The Old House, Sevenoaks

One of the last old-school country pubs hidden away on the Greensand Ridge. Retains two separate rooms, with quite a dark main bar to the left of the entrance and a brighter lounge on the right-hand side. No new-fangled handpumps or keg founts on the two counters, with the real ales being served by gravity from the stillage in the room to the back. Three Harvey's brews being served - Sussex, Old (£5.20) and the coronation special Carolean Crown - together with the 'house' beer from Goachers and Adnams' Ghost Ship.

This is a particularly hard to find pub, thanks to its obscure rural location and the fact that it has no pub sign or name board. The hung tile exterior is quite striking on approach, but a closer look reveals a pub that has been neglected to a degree, with various bits of detritus strewn on the floor outside the car park and bits of unrepaired damage to the building. You enter into a lobby area, apparently once the off-sales space, with the public bar to your left and a saloon of sorts to the right. The public bar is most definitely the place to be - a parquet floored room with the bar to the rear, an incredible inglenook fireplace to the far left and seating around the rest of the perimeter. This comes mainly in the form of hard pews and smart chairs which fit the room’s traditional, unspoilt appearance. Dark beams cross the ceiling, studded with horse brasses and draped with garlands of hops. The bar has a nice dark wood panel counter and mirrored bar back, with a series of beams above the serving area used to display a collection of unusual glassware that’s well worth checking out whilst ordering - look out for the half-pint glass in the form of a cross-section pint glass. There’s a dart board in the far rear corner of the room and a TV screen was slightly incongruous, although it wasn’t in use. The saloon bar to the right was a less appealing space, with worn carpet, lincrusta walls and a fine window bay at the end which gives views out over the beer garden and beyond. There are a couple of lovely old tables in here, including a nice oval shaped one, that the landlord claimed was 300 years old. These are served by a good number of chairs and there’s also a collapsed chaise longue on the front wall, which really needs to be restored or thrown out. Decort is pretty dated and includes old paintings, mirrors, some Babycham figurines, glassware and CAMRA certificates, but the room was also being used as a bit of a storage dumping ground, with gas canisters, boxes of supplies and bits of paperwork blocking the small serving hatch to the left. The garden also looked pretty scruffy, but offered bench seating and a couple of shelters. There were five beers available on this visit - Larkins Traditional, Bitter and Porter, Adnams Ghost Ship and Long Man Long Blonde. I took a pint of the latter, which was undoubtedly in excellent condition. There was a decent group of locals in attendance on a Saturday afternoon - all maler and all known to each other - which made it feel a bit cliquey and not the most welcoming. This is a great pub that feels like the very definition of a hidden gem, but I felt it was let down by sloppy presentation that suggested a lack of care - something that thankfully hadn’t translated to the beer quality. The place isn’t very inviting, which perhaps deters some from returning, resulting in a bit of a member’s club feel, but I would still recommend fans of unspoiled, rural pubs to come and check the place out.

Official site of The Old House - www.oldhouse.pub

Official site of The Old House - www.oldhouse.pub

The phone# listed here is unobtainable and no amount of googling could provide a valid number to check whether they close in the afternoon. As it happens, I was advised in the Golding Hop that they don't even open until 19:00(!!!) in the week. No rating left, despite a temptation to mark it down for such a policy.