Above line print, 1908.

Above line print 2008.

Above photo, 1935. Kindly sent by Rory Kehoe.

Above painting, date unknown.

Above print taken from "Old Country Inns of England."

Above photo showing taken 2010 from their web site.

Above photo showing taken 2010 from their web site.

Above photo showing the bar in 2004.

Above sign left 1974, sign right 1996.

With thanks from Roger Pester www.innsignsociety.com.

Above sign 2010

Botolphs Bridge sign left 1970s, sign right March 1991.

Above with thanks from Brian Curtis www.innsignsociety.com

Above aluminium card issued June 1951. Sign series 3 number 9.

Above photo showing the "Botolph's Bridge" dart team of 1947.

THE LEGEND OF BOTOLPHS BRIDGE

(As related by Duncan Forbes in his book "Hythe Haven" pub 1981)

The English monk St. Botolph lived in the seventh century, and many popular tales have been told about him, since there is very little known historical fact. His monastery is thought to have been in Boston, Lincolnshire, which has derived its name from "Botolph's Town". But our legend about the saint concerns his dead body and Botolph's Bridge.

Go to the bridge across the Canal Cut at West Hythe, which is not the same as the original bridge before the canal was constructed, and look at the Inn sign there, which illustrates the story. Two more monks are following them from the bank, and a shaft of light is seen shining down on all of them out of a dark sky.

The legend is that the body of St. Botolph was lying borne to some place where it would be kept safe from desecration by the heathen Danes. There was water to cross, and the night was pitch black. Then suddenly a shaft of light, which was not the moon, shone down from heaven to guide the escort as they went aboard. But where the body now lies, no one knows.

The bridge by the Inn spans a stretch of water that is now a branch of the Royal Military Canal, draining into the sea through the sluice beside the Grand Redoubt built during Napoleonic Wars. But in the past it carried travellers to the shore across one of the many creeks of the marsh. It was called Boter's, Butter's or Butler bridge on the old maps, whether Butler is derived from Botolph, or whether there really is a man in charge of the drinks there, a there is today, or whether, as is more likely the name came from that of a well-known local family. I do not know.

What I do know is that, with the sheep meadow around you, the placid water nearby, the Roman ruins, looking like old, decaying teeth sprouting out the hillside, and the more modern castle with its Second World War reinforced concrete watchtower on the skyline, there is no pleasanter place to stop and take a glass.

I browsed your entry of the pub, to see what information you had about ownership during & post WW2.

You could show a much more interesting history of this lovely pub, if you availed yourself of a copy of the book, "The Flying Sword" (a history of 601 Squadron)

This famous RAF Squadron used the pub whilst attending summer camps at Lympne. The road sign for Dymchurch from the nearby junction became a 'mess trophy' after a landing accident.

I am interested in what happened to the propeller displayed in the bar in the 1970s and any other stories you may unearth.

Excerpt from, "The Flying Sword" by Tom Moulson (a history of 601 Squadron Royal Aux AF (the Millionaires Squadron).

During summer camps at Lympne private aircraft were flown off the aerodrome and put down alongside the favourite pub, Botolph's Bridge Inn, a picturesque tavern among the sheep pastures of Romney Marsh. Although some of these aerial run-abouts were dazzlingly impressive, others were held together by a few strips of sticking plaster and the ingenuity of the squadron's mechanics. The Legion* was so closely knit that a mechanic would never object to working on his officer's aeroplane even though he knew that after dinner it might be used, as though it were a bicycle, to fly a mile or so down the road for a game of darts.

On an evening in 1935 the Legionnaires were assembling at Botolph's Bridge before the rabbit hunt. When it became dark, live rabbits would be caught in the headlamps of a motor car, then put through every window found open on the airfield precincts. Once almost two hundred had been caught and all let loose in the bar of the Cinque Ports Flying Club, the barman who found them next morning had to be coaxed out of taking a week's sick leave.

The evening was warm and the door of the inn was left open. Through it drifted the strains of a concertina, played by Peter Robinson as he leaned against the bridge and the sounds of aero engines, as the little machines rose just beyond the brow of the hills, cruised the two miles then circled over the inn and followed each other into the stamp sized field opposite.

Roger Bushell in (Max) Aitken's Aeronca, eager and thirsty, made a crisp approach over the taxying machines, swerved to avoid a sheep and touched down too late. As his plane tore through the hedge and disintegrated on the highway, less than 20yds from the inn, it decapitated a signpost which read, “To Dymchurch”. Bushell stepped unscathed from the wreckage, apologized to Aitken and began to auction off the Aeronca's remains. The “TO DYMCHURCH” sign became one of the Squadron's most treasured mementos, locked up with the Squadron silver and displayed on mess nights.

*Squadron Leader Roger Bushell was one of the ‘great escapers' from Stalag Luft III at Sagan and was murdered by the Gestapo.

Above email kindly submitted by "Nobby Nige."