This poem was taken from the Kentish Gazette 8 October 1839. I thought it would be interesting to find the location of each of the inns mentioned. Edward Wilmot wrote two books – Eighty ‘Lost’ Inns of Canterbury and Inns of Canterbury that located many of the Inns. I then turned to Pigot’s Directory of Kent 1826/7 and Bagshaw 1847 History, Gazetteer and Directory of the County of Kent to locate the remaining Inns. However, there were still some unlisted so I next turned to the Kentish Gazette.
pub-poemWhat has arisen is that sometimes there were two inns with similar or the same name within the Canterbury area and also that when an inn closed down the name was moved to another inn in possibly another area.
Canterbury was renowned for having many inns and public houses and this is a starting point for discovering all those that were open in the nineteenth century. The poem (with footnotes as to where the locations of the inns were) can be downloaded here.