CAPEL HISTORY TRAIL
No. 3 - The King's Head pub
The former King's Head pub building is one of our saddest historical losses and now certainly greatest eyesore in Five Oak Green. Believed to have been first opened in 1823, it has been closed since 2017 and was damaged by fire in December 2019. The first floor was then removed as the building was declared structurally unsound.
The photographs above and below most probably date from the late 1920s and show the addition of the brick frontage which was likely built in the five years before the First World War. The image above showing that it was at that point operated by Style and Winch Limited who were a brewer formed by the merger of the A F Style and Company brewery of Maidstone with the Edward Winch and Sons brewery of Chatham in 1899. This created a business with 365 tied public houses across Kent. Style and Winch were themselves taken over by Barclay, Perkins and Company in 1929 who operated 600 tied pubs. The Maidstone brewery ceased operation in 1965 and was subsequently demolished.
The image below reveals that the brewery ownership had changed by the time this postcard photograph was taken although it is difficult to make out the new name on the front of the building. Interestingly, notice that the pub had by then become a hotel as presumably some of the upstair rooms were available for overnight guests.
The photograph below shows the building most probably in the very first years of the 1900s prior to the brick front addition mentioned earlier. You can see St Luke's church on the right which was opened in 1894.
The picture below was taken in 2011.
