Remember life before Wetherspoon pubs?

From a former cinema to a furniture store - there’s a rich history behind each of the district’s Spoons...

The Thomas Ingoldsby in Burgate opened as a Wetherspoon pub in 1997. The site used to be home to Courts furniture store. The pub gets its name from Richard Harris Barham who was born in 1788, at 61 Burgate, across the road. Using the pen name Thomas Ingoldsby, he wrote The Ingoldsby Legends which first appeared in 1840 in a periodical edited by Charles Dickens. Canterbury is blessed with not one, but two Wetherspoon pubs. When the West Gate Inn opened in 1999 at 1-3 North Lane it also swallowed up what was the Falstaff Tap next door.

The Grade Ii-listed building is positioned near Canterbury’s West Gate, which it takes its name from. The Saxon Shore Wetherspoon pub opened in Herne Bay in 1999. The site was previously occupied by Collard’s Restaurant and Hotel in the 1890s. It later became the Tower Hotel, before it was gutted by fire and demolished in 1932.

A new building was constructed the following year, with owner Ronald Loader creating a restaurant and a 3,000 sq ft ballroom.

It was run as Chaplin’s by John and Sandra Young until 1998. Wetherspoon gave it the name The Saxon Shore, which dates back to the military forts built along the coast during the late Roman occupation. After a £1.5 million redevelopment, the old Gala bingo hall in Whitstable reopened as The Peter Cushing Wetherspoon pub in August 2011. The building was also formerly home to the Oxford Cinema.

Its name is a tribute to one of the town’s most famous former residents, actor Peter Cushing OBE, who was known for his many roles in Hammer Horror films and his numerous appearances as fictional detective Sherlock Holmes.

(Pic: Rory Kehoe) Outside the Falstaff Tap in 1926, which the West Gate Inn swallowed up

(© Copyright Dennis Turner) The Oxford Cinema in Whitstable, which became the town’s Wetherspoon pub

In 2005 the West Gate Inn became the city’s first non-smoking pub. Manager Ian Feltham is pictured with ash trays

The Saxon Shore was home to Loader’s Cafe and Restaurant, built in 1933

(Pic: Images of Canterbury) A blaze at Courts furniture store - which is now our Burgate Spoons