London Countryway 2: Sole Street - Borough Green

Signature Kent architecture: oast houses originally for drying hops at Aldon Farm near Addington.

Just out of Gravesend and not that far from London itself, the London Countryway plunges into deeply rural surroundings: a rolling West Kent landscape of chalk hills and picturesque hamlets, dotted with overgrown orchards and oast houses as a reminder this was once the Garden of England. The first two-thirds of today’s walk are through a lesser-known corner of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), including a delightful wooded ridgetop path and a crossing of the main escarpment through ancient woodland, with a prehistoric long barrow nestling at the bottom of the slope. From Addington on, the trail is outside the AONB but there are pleasant locations such as lush Platt Woods to compensate for two golf courses.

There are good rail connections at start and finish, but not much opportunity to split the section further: bus stops at a couple of points have an infrequent service, and the best bus options, at least on weekdays, are at Platt, which is quite close to the end. One other option is to divert at the foot of the escarpment along the North Downs Way National Trail to Vigo Village where there’s an hourly bus to Gravesend or Borough Green (except on Sundays) but I haven’t explained this in detail as I plan on covering it in a future post on the national trail. The Countryway intertwines with a well-established signed trail, the Wealdway, as far as Platt, giving various options for circular walks. This post is an expanded and updated version of my earlier post on this section, originally numbered 18, in March 2008.

Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty

From one ridge to the next: view east from Brimstone Hill, Luddesdown.

Geology is a curious thing, a set of processes outside human or animal influence, with timescales so slow they approach immutability. Its reference frame is not society or history or culture but the universe, its matter the stuff of solar systems: though an atmosphere makes things more interesting, lifeless planets do geology too. The power to influence geology through will, like the Prophet moving his mountains, still seems remote and god-like even in science fiction, where terraforming is often presented as the ultimate technological milestone of the most advanced civilisations.

And while that may be changing, if global warming theory is to be believed, it’s still a bit cold and scary to feel insignificant out here where the universe just gets on with things as it always has. The palaeozoic rocks of the ‘London platform’, at the deepest levels beneath London, are more than 400 million years old, a length of time so vast it seems meaningless.

The next layer up, and the one that will interest us most today, is admittedly a product of life, though there was certainly no conscious agency involved. During the Cretaceous period, 142-65 million years ago and before the formation of the Alps, a tropical sea washed over these rocks, and the calcium carbonate shed by microorganisms inhabiting that sea collected as a bed of what has now become chalk, a particularly pure form of limestone. This was later smothered by clays and gravels, but subsequent millennia of erosion have exposed the underlying chalk as ridges along the edges of the shelf to create the structure known as the London Basin.

London itself sits within a triangle of chalk, with the edges marked by the North Downs in the south and the Chilterns in the northwest, while much of the eastern edge is submerged by the Thames estuary. The Thames runs roughly east-west through the basin, but its own drainage basin stretches much further west, and long predates the river. This once ran on a more northerly course, until forced into its present alignment by glaciation, as we’ll discover when we reach the Vale of St Albans on section 17.

The chalk hills, with their shallow dip slopes reaching inward towards the city and their steep, wall-like scarp slopes facing sternly outwards, form one of the more concrete boundaries of London. They are part of a larger system of chalk deposits that covers much of southern and eastern England and stretches to Champagne in France, with skeins of chalk hills sweeping from Dorset to the Yorkshire Wolds. The same chalky, well-drained soils that produce some of the world’s best hops also sustain some of its most prized vines.

Chalk ridges were firmly established features of the scenery when humanity first walked across the land bridge from what's now mainland Europe, and they played an important role as early channels of communication, scored along their length by ancient trackways that probably began as animal tracks and have sometimes ended up as part of the modern road network. The springy tracks and airy open views most people associate with downland are a result of human management, particularly for grazing -- left to their own devices, like most of England they quickly revert to woodland, which is how the first downs walkers must have found them. Some sections, including those we’ll discover today, are wooded still.

Most of England’s undeveloped chalk downs now enjoy special protection. Here they form part of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB), which you’ll enter through the gate opposite Sole Street station. The upper-case initials indicate this isn’t just any old area of outstanding natural beauty but one which has been officially certified as such through a statutory process.

