The Bourne Tap

The Bourne Tap

This is a former beerhouse, now a house, dating from around 1800. The building retains historical significance despite extensive twentieth-century extensions to the north-west, south-west, north-east and further extensions in the 1970s, none of which are of special architectural interest.

The original structure consists of two parallel ranges, each a single storey containing one large room. The north wall of the north range retains its original weatherboarding, while the gable ends are of painted brick. The south range is rendered with gabled tiled roofs and external brick chimneystacks.

The original main entrance is on the north side, now accessed through an early twentieth-century extension. Part of the original weatherboarded front wall survives, together with a brick external chimneystack and a wide right side doorcase with wooden surround and ledged plank door with L-hinges. When the early twentieth-century extension was added, the eastern part of the original north wall was removed. The side gable ends are painted brick, and an external brick chimneystack is attached to the east side of the south range. The south wall of the original building is rendered and features a central early twentieth-century gable, a wooden early twentieth-century door with horizontal glazing and two three-light 1930s metal casements.

Inside the north range, there is a nineteenth-century Tudor-arched fireplace set over an earlier brick surround. The ceiling displays the lower part of thin rafters exposed with thin horizontal beams connecting each pair. The original partition wall of lath and plaster between the north and south ranges survives. The south range is accessed internally through a ledged plank door and has a similar ceiling. To the east is a cambered brick fireplace with late eighteenth-century or early nineteenth-century bricks and a wooden beam across the full width of the room. The roof was not inspected but is reported to be of twentieth-century softwood.

The Bourne Tap was a cottage belonging to George Ransley, the last leader of the Kentish smuggling gangs and head of the Aldington gang of smugglers. The Aldington Gang operated the coast between Dover and Rye during the 1820s on an industrial scale, mustering up to 300 men. Although Ransley's official occupation was farming, he ran this cottage as an unlicensed beerhouse where he sold smuggled liquor, notorious for drunkenness and unbridled sexual licence. The cottage served as the focal point of his distribution system for contraband goods, selling up to 100 tubs of spirits per week.

On 18th July 1826, the smugglers killed a quartermaster in a boat off Dover beach. A large reward was offered, resulting in informers alerting the authorities. A group of blockade men and two Bow Street Runners marched on the Bourne Tap, capturing George Ransley and seven others. Nineteen smugglers were tried at Maidstone Assizes in January 1827 and found guilty of capital offences. Their counsel successfully had the sentences commuted to transportation to Tasmania. The building is shown on the First Edition Ordnance Survey map of 1872 and was sketched by Charles Igglesden on the title page to Aldington in his early twentieth-century volumes "Saunters through Kent with pen and pencil".