Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
Ringing last orders for city’s smallest pub
Whitbread’s takeover was the final act for the Ben Jonson after 100 years in Canterbury...
Every Man In His Humour perhaps Ben Jonson’s most famous work - focused on the fluids believed in the 1700s to regulate the body and the human temperament. And punters at the Canterbury pub named after the playwright also found their temperament’s significantly altered by an over-abundance of a particular fluid, namely beer.
Last orders were rung on the Ben Jonson in 1969 when it closed to be transformed into a steak house. Eight years earlier it was landlord Mr H Bacon ringing time on the Mafeking Bell. The notice next to the bell read: “Time gentleman please - It’s still a warning bell!” This refers to the fact the bell was rung during the Siege of Mafeking, in the Boer War, to alert the British defenders of imminent attack.
Thought to be Canterbury’s smallest pub at the time it closed, the earliest reference found for the Ben Jonson is for a Stephen Wood in 1840, but he was listed as a brazier. The premises was first listed as a public house in 1858.
The Ben Jonson was the only Canterbury pub for Francis A White’s Stourmouth Brewery, until 1904, when Flint & Co’s St Dunstan’s Brewery acquired it. The Guildhall Street tavern then became a Leney’s of Dover house, when Flint’s were bought out by them in 1924. Eventually it became a Fremlin’s house when, in 1926, all Leney’s houses were leased to Fremlin’s, in what was in effect a brewery merger.
After Whitbread’s acquisition of Fremlin’s in 1967 the pub was tragically axed. Soon after, landlords Bob and Sherry Lucas went on to run the City Arms in Butchery Lane from 1969 until they retired in about 1983.
By 2014 the Ben Jonson was operating as Oscar & Bentleys bistro.
■ Pictures used with permission of Paul Skelton, of www.dover-kent.com.