The Woolpack, Brookland
A building was on this site from 1410 when the sea lapped against its walls, and it served as a beacon keeper’s house; and some of the 15th century fabric (beams and wattle-and-daub) remains within the current fabric of the Woolpack. Whilst many pubs make a rather tenuous claim to have been involved in the free trade, the Woolpack is a bona fide smuggler’s pub, once used by the infamous Aldington Gang, and with plenty of evidence to support these links. There are still traces of a secret passage once used to evade being captured by excise officers and, if you sit at the long table in the main bar, the strange item that you will see wedged on the ceiling between the beams above your head is a “spinning jenny”. There is more than one theory as to its purpose, but the most popular is that it is a device used to distribute the spoils of a successful smuggling “run”.
The table at which you are sitting bears testimony to a different form of gambling: it incorporates a shove-penny board, the larger than usual spaces denoting that it was played with the “cartwheel” pennies popular in Georgian times. Other items of genuine historic interest to be found adorning this two-room hostelry include an ancient Flanders tapestry and a mediaeval lock that was in use up until 1972.
This is a classic country pub, a whitewashed building with an inglenook fireplace and hop bines adorning old beams – some of which are claimed to have come from local shipwrecks. It was deemed to be an excellent setting for scenes within the 1947 film The Loves of Joanna Godden, a film which is recommended viewing for anyone with an interest in the Romney Marsh.
