The Windmill Inn, Sevenoaks

This is a nice village pub situated at one corner of the village green and easily accessed from the nearby Sevenoaks bypass. The exterior has a simple, two-tone colour scheme that has been brightened up considerably by the addition of several colourful hanging baskets. Entering through the right side of the building, you pass a small side room to the right of the bar with a few tables and chairs in a cosy looking spot, before reaching the main bar area. The room is bare boarded and has nice etched glass ‘Public Bar’ panes in the front windows, whilst the servery runs along the rear wall. The bar has a white wood panelled counter, modern bar back and simple canopy decorated with some old framed pictures and a flat screen TV. Seating here is fairly limited, comprising a row of tables and chairs along the front wall and one more in a small space next to the bar, separated by a pleasant tiled fireplace with a plain mirror in a chunky wooden frame above. The room extends to the left into a tiled floor space that was clearly once a separate room, as evidenced by more etched glass panes in the front windows, this time denoting a ‘Club Room’. Walls here are half panelled with cream uppers and there is a fine fireplace on the end wall with a decorative wooden surround and mantle lined with Windmill-themed objects and a collection of ceramic jugs and other such vessels on the hearth. The walls throughout are liberally covered with old black and white photos, framed maps, lots of good breweriana (especially old Courage items), shelves full of porcelain, some sherry barrels in the window sills and half an upturned barrel which has been nailed to the wall and acts as a table stacked high with various board games. There’s a tidy beer garden out the back and I suspect some punters spill out onto the village green on summer days. With the current Covid restrictions limiting customer numbers, the cask ale range has been proportionately scaled back, with just two options available – one from Harveys and another from Larkins, although the waitress, having already gone off once to check which beers were on, returned only with the names of the breweries and not of the beers, so I took pot luck and went for the Larkins, which turned out to be an excellent pint of bitter, so I suspect it was Larkins Traditional. We had a Sunday roast here and found the food excellent quality, although at £15 for the cheapest roast, it wasn’t exactly budget friendly. I really liked this place and thought it was an excellent asset to this pleasant village. The pub has clearly been opened out and adapted to suit modern day requirements, but it has retained a lot of character and certainly doesn’t feel in any way like a typical rural gastro-pub. The food and beer are both worthy of recommendation and I think this place will appeal to a wide range of customers from young families to pub traditionalists.