SEVEN STARS INN

Battle Road, Robertsbridge, Sussex, On A21

 

This ancient building was constructed in 1380, only 30 years after the earliest music manuscript of the associated Robertsbridge Abbey was written, and about 170 years after the founding of the Abbey itself.

 

The associations of the public house with the ruins of a religious sect are varied. An entrance to one of the tunnels from the Abbey site can be found in the cellars (another arched entrance, now bricked up, is on the side of the main road about 500 yards south) and a ghost has recently been heard walking through the-upstairs rooms.

 

One of the rooms of the pub is said to be where Charles II was kept prisoner and an unusual 70ft deep shaft from the loft to the cellars adds an intriguing mystery to this hotel. When the Cistercian Abbey of St Mary's was moved to its present site, about half a mile to the east, a chapel was left on the original spot which was later to be used as the foundation of the George Hotel.

 

The local archaeological society state in their journal that it was 'built as a high class building' which is extremely pleasing and obviously expensive'.

 

In 1567 it was the only house to be held on the demesne of the Manor and is the largest and most elaborate of the existing medieval buildings in the attractive village. Over recent years the story of a haunting by 'The red Monk' has been developed, but no substantiating facts have been traced.

 

However, during November evenings the sounds of foot steps have been clearly and definitely heard on several occasions walking through empty upstairs rooms. So definite were they in 1969 that David Barden and another local resident went to investigate, but found no cause for the sounds.

 

Ruth Parkes, wife of the licensee, told me that her two large Labradors had watched something unseen to her walk through her sitting room from the narrow corridor leading to the minute room where Charles II was supposed to have been kept. Adjoining this room is a small flight of vertical stairs at the top of which, in the loft, is the entrance to the mysterious shaft.

 

Another local resident was disturbed when trying to open the door leading to the corridor she felt that 'someone was pushing against it'. Other visitors have noticed a 'cold corner' in the bedroom and a young Canadian girl staying at the inn during 1972 mentioned seeing a figure in the corridor and 'thought it was that of a monk.

 

 

 

 

Story by Andrew Green: 'Our Haunted Kingdom'

 

 

 

 

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