Selling village has a population of around 850 people. The village has a long road at its centre, with the pub at one end, farmland either side and the railway station at the other end (about a mile and a quarter away). There used to be another pub by the station, The Sondes Arms, but it closed a few years ago and is now a lovely tea house and small village shop. The village is hilly, sloping down to the Kent Downs AONB to the south and east. Surrounding, are its hamlets of Hogben's Hill, Gushmere, Neames Forstal, Shepherds Hill, and Perrywood.
The close-by Perry Wood is a lovely spot amid the rolling chalk of the Downs. Its position in the landscape with fantastic views of the coast and countryside means that it has a rich history. The viewpoint called The Mount was used as part of a semaphore chain, sending messages from London to the Kent ports. Our nearest competitor, The Rose and Crown, is a free house in the woods.
We believe the pub itself dates from the early 1700s, it is grade two listed and has belonged to Shepherd Neame for many many years. We've struggled to find out a lot regarding its past - in this case, google is not our friend, but it is still an ongoing project to document the history of the pub.
Back in the 60s, 70s, and into the 80s it was a very popular venue in the area. In 1969 it was awarded the Evening Standard Pub of the Year, with long-running landlord Ernie Warne in charge. When the Warne family left the pub, it was taken over by a well-known and popular local landlord, Tony Richards (coincidentally, my first ever bar job was working briefly for Tony and his wife Jackie at the Chimney Boy in Faversham, just before they moved to the White Lion). Tony, Jackie, and their team built on the pubs already great reputation and it became the "go-to" country pub in the area under their leadership - I recall 4-week waiting lists for Sunday lunch.
In 1984 the pub won the Shepherd Neame Eggs competition, we're still trying to work out what that was all about!!
Tony and Jackie eventually moved on to run a free house locally (they retired a few years ago, and sadly Tony passed away in Nov 2018) and I think it's fair to say that the pub has had a challenging time since then.
Before we took over in April 2017, we think there had been at least 7 different tenants in the preceding 10 years so an average of fewer than 18 months per tenant. As you'd expect each of these tenants had differing ideas and vision for the pub, some more successful than others. The locals have very differing views on which were the best or worst!
When DT and I were forming our proposal for the business, we wanted to make sure we kept the White Lion as first and foremost. a village local. It's important to us that the White Lion is at the heart of the village and our regulars feel a connection to it. But, the village itself cannot sustain the pub, we need to encourage visitors from further afield as well, so we are constantly balancing the two very different customer types.
Sometimes, it's tempting to give extra tables over to diners but we want the locals to be able to pop in for a pint or two and not feel they are in the way or second-rate to the restaurant area. So often, a village local becomes a fine dining restaurant or (and I loathe the term) a gastropub - we feel (and apologies if it seems a bit sentimental) that we have a "moral duty" to do our utmost to retain the pub for the village. Lots of people have said to us that, during the many times the White Lion has ended up closed over the past few years, it felt like the village was missing something vitally important, the village centre and that many of the community didn't see each other or chat for weeks at a time. We're lucky, Selling has a village school and an active church, but to many, the pub is an equally important part of village life. Our aim is to build on that and form a strong community bond.
Before we moved in, the pub had been fully shut for 6 months and in the 6 months previous had opened on and off so it needed a lot of love and attention to get it fit to reopen.
We aim to provide a good selection of beer and wines and good honest pub food, with, what we think of as the occasional modern twist. We do have a vegan special menu, but to be honest, this is typically a "meat and two veg" type of area - the game is always popular, as are the traditional Kentish recipes we like to have as specials.
It's not been easy since opening, rebuilding a customer base and gaining peoples trust after they felt let-down by previous tenants has been tough at times but, I like to think we were doing reasonably well. Not everyone likes us or our style, but that's fine as many do and we feel we've become a welcome part of the village.
We've followed the business plan reasonably closely (writing it along with several bottles of red didn't prove too disastrous), although there have been some lessons learned. After a couple of years of financial losses and/or just about break-even, 2020 was supposed to be the year we started to make a living from it.
And then COVID 19, the Coronavirus struck!
