Brewtiful Maidstone

“He not only knew Maidstone well, but was much attracted to it.”

The Kent of Dickens by Walter Dexter (1924)

I sipped a Naked Ladies golden ale in the front dining area of the Muggleton Inn waiting for my fish-and-chips. A young woman with heavy make-up and an Eastern European accent sat nearby with her tattooed, muscle-bound boyfriend. Her outfit was unflatteringly tight and had the attention of an elderly couple who scowled in silence. The beer tasted slightly soapy; a bad rinse perhaps. I winced. One year ago, I sat at this very table after hiking from Rochester. Today it was just a short walk from my hotel. The menu was the same, prominently featuring a photo of Charles Dickens who stared back at me like last year. My meal arrived and the first thing I did was knock several peas covered in ketchup off my plate, narrowly missing my only clean pair of shorts on day one of my holidays. Musclehead walked towards the restroom, tattoos ran from his shoulder to his wrist. He looked like one of the dudes Denzel took out with a shotglass and corkscrew in the first Equalizer. Tightpants glanced over at me. The old couple continued to bemoan either immigration or youth or both. I took another sip of my beer as commotion at the front door caught my attention; a mother and her daughter struggled to get a baby stroller through. Soap again. Blech. The fish, though, was fresh and each bite went down with malt vinegary joy. Musclehead returned. His girlfriend rose from the table and they walked toward the door. A couple guys looking like video game buddies were just entering and couldn’t resist gawking at Tightpants as they held the door for them. And it crossed my mind for a moment, what am I doing in Maidstone?

For the last three years, May has meant one thing. Bloody England. In 2022, I immersed myself into Dickens’ London and the Cliffs of Dover. In 2023, I explored Dickens’ Kent and Becket’s Canterbury. This year, I came up with something somewhere between off the beaten path and the Pilgrim’s Way. A bit Dickens, a bit King Alfred. And it started in the Kentish city of Maidstone where I had unfinished business.

“Maidstone… appears to be a thriving and solid-looking place…
There are but few historical associations with it, as Maidstone “has lived a quiet life.”

A Week’s Tramp in Dickens-Land by William R. Hughes (1891)

Maidstone does not jump off the map when you think about places to visit in England. However, in exploring Dickens’ Kent last year, I left off one essential Pickwickian journey and that was a hike between the two Muggleton inspirations of Pickwick Papers, Maidstone and West Malling. Both have competed in the classic texts for the honor.

“The nearby town of “Muggleton” may have been Maidstone, or it may have been West Malling.”

Dickens’s England by Michael and Mollie Hardwick (1976)

So here I was back in Maidstone to tie up loose ends. While I don’t expect this post to launch Maidstone into the stratosphere of bucket-lists, the city does have charm and even better, a few really nice pubs which kicked off a holiday full of them, starting with the Dickensian Muggleton Inn, which, despite one soapy glass experience, I really like. It is part of the Wetherspoon group of pubs which are generally looked down upon by the discerning pub goer. They are able to offer prices almost half of what most other pubs can offer at the expense of being slightly more commercial and less authentic feeling.

While the pubs themselves can stand alone as suitable entertainment in Maidstone, a visit to the Maidstone Museum is actually a good way to orient oneself to the history of the city’s beer culture beforehand.

Maidstone Museum

The vicinity of Maidstone was once known as the “garden of England” where hop-growing was one of the main agricultural industries. The museum focuses partly on their hop agriculture, beer brewing past, and pubs. It is here I would discover that a once proud brewing culture headlined by Fremlin’s is being kept alive by a single brewery in a nearby town, called Goachers Ales. Something I would look out for later.

I don’t normally go out of my way to visit such museums but I was a bit hopeful that there would be a Dickens link there. In the past, the museum was called the Chillington Manor House. In 1891’s A Week’s Tramp in Dickens-Land by William R. Hughes, he writes of a visit to it:

“We notice an original “Dickens-item” in the shape of a very good carved head of the novelist, forming the right top panel of an oak fire-place, the opposite side being one of Tennyson… No pilgrim in “Dickens-Land” should omit visiting Maidstone and its treasures in Chillington Manor House.”

