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Home > Kent > Maidstone > Fortune Of War

Fortune Of War

Picture source: Stephen Harris


The Fortune Of War was situated at 126 Upper Stone Street. This pub is now in private residential use.

My mum and dad, Pat and Peter Pearson, were licensees of the Fortune of War for 25 years – the longest serving publicans in Maidstone at the time. I lived there with them and my two younger brothers Phillip and Ashley. They eventually retired from the licensing trade in about 1990 when the brewery sold the pub to a private buyer, who then turned it into bedsits.
I have some good memories of the pub back in the 1970s and 80s, with my dad running the Maidstone & District Pool League. He also had a gents and ladies darts team, a quiz team, a shove ha’penny team and a sea angling club at one point!! He gained a lot of his trade from providing outside bars at weddings, parties etc. Some weekends he had about four or five outside bars on the go, along with the running of the pub, so life was pretty busy for him and mum.
Trade started to become less profitable with Whitbread brewery raising the rent to such an extreme that it was a struggle to make a profit, along with the fact that, come the 1990s, it became too expensive for people to spend as much time as they used to socialising and drinking in the pub. It was very much a working man’s pub, so did not have the added benefit of also providing restaurant facilities!
Anyhow, mum and dad are obviously now retired and living in Coxheath. They are still in touch with many of the loyal customers who also became good friends to them over the years.
Paula Wilkinson (October 2011)
I grew up in Tovil (Courtenay Rd near the shops), and The fortune of War was either the first pub on the way to Town or the last one visited on the way home. I was suppressed when it was closed down and turned in to bedsits.
Derek Lamming (November 2012)

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Name Dates Comments
Kevin Mitchell 1960s My parents were tenant landlords back then we're there for a few years I have good memories of the pub and made some good friends .I was aged about sixteen then I'm now 66. We moved up to Fulham after we left Maidstone to run an off License for a few years before we moved back to Ramsgate