Dering Arms

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Kent - Pluckley

One star - A pub interior of special national historic interest

Listed Status: II

Station Road
Pluckley
TN27 0RR

Tel: (01233) 840371

Email: jim@deringarms.com

Website https://www.deringarms.com

Facebook https://www.facebook.com/deringarms

Real Ale: Yes

Real Cider: Yes

Lunchtime Meals: Yes

Evening Meals: Yes

Nearby Station: Pluckley

Station Distance: 100m

Public Transport: Near Railway Station (Pluckley)

View on: Whatpub

The coming of the railway in 1844 led Sir Edward Cholmeley Dering to provide this flamboyant building for his guests and its architecture echoes his main house and other buildings on the estate. After this was sold in 1928, it was turned into a pub, neatly confirmed by the date of 1931 on one of the quadrant arms of the hand pumps in the left-hand bar. There are two bars at the front, much as they were about 1930, with their original counters and a back fitting which houses a couple of drawers for cash or other items. The door between the two rooms has colourful glass as does the small divider sitting on the counter. The large rear room, although apparently dating from about 1845, now has no features of historic interest.
Built of stone in c.1840 originally as a hunting lodge for the Dering Estate, it is a smaller replica of the main Surrenden Dering mansion with impressive Dutch gables and has a red creeper. It has distinctive Dering stone mullioned round-headed windows and has been an inn for a hundred years. Through the left hand stud door is a public bar which has a bar counter including decorative brackets. The counter is probably the one installed when it first became a pub and on the staff side it has two large drawers. The room has a flagstone floor and a brick fireplace that is not that old.

To the right a door with a colourful leaded panel in the top leads to a smaller second bar with another original panelled bar counter and, like the other bar, it is inlaid with leather which has started to deteriorate. The room also has an old bar back fitting of shelves held up with slender columns and two drawers in lower half, a brick fireplace that is not that old. To the right is a lobby and on the far right a door leads into a restaurant in a modern extension consisting of two small rooms joined and both with a dado of old panelling. On rear left is a large room with a modern bar counter.
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