I looked for this “Dickens-item” unsuccessfully, but in retrospect, I find that I misinterpreted the above passage and was looking for a bust when now it is clear to me that it is a wood carving. So, I cannot verify if it still exists or not. However, not all was lost. There is one room with a nice collection of old books, and I spotted one that I also own, The Real Dickens Land by H. Snowdon Ward and Catherine Ward.

There is also quite an impressive art collection which gave me the opportunity for an abbreviated edition of Drunken Masterpieces.

Drunken Masterpieces: Maidstone Museum

The museum had one qualifying painting; a 17th century tavern scene from an unknown artist believed to be from the workshop of Adriaen van Ostade from Haarlem, Netherlands. Here we see a brightly lit woman raising her Berkemeyer glass and singing as the guy in the window is clapping his hands. Interestingly, the woman is the only one in this scene who has a drink. Which made me realize that I also didn’t have one. Time to go visit some pubs.

The Rifle Volunteers

Rifle Volunteers were groups of part-time militias which became common in Kent in the late 1800’s when tensions were high with France¹. This is a classic public house for the locals. Within minutes of hearing my accent, I was engaged in conversations with a few of the regulars about beer in America. It is amazing how bad the reputation of American beer still is in other parts of the world. I do believe one of the USA’s great surprises for visitors is discovering that it is not just Budweiser and Bud Lite. Then the conversation turned to the decline of the pub culture in England. It is places like The Rifle Volunteers which still carry on that traditional spirit of British pubs. Meanwhile, the Goacher’s bitter washed away any memory of Muggleton Inn’s soapy glass.

The Flower Pot

This fantasic pub was recommended by the bartender at Rifle Volunteers. It is a bit outside the city center so a good 15-minute walk, but worth every step on your step counter. The Flower Pot may have the best combination of local pub coziness and ambitious ale selection of the entire trip. When you see a British pub advertise “craft beer”, it usually means one or two unique ales on tap. Here, every ale is something you won’t easily find anywhere else. If I could transplant one pub during my trip to my own neighborhood, this might be the one.

Ye Olde Thirsty Pig

Easily gets my vote for the most attractive pub on the list with its half-timber exterior, walls with no ninety-degree angles and oak-beamed sailing ship-like interior. For good measure, there is the low-hanging entrance which will surely give you a friendly pat on the noggin on the way out. I find the sign, however, to not quite fit the medieval aesthetic, especially without the “Ye Olde”. It is here where I got asked the question Glass or Mug? for the first time on the trip. Remembering back to my experience at The Thomas Becket pub in Canterbury a year earlier, I knew the correct answer this time. The traditional glass for a bitter is not the ordinary flat glass that you see in my other photos, but a dimpled mug.

And yes, I did get a wood-beam kiss on the top of my head on the way out.

The Fisherman’s Arms

The least appealing of the pubs on the list but a good pub to end the day with the locals out for an after-work drink. Here I got sucked into a neighboring conversation between an older guy and a younger guy. The younger guy was getting schooled by the older guy for not knowing the song (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction by the Rolling Stones. We spent the next hour comparing classic rock bands from America and England.

Final Words

One common question I was asked several times was Do you like the beer here? When you look around the room in a British pub, you generally see people drinking international lagers. Peroni from Italy. Madri from Spain. Or Guinness. Lots and lots of Guinness. Ales and bitters seem to be for the traditionalists or someone like me who is seeking something local and different. Going to a pub in Belgium, I wouldn’t look twice at a beer offering 4% alcohol content. I want 8-9-10% in my Belgian beers. But in England, bitters and ales sit in the 3.6 to 4.2% range, sometimes creeping up to 5%. Yet, when I am there, all I want to drink are those. The answer to the question is complicated. I don’t find them all that tasty. But I crave them for that one week out of the year I get to experience them. They are one with the atmosphere of the pub. To me, inseparable. Yet, by the end of the trip, I would no doubt be considering them pig swill and looking forward to getting back to Westmalle Tripel. The good thing about 4% beers is no hangover in the morning. Tomorrow I would finally get to see the other Muggleton and its pubs. But it would take 21km and some mishaps along the way to get there. I would need every bit of that lack of hangover. So, with Day 1 in the books, the pubs of Maidstone did not disappoint. If for some reason you take a wrong turn to Canterbury and end up here, all is not lost.

Footnotes

1. Information panel from the Maidstone Museum ↩︎