelve Carols & Six Lessons from Kings College Cambridge, could just be heard coming over the radio. As I sat there, enjoying my pint, I was enveloped by a deep-seated feeling of contentment, and I felt totally relaxed and at one with the world.

I believed that whatever else changed in the world, the Honest Miller would remain the same, and that it would still be there, as a haven, for me to retreat to every time I returned home. However, dark rumblings were afoot. The landlady had mentioned, on more than one occasion, that if the pub relied totally on the village for its custom, it would have closed long ago. Fortunately, its patronage by the college students and the increasing popularity of its food trade (its cold table in particular was held in very high regard) kept it going.

During the mid-1980’s, the pub suffered a disastrous fire, which started in the kitchen, before spreading to the rest of the pub. By this time, I had married and was living in Maidstone, but my parents kept me updated on what was happening in the village. It is my firm opinion that, so far as the brewery was concerned, the Honest Miller was not realising its true potential, and that the enforced closure, caused by the fire, gave them the excuse they had been looking for to make some alterations. During the re-building work the pub was extended, increasing in size by approximately one third.

It must be said that the architects and builders did an excellent job on the exterior of the building. The new section was clad with matching weatherboarding, the peg-tiled roof was extended, and identically styled sash-windows were fitted. The work was so well done that it was virtually impossible to distinguish the new section of the building from the old. Unfortunately, the excellent job which had been done on the outside did not extend to the interior of the pub.

I visited the Honest Miller shortly after it re-opened, expecting to see some changes, but totally unprepared for what greeted me. The former entrance lobby, with the public bar leading off to the left and the saloon leading off to the right, had been done away with, as had the main staircase which had risen up straight ahead. Instead, the door opened into one large bar, with about as much character as a barn! There was one long bar-counter replacing the former serving hatch, and whilst the beer was still cask-conditioned, it was no longer served direct from the cask. The open fire, which had heated the public bar, was still there, but had been knocked through to the other side, as had the walls on either side of the chimney breast. The entire bar area was carpeted throughout and whilst there was still a dart board in the area formerly occupied by the public bar, no-one was playing.

The cosy, intimate atmosphere of the pub had vanished. There would be no more jolly evenings playing cribbage or darts. Piped music was oozing out of strategically sited loudspeakers, with no escape from it. The locals were missing, no doubt driven out and moved on elsewhere. The food was from the brewery's own standardised menu, rather than the extensive cold table selection the pub had formerly offered. The white-painted, rough plastered walls had been papered over with chintzy wallpaper and decorated with a series of tacky "hunting" prints. In short, an unspoiled and unique pub, which was very popular with its locals, and which served the needs of the local community, had been lost forever. In its place was yet another standardised beer and food outlet, of the type that is virtually identical to hundreds of others up and down the country.

What annoyed me, more than anything else, was the fact there was nothing wrong with the pub as it was. There was no need to change anything. Even the outside toilets were fine the way they were! As seems the norm, in such cases, the brewery didn’t bother to consult the locals about the proposed changes; instead, they were just imposed with a “like it or go elsewhere” attitude. What saddened me most though, was the fact that this pub was formerly my local, and to see the place desecrated in such a fashion, was heartbreaking.

I haven't been back since then, preferring instead to forget what I saw that day, and remember the Honest Miller as it was. Besides, not long afterwards, my parents retired to Norfolk, a county where there were still plenty of unspoiled pubs. I therefore had no reason to visit the village of Brook, a settlement that in common with many other villages, slowly turned into a dormitory for well-to-do commuters, rather than a place that was home to a thriving agricultural community.

I’m going to leave the narrative here for the time being, partially because I still haven’t been back to the Honest Miller, but also because there have been quite a few changes affecting the pub. I didn’t experience any of them at a personal level, and instead I have relied on information about the pub that I discovered online. For example, the pub was closed and boarded up for the best part of three years following the COVID-19, before re-opening under new ownership in July 2024. Even then, its opening hours were limited as the new owners beavered away to get the place up to scratch again.

It closed again, last year, whilst one of the new co-owners underwent a bout of chemotherapy, but the aim is to reopen sometime in April, next month. When the Honest Miller does finally open its doors again, I expect to pay the pub a long overdue visit, as there is a lot of catching up to do! So, watch this space and be prepared for a lengthy update.