Above photo, date unknown.

Above photo date unknown. Also just showing the "Swan Hotel" left.

Above photo showing landlady Gendoline Waveney Coleman in the lower bar in 1943.

Above photo, date unknown and for some reason showing the sign on the wall upsidedown.

From an email received, 1 February 2025.

Hi my name is James Stears. I lived in this pub in the 1970's and went to the local school. My uncle Johnny Doyle ran the pub with wife Joyce.

It was said to have been a one up one down coaching house, rumoured to be over 900 years old. I was told there was a tunnel connecting it to a nunnery opposite?

My uncle discovered panels of tapestry in a room upstairs under many layers of wallpaper which ended up in a museum.

The pub was haunted. My sister saw an old lady in this room sitting down sewing. Books would fly off shelves at my uncle and footsteps were heard going up and down the stairs.

The plague pits were dug up locally and the workers would come in for a drink and clear the pub out.

Our claim to fame was prince Charles who was at the RAF base would come in for a drink and cheese sandwich at lunchtime occasionally!

There was also a hidden room in the attic with a table and chairs laid out ready to eat. Possibly a priest hole.

The tapestries were purchased by the Victoria and Albert museum in Kensington probably around 1970?

Johnny took on the pub in around 1964 and ran it until he retired to Birchington many years later. He was a Sargeant in the Buffs and was one of the Liberators of Bergen Belsen. The buffs used to hold their meetings upstairs and would arrange trips to Belgium and Germany where he was stationed at the end of the war.

I can remember round wicker tables in the bar area with glass tops under which was stuffed currency notes from around the world, as well as them being pinned all around the back of the bar. Johnny stood on a special platform to serve customers as he was not very tall.

My room was upstairs at the back of the pub above the kitchen. This was connected by a staircase on the left as you entered which was blocked off, however you could look through the cracks and still see the steps. The floor was old and tilted which meant you almost ran into bed.

This was the oldest part of the pub so I was told.

Although Johnny died quite a few years ago, Joyce nearly made 102. She and her mother cooked for the pilots at Manston airfield in WW2.

Mum served behind the bar (Betty, Joyce's sister) being blonde and shapely helped sales until Johnny found out she was accidentally giving out extra large shots!!

James Stears.