Brick and timber pub with dormer windows and a tiled roof, above a flint city wall

The Parrot

1-9 Church Lane, St Radigunds, Canterbury CT1 2AG

Grade C · TraditionTrading · checked Sept 2026

The Parrot is locally dated 1370. The records say 1987.

Claimed: 1370
First record: 1987
Building: no single date

The building. A timber Wealden hall house with jettied wings and a crown-post roof, dated to about 1370 by a regional heritage account and to the fifteenth century by the Canterbury Historical and Archaeological Society.

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Real ale
Food
Beer garden

How old is it, really?

How to read this ribbon

Hatched: 617 years claimed but no document confirms. Solid: 39 years on record.

The claim

In Canterbury's St Radigund's quarter, with a fragment of old wall in front, the Parrot fills a timber Wealden hall house known as St Radigund's Hall. Its date is disputed: a regional heritage account gives about 1370, the city's own archaeological society the fifteenth century. It has only been a pub since 1987, and it is one of the oldest buildings in the city in which you can buy a pint.

What the records show

The c.1370 is a local heritage blog's dating of the building, a Wealden hall known as St Radigund's Hall, said to have been built on Roman foundations and restored after narrowly escaping demolition in the 1930s; CAMRA calls it a 14th-century gem and the oldest building in Canterbury but names no year, and the pub's own site gives no date at all. CAMRA records that it only became a pub in 1987, so there is no medieval drinking-house history here.

Dated evidence for The Parrot, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1370	Claimed founding	Local history
1987	First record of a drinking house here	CAMRA, on the conversion to a pub in 1987

What to look for inside

14th-century Wealden hall house saved from 1930s demolition
Became a pub in 1987 (formerly Simple Simon's)
Remains of an ancient wall visible at the front

Visiting

The Parrot is in Canterbury, England, at 1-9 Church Lane, St Radigunds, Canterbury CT1 2AG. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

parrotcanterbury.co.uk Directions in your maps app

Sources

Know something we don’t?Suggest a correctionLast checked Sept 2026

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Free to put on your own site, no permission needed. It shows what the pub claims and what the records support, and it changes when the data does.

How to use it, and how to change what it says — if you have a document we have not seen, we would like to read it.

Above: the record · Below: what readers rememberThe record ends here

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The snug

What people remember about the Parrot

Nobody has written about this pub yet. These are readers’ own recollections, not our records — we check documents, not memories, and a memory never moves a date or a grade.

Were you a regular here?

We are after the things a record cannot hold: the landlord’s name, what was behind the bar, the room that is not there any more, the year the fire was moved. One paragraph is plenty.

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