1950 Royal Standard

This section of the old High Street has seen a fair amount of change over the years. Originally the site of a little row of shops, these were razed to the ground in the 1880s to accommodate a new public house owned by the Watney brewery company, called The Rifleman. This in turn was knocked-down in the late 1930s to be replaced by this larger ‘Faux Tudor’ style building owned by Watney Combe Reid. This lasted a little short of sixty years before the site was re-developed with a gated row of vernacular town houses. This marks one of only two known occasions in Westerham where a pub has been knocked down – the other being the Crown Hotel opposite the railway station in London Road. There have been several pub ‘closures’ around the town over the years, but all have become residential buildings in the original ‘skin’.