This former pub – diagonally across the road from the Village Hall – closed in 2020 but you can still see its old name boldly incised on the front wall. It was built in the 1870s on the site of two demolished cottages. Albert Walkling was the landlord in 1881 and James Santer, a former policeman, was in charge ten years later. When he died in 1911, his wife Harriet, son James and daughter-in-law Rebecca took over until the early 1920s.
They were succeeded by Mr and Mrs Foster. Their family name was appropriate as they took in at least seven evacuee children during the Second World War. By this stage, there was a tea terrace and three bars supplied by the Style & Winch brewery.
“Ordinary workers frequented the Public [Bar], while visitors and middle-class business owners gravitated to the Saloon, as did any spruced-up male out to impress a girlfriend or spouse,” recalled one of the evacuees. “The Private Bar was not greatly used, its most likely patrons being the squire or the vicar, or a special friend of the publican.”
Mrs Foster had previously been a cook at a large country house, so meals served in the Saloon were of high quality, despite wartime privations. Mr Foster had a market garden, small orchard and poultry farm on land at the back. He died early in the war and Mrs Foster gave up the tenancy in 1942.
Later, the highly industrious Ernest Dowdy took over. Dowdy was clerk to the parish council for 25 years and had been one of the founders of the Village Players, chairman of the football club, and taken part in many other village activities. He had also managed a haulage business, a milk round and collected for a friendly society. He left the pub in 1951 and moved to Sevenoaks, telling the local paper he needed a fortnight’s holiday – the first “for a very long time”.
Text by James Saynor