It seems a curious thing that an aesthetic, subjective judgement can be institutionalised, with officials and lobby groups debating the presence and extent of beauty, and you might expect such judgements to err in favour of traditional conceptions rather than, say, the beauty some of us might see in a derelict industrial site or a tranche of particularly interesting early 20th century social housing. Indeed, in the past there was considerable subjectivity involved in defining AONB boundaries, though as I explain when London Loop 4 dips into another designation – an Area of Great Landscape Value – in recent years the criteria have been made more specific.

AONBs also struggle with the perception that they’re a kind of second division of National Parks. Both designations result from the same post-war legislation, both are vehicles for managing areas of land in mixed and private ownership (unlike national parks and their equivalents in many other countries, where most of the land is in public ownership), and AONBs will tell you their landscapes are just as valuable as those of the national parks. But they were nonetheless set up in recognition that the resources required for a national park, which has its own statutory authority, would not stretch to covering all deserving landscape areas.

AONBs are managed instead by partnerships of local authorities and offer less protection than national parks. The ones around London are all based on chalk ridges and the Countryway crosses all three: the Kent Downs, Surrey Hills and the Chilterns AONB. Further south, the South Downs, once an AONB, has since become the closest national park to the capital.

Interestingly, the primary purposes of an AONB don’t include recreation but are ‘to conserve and enhance natural beauty’ – though demands for recreation should be met where they’re consistent with this. For AONBs like these, so close to the UK’s biggest city, there’s certainly a demand, as well as massive pressure for developments which would detract from the areas’ unique attractions. For visitors surveyed in 2013, the scenery and views and the footpath network figured highly in the features of the Kent Downs they most valued. When asked to isolate components of natural beauty, respondents large plumped for chalk downland, woodland and ancient lanes and paths.

Designated in 1968, the Kent Downs AONB covers 880 km² in an uneven and ragged band of varying depth, stretching from the boundary with Surrey eastwards to the coast. Examined more closely, the shape resembles more a circumflex accent than a straight line, following the orientation of the main ridge. In the west, there’s a thick donut around Sevenoaks, then the line deflects northeast to meet the Medway before heading southeast on the other side of the river, at first a thin strip below the sprawl of the Medway Towns then thickening out to embrace the famous White Cliffs between Hythe and Deal. The boundary includes not only the chalk ridge and associated valleys but related ridges and escarpments, including the Greensand Ridge running roughly parallel to the south, which provides the AONB with its highest point of 250 m at Toys Hill.

All the AONB is in the traditional county of Kent but smaller parts are now outside the modern administrative county, in Medway unitary authority and the London Borough of Bromley. District councils, the Environment Agency and land management organisations like the NFU and the CLA participate in the partnership. The AONB works closely with its neighbour, the Surrey Hills AONB, covering the rest of the North Downs west of the boundary, and has further links to the east, with the Parc Naturel Régional des Caps et Marais d'Opale, safeguarding the coastal chalk cliffs on the other side of the English Channel.

The AONB has been subdivided into landscape character areas, and the first one the trail encounters is known as the West Kent Downs: Luddesdown. Kent County Council assessors have noted the importance of woodland to the landscape, particularly atop the ridges, and there are good examples on today’s walk. These woods, once part of the much larger area of Rochester Forest, help frame large fields which undulate across dry valleys, and are particularly important to the structure of the landscape because many of the hedgerows which once portioned out the fields have been lost.

Henley Street and Luddesdown

Classic country pub: the Cock at Henley Street near Luddesdown.

The London Countryway peels away from the Wealdway (which I talked about in more detail in the previous section) immediately on leaving the station, the first of several such partings today as the two routes intertwine round each other like hesitant suitors for much of the way. Your route is a nice straight path across a field roughly parallel to the railway, which soon reaches a junction with the previous section, approaching from a footbridge (that’s if you’ve chosen to follow my revised section 1: you’re already on the original route via Wrotham Road).

In the ancient divisions of Kent dating back to Saxon times, this was all part of the Lathe of Aylesford. Sole Street was a hamlet of Cobham in the hundred of Shamel and is still part of the modern civil parish: you’re roughly following its southern boundary through the field. Turning south on Gold Street, you enter both the ancient and the modern parish of Luddesdown, which is long, thin and very rural, consisting mainly of woodlands, fields and scattered villages. Historically this was a different hundred, the delightfully named Toltingtrough.

