CANTERBURY

Today, as you stroll along Canterbury’s St Margaret’s Street and take a turn at HMV into the Marlowe Arcade, the route will lead you up towards Whitefriars. Yet if you’d taken that same turning between the years 1029 and 1942, you’d have been stepping inside the city’s first ever inn.

Trading under various names over the centuries, the Royal Fountain Hotel truly was a tavern steeped in history.

The four knights who murdered Thomas Becket in the Cathedral in 1170 are said to have first stopped off for a sharpener in the Royal Fountain, according to pub expert Rory Kehoe.

In 1299, the German Ambassador reportedly stayed at the inn en-route to London to attend the wedding of Edward I and Queen Margaret, and “found the amenities much to his liking”.

The dover-kent.com website continues: “An even earlier tradition states that Earl Godwin’s wife resided there in 1029. Dickens, however, certainly stayed there in 1861.” Originally the Fountain Inn, the pub was renamed the Fountain Hotel in 1827 and by 1867 it had become the Royal Fountain Hotel.

According to “Some Old English Inns”, written by George T. Burrows in 1907, the Royal Fountain was in fact the oldest pub in England! However, like so many historic buildings across the city, the inn met its doom during the Luftwaffe’s Baedeker Raids in 1942.

So, the next time you’re in Canterbury, why not make a pilgrimage to this hallowed site - and pop to the nearest pub to raise a glass to the Royal Fountain.

Picture: dover-kent.com A postcard showing a carriage outside the pub in St Margaret’s Street, date unknown

Picture: Rory Kehoe The Royal Fountain was devastated by the Luftwaffe in 1942; The entrance to the Marlowe Arcade in St Margaret’s Street, where “England’s oldest pub” once stood

A pub so old that the four knights who killed Thomas Becket are said to have had a pint there first