SIGN OF THE “BRICKLAYERS’ ARMS.”
But all Sevenoaks inns, past or present, yield in interest to the fine old mansion facing the high road near the church, and known as “The Old House.” All details of its history have been lost, and it is only known that it was once the “Three Cats”—probably “The Cats”—inn, celebrated by that late seventeenth-and early eighteenth-century poet, Tom Durfey, who was kept by his patron, the sixth Earl of Dorset, at Knole as a mirth-maker and general bacchanalian laureate. You cannot imagine a poet with the Christian name of Tom being other than a bard of the barrel; and as for Tom Durfey, he was the most bacchic songster, and the dirtiest rhymester of all the dirty dogs of his age: which is why he is so reprobated by the good—and so read.
In his song in praise of the “Incomparable Strong Beer of Knoll,” he says:
There’s Adams, in hoping to pleasure his town,
Declares the best French wine is sold at the “Crown,”
And well it may be, for he takes good rates,
And so does my jolly sleek friend at the “Cats.”
But to strong beer my praises must come,
Leave them to isinglass, egg-whites, and stum.
Beer, fine as Burgundy, lifts high my soul