Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
300 years of getting a round in at city pub
The Round House pub next to Wincheap roundabout was serving pints for more than 300 years before it sadly closed in 2006. It originally opened as the Wheatsheaf as early as 1692 and operated under that name until between 1838 and 1865 when it became the Railway Tavern.
In 1862, landlord George Dunn appeared at Canterbury police station, accused of “unlawfully detaining a £10 note, the property of James Tuff, banker, Wincheap Street”. Mr Tuff had spent the whole afternoon at the pub playing bagatelle for drink and money with another punter.
He’d asked the landlord to change a £10 note - and claimed he never returned it.
Mr Tuff admitted being “fresh” at the time and magistrates dismissed the case - but not before scolding Mr Dunn for allowing gambling at his pub. The name later changed to the Station Hotel before switching again, in 1968, to the Man of Kent after the other Man of Kent in Worthgate Place was compulsory purchased and closed. In 1972, brewers Fremlins/whitbread asked the Queen’s Own Buffs Regiment for permission to use a copy of the painting by Lady Butler of a Man of Kent, which hung in the Officers’ Mess at the barracks, to be used as
their pub sign. This was duly granted. There was more drama in 1987 when the landlord and his family were rushed to hospital after being overcome by gas fumes. Licensee Mavin Wilkinson was found unconscious in a first-floor lounge and wife Jacqueline had collapsed on the stairs. Three students were also rescued from the loft by fire crews. The pub was renamed the Round
House in 1997 but shut nine years later. It was put up for auction with a guide price of about £350,000 in 2009.
It was later converted into a 10-bed house used for student accommodation.
The property is now understood to be rented privately.
Pictures and information used with kind permission of Paul Skelton of dover-kent.com.