When Keith and I were in Gravesend last week we passed the 3 Daws pub, which is situated next to the Town Pier. Records indicate there has been a public house on this site since the 16th century and is possibly the oldest surviving pub in Kent. It was extensively restored in the 1980s.
Originally it was a series of riverside cottages, but in the 1560s they were converted in a single building as a rest place and accommodation for seamen and people who worked on the river. There were a series of tunnels from the pub which the seamen and others could use to escape the navy press gangs if they raided the pub looking for recruits. These tunnels may have also been used by local smugglers Until 1707 it was called the Cornish Chough (another member of the crow family like the Jackdaw) and from 1707-1788 it was known as the Three Cornish Choughs. This may have been because the pub stood next to a landing place used by pilgrims on their way to Canterbury and the shrine of Thomas Beckett. The coat of arms of Canterbury has three Chough on it
So how did it become the 3 Daws? No one is really sure but it is suggested that it was a case of misidentification of the birds as Jackdaws ‘the Daws’. There is a painting by James Tissot in 1873 where he calls it the Three Crows Inn suggesting that there was some confusion about which species of Crow family was depicted on the sign.
Chough have been reintroduced to Kent in recent years and there is now a small colony of the birds on the Dover cliffs.