The name Luddesdown, pronounced ‘Ludsden’, is Anglo-Saxon in origin, meaning ‘Hlud’s hill.’ The parish is mentioned in the Domesday Survey of 1086 when it was part of the vast swathes of land around London gifted by William of Normandy to his half-brother Odo, Bishop of Bayeux (see under Crofton on London Loop 3). It was through Odo that Luddesdown was linked to the estates of Rochester cathedral and Swanscombe manor, links which persisted even after the bishop fell out of favour and had most of his land confiscated in 1083.

There were numerous lords of the manor over the succeeding centuries, including ‘marcher lord’ Reginald Grey, Baron of Ruthin, who had to sell it to pay off his ransom when held hostage by Welsh rebel Owain Glyndŵr in 1402. His successor William Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, died from injuries sustained from being hit by a cannonball during the Siege of Orléans, where Jeanne d’Arc was among his opponents.

The manorial centre was to the south in Luddesdown village, where the old manor house, Luddesdown Court, still stands: partly dating from around 1100, this is one of the claimants to the title of the oldest inhabited house in England, but it’s off our route, though on the Wealdway. The latter route will also take you close to another Luddesdown curiosity, the lost village of Dode, decimated by the Black Death in the 14^th century and abandoned, though its church still stands and is now used as a wedding venue. But the Countryway chooses a route via one of Luddesdown’s hamlets, Henley Street, passing a very tempting pub, the Cock Inn, a solid building dating from 1713. The pub has an excellent reputation for its beer but sadly it’s a bit early in the route for a refreshment stop – you could always schedule a visit at the end of the previous section.

The trail turns off the road just after the pub, but a little further along is the Grade II-listed Reynolds Farmhouse, an 18^th century red brick building with a vaguely Dutch-looking half-hipped roof and an imposing front door. Back on the trail, the fields start to roll as you approach the corner of the first major patch of woodland, known as Henley Wood. The Countryway crosses the Wealdway again here and following the latter left will take you to Luddesdown and Dode, but our trail keeps on along the woodland edge. The field to the left was also once wooded and was known as Woodfield Shaw. Emerging into a field, you’ll see the buildings of Bramblehall Farm over on the left before reaching Oakenden Road and the boundary of the parish of Meopham.

The Brimstone ridge

Spring flowers on a chalky bank along the Brimstone ridge.

Once again, the Countryway passes through a historic parish while avoiding its main village, which is along Oakenden Road to the right. Meopham (pronounced ‘Meppem’) has a lengthy documented history. It was a Roman-British farmstead back in the 1^st century BCE, and the first written reference to it dates from 798, with numerous records of land transfers from the 10^th century. It’s mentioned in the Domesday survey, by which time it had been attached to Christ Church Priory, Canterbury, to help provide a living for the monks. One archbishop, Simon de Meopham, was born in the parish in 1272.

It retained its connection with Canterbury even after the dissolution, remaining church property until the lands were gradually sold off in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries. The parish council finally bought out the title of lord of the manor in 1949. Perhaps the best-known Meopham native is John Tradescant the younger (1608-62), botanist and royal gardener, responsible for introducing numerous exotic species to English gardens.

The path follows the Meopham boundary through the first field then turns decisively into the parish in the second field, climbing the slope of Mill Bank and crossing a track known as Brimstone Lane, part of an old road between the main village and the subsidiary manor of Dene. The path beyond is one my favourites on the whole trail, a lengthy and relatively direct stride through a strip of woodland atop Brimstone Hill, a subsidiary north-south ridge that runs to the west of the main North Downs spine. It can be muddy and uneven and in places it’s a little precipitous, clinging to a contour a few metres down from the crest.

In places it passes the back gardens of houses along the lane to the west but it’s mostly uninterrupted woodland, with glimpses of open country through the trees particularly when they’re not in leaf, and wild primroses in the dense undergrowth in early spring. Brimstone Wood, the first big wood on the right, is ancient woodland, then there’s Long Gorse Shaw and John’s Croft Shaw. To the south the hill is known as Chambers Hill, then the path emerges on Chandlers