20 High Street

The Restaurant

Licensing records show that no. 20 was a beerhouse supplied by Maidstone based brewery, Edward Mason & Co., called The Restaurant for around 21 years(1). It may well have been the location of earlier beerhouses that we know existed but that there is no current information to establish where – the Women’s Institute Scrapbook states that this property had previously been known as the The Dried Haddock but offers no evidence for this(2).

Born in Wiltshire, Josiah Abery, along with his brother, Thomas, appears to have spent the best part of his life in West Malling, Josiah taking his father’s trade as a carpenter whereas his brother became a blacksmith. Although they pursued different trades, they shared the same common trait of supplementing their regular trades with stints as landlords of different beerhouses along West Malling’s High Street. In the 1881 census, Josiah is living with his father in law at the Royal Oak (One Smile) where he is listed as a carpenter as well as beerhouse keeper – as we know, he later became the landlord of this property whilst his brother can be found as landlord of the Nags Head (Hicks, Eves and The Lodge) and the Joiners Arms. Josiah’s career as a landlord came to an end, however, following an incident in 1892 which reached the local newspapers…

DRUNK AND ASSAULTING THE POLICE
Josiah Abery, landlord of the Restaurant, Malling was summoned for refusing to admit a policeman to his licensed premises, further with assaulting Sergeant Handcock while in the execution of his duty, and also with allowing his house to be used as a brothel.
Sergeant Handcock deposed to visiting defendant’s house at twenty past eleven in the evening, on Saturday July 2nd. He tried the door but found it fastened. Defendant said “What do you want,” and witness replied “I want to see who you have got in the house.” Defendant’s wife then came downstairs and said “Oh let him in, Joe.” Witness then went in, but on going into the bar, where witness saw some men, defendant pushed him back and struck him.
…Eventually witness got upstairs…came to a door which was closed and defendant, standing in front of it, said “This is a room we don’t use, and it’s no use going in there.” Witness looked in the room, however, and saw a man who was in the act of pulling the clothes over him. Under the bed he found a woman named Channer, wife of a postman of the town, and sister to the defendant’s wife.
*  *  *

The chairman of the case, Hon E V Bligh (owner of Fartherwell House), heard from the defence that one act of immorality did not necessarily mean that the house could be described as a brothel which Mr Bligh agreed with, however despite this aspect of the trial being dropped, the bench did go on to convict Josiah for refusing to allow the police constable access, concluding that this action may have prevented further evidence from being found and the defendant subsequently being convicted. For this reason they could not allow the case to be dealt with lightly – Josiah was fined £5 for each offence in lieu of a 1 month prison sentence.

Although the bench agreed that, despite this incident, the Restaurant’s licence could be endorsed if it was transferred to a new landlord, Supt Lane opposed this decision on the grounds of knowing nothing about the proposed replacement, an opinion that was supported by Sergeant Handcock who also disagreed with the decision seeing as the house had been badly conducted. This appears to have been the end for the Restaurant and following its closure, it became the Liberal Club(1) for a short time before changing hands to make way for Alfred Barkaway’s Family Butcher shop.

Alfred Barkaway

A B Barkaway Family Butcher

Born in Norwood in 1857, it would have been surprising if Alfred Benjamin Barkaway hadn’t grown up to be a butcher – he was the son of a butcher, Richard, and of his brothers who reached adulthood, all three entered the same trade, Richard in Borough Green, Charles in Plaxtol and William in Ightham. A series of interviews undertaken by the Malling Society called Rememberances, includes an interview with one of Alfred’s grandchildren who provides some wonderful insights into his business and family life(4). His father’s first shop had been in Hadlow before he moved to Norwood, so the family already had local connections before Alfred returned to the area. Apart from the fact that the brothers shared a common trade, it is interesting to note that three of them, including Alfred, married three sisters – the daughters of William Sparrow, a shoemaker from West Henningfield in Essex. It was thanks to the money William left to his daughters in his will that Alfred’s wife, Sarah, was able to finance the opening of her husband’s shop in West Malling.

Alfred’s shop built up a good reputation, particularly for fine sausages, and his customers crossed the social boundaries from regular town folk to the likes of Lord Beaty of Mereworth Castle. He added to the business by buying a slaughter house in Back Street (now King Street) which was where the garages for Viner’s are now. Apart from this interview, Barakway’s butcher shop is mentioned in several of the other interviews in this collection…

Aged 83, Alfred passed away in 1941 and the business was handed down to his son William Alfred, known as young Alf. He was a churchwarden at St Mary’s Church and his wife, Kate, was a Sunday School Teacher so the church was an important part of their life – Kate’s contribution was suitably marked by the ringing of a special bell peal at the couple’s wedding, which included 3,040 changes(5). Young Alf’s health began to fade in 1946 and as a result, the shop would leave the Barkaway family for the first time in nearly 50 years when it was sold to the Rochester Co-operative Society.