The Plough Inn, Stalisfield Green

The claim

A timber-framed hall house on the North Downs above Faversham, jettied at one end on a dragon post and roofed over a crown post. Historic England dates the frame to the fifteenth century and the alterations to the nineteenth. The earliest record we have traced of the house as an inn is 1841, when Thomas Brenchley kept it. Two changing Kentish ales, a garden, rooms in a barn behind.

What the records show

The pub's own events site calls this a fifteenth-century pub and a grade II listed medieval Wealden hall house. That is the claim, and the register carries the fabric half of it. The official list entry, number 1069205, listed 27 August 1952, describes a Wealden hall house, now a public house, of the fifteenth century and altered in the nineteenth: timber framed, four framed bays, both end bays originally jettied with the right end still jettied and returned on a dragon post, and a crown-post roof inside. It was read on 20 September 2026 through the Internet Archive's copy of the page, because historicengland.org.uk refused every request from this machine that day. Nothing in the entry says when the hall began selling drink, and that gap is what the grade turns on. The earliest record we have traced of drinking here is 1841. The Kent pub archive kept by Paul Skelton at dover-kent.com gives Thomas Brenchley, aged 65 at the census of that year, as the first of five licensees it records, followed by Abraham Chapman in 1858, William Chambers from 1871, Henry Cheeseman in 1903 and Robert Rook in 1913; the same page transcribes the Kentish Gazette of 23 October 1860 reporting a coroner's inquest held at the Plough Inn, Stalisfield, which is a record of the house trading under that name and not the pub's own word for it. Four centuries stand between the frame and the first named landlord, so this is a B and not an A. Whether a drink is served without a meal is answered by CAMRA, whose entry calls it a historic multi-roomed pub with two changing cask beers from Kent microbreweries and Kentish cider at the bar, and by OpenStreetMap, which tags the building amenity=pub.

Dated evidence for The Plough Inn, earliest first
Year	What	Source
1400	Claimed founding	The pub
1841	First record of a drinking house here	Historic England

What to look for inside

Wealden hall house of the fifteenth century, listed grade II in 1952
Crown-post roof inside, and one end bay jettied on a dragon post
Thomas Brenchley kept the house at the census of 1841

Visiting

The Plough Inn is in Stalisfield Green, England, at Stalisfield Road, Stalisfield Green, Faversham ME13 0HY. We do not list opening times, because they change; the pub’s own site is the place to check before you set out.

theploughinnstalisfield.co.uk Directions in your maps app