For more than 300 years, the timber-framed George Inn (recently renamed the Samuel Palmer) has announced the village as you enter it from Station Road. Its ancient name goes back to at least 1707, when the George was listed as a licensed alehouse in the diary of Paul D’Aranda, a local magistrate and landowner. The building may have been put up around 1500 and early on was occupied by the Petleys, Shoreham’s dominant farming family at the time. Still doubling as a farmhouse, the George became an inn in 1675. A recent study of old wills suggests the original innholder may have been Henry Spilsted.
The occupier in 1707 was William Pearch, and a descendant, Jane Pearch, married into the Willmott family, soon to make their name in Shoreham as holders of the paper mill. Her husband, William Willmott, already owned paper and corn mills at Sundridge. According to his will of 1775, another property was “my freehold messuage or tenement… being in Shoreham… known by the name or sign of the George”.
The land around the George may once have been the heart of the village, with lanes running either side and a village green nearby. In the early 1800s, the landowner Sir Walter Stirling enclosed much of the land to the left of the building for a mansion and grounds for himself (which became Shoreham House). He also complained about the sharp bend in the road on the right-hand side, which still causes trouble for road-users today.
The land around the George may once have been the heart of the village, with lanes running either side and a village green nearby. In the early 1800s, the landowner Sir Walter Stirling enclosed much of the land to the left of the building for a mansion and grounds for himself (which became Shoreham House). He also complained about the sharp bend in the road on the right-hand side, which still causes trouble for road-users today.
Stirling wrote: “Where it passes the public house [the road] forms almost a right angle with it. This is an old building, the upper part of which projects over the lower and is absolutely dangerous to the traveller on horseback or in carriages.” Stirling used this argument as part of his audacious plan to build a new turnpike road from the Bridge straight up to the Eynsford-Otford road, a scheme later shelved after bitter local opposition.
The George was a key village meeting place by the 19th century. The church vestry – which supervised much local governance – moved its discussions across from the church in cold weather. In 1835, rate-payers met to decide on a general valuation of the parish “for the purpose of equalising the Rates”, and a gathering three years later began the process of ending the medieval system of tithes levied on landowners. The pub also became the headquarters of the Rat and Sparrow Club: people killed sparrows in cottage gardens and rats in corn stacks, producing the animals’ heads and tails to compete for annual prizes.
The Summerfield family ran the George for much of the 20th century. Jack Summerfield recalled two German airmen being taken to the George after their bomber was shot down in 1940. The Home Guard who arrested them clearly felt the airmen needed a tot of something fortifying on their way to custody. Some villagers, however, said that it was the Crown pub that offered the unusual hospitality.
The Summerfields also offered a car-hire service and motoring repairs.
In 1940, Charles Franklin White captured the scene
at the bar one night in his painting 'Darts in the George'.
The Summerfields also offered a car-hire service and motoring repairs.
In 1940, Charles Franklin White captured the scene
at the bar one night in his painting 'Darts in the George'.
In 1980, Shoreham played the part of a small English village in the film "The Mirror Crack'd", a Miss Marple yarn adapted from the Agatha Christie novel "The Mirror Crack'd from Side to Side", set in 1953. The film starred Angela Lansbury, Rock Hudson, Tony Curtis, and....... Ye Olde George Inn right there in the opening titles.
Text by James Saynor.