I to have no local here...But below is the pub where I started my love of the amber fluid & had my pewter tankard behind the bar at age 16. The owners wern't too happy when I celebrated my Eighteenth there, having though I was always over the legal age. Over 500 years old, it's one of the earliest English pubs. I've included a little history for anyone interested
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It doesnt do too well to be too tall if you are a White Lion regular, as the sign above the door states: Weary traveller do ye mind your hatte although its clear that many modern day imbibers do not understand Olde Englishe, judging by the regular sickening thuds as head meet low beams and the accompanying expletives that can be heard on any given day.
Obviously, people were a lot shorter in the days when the White Lion was built around 1467, according to this history books which is why many of the low beams in the building barely reach six feet.
But, the Lion wasnt always a pub. It was built first as a farmhouse and cottages, only becoming an Inn later in the 15th Century. This was due to an inspired move by owner and local farmer, Hubert Grassdangle! I think the fact that the Parish Council continually refuse to put up a statue in his honour on the front of the pub is a national disgrace.
The White Lion Inn became an immediate hit, with its warren of intimate and enclosed bars, lit by old carriage lamps, and its unique features such as the Inglenook fireplace beneath which is buried the entrance to a secret tunnel leading under the Limpsfield Road to the nearby almshouses.
And its worth looking out for the carved wooden post which precariously supports one end of the particularly low beam running across the main bar area. It was taken from the corner of an Elizabethan four poster bed whose springs once bounced along to an amorous romp between Shakespeare-wannabe, Christopher Marlowe, and a mystery milkmaid from nearby Chelsham.
During the 19th Century, the Lions services were more diverse than they are today, selling general provisions as well as beer much like some of the bars in rural Ireland still do to this day.
Inside the pub, the atmosphere was often gloomy, with little sunshine breaking through the smoke-fugged rooms and, not surprisingly perhaps, there have been many sightings of apparitions in the main bar area after closing time when all but the bar staff have gone.
One notable encounter was in 1913 when Dorothea Tremayne-Wilkinson, the daughter of a local wealthy businessmen, big in steam-driven suction pumps for cesspits, found herself collecting glasses as a favour to her barmaid friend.
She heard a noise in the main bar, poked her head round the door and saw at the bar a young girl dressed in white standing next to a florid-faced man with heavy black Cavalry whiskers, banging soundlessly on the bar top, apparently demanding a drink.
I now understand that this could be Colonel Manley Pilkington and his young wife, Cecilia, who tragically died in 1824 while waiting for a coach to London. They were both pushed under the hooves of the oncoming horses by jealous rival, Frederick Fawshaw, and his rather simple-minded brother, Jebediah, who were both later hanged for their crimes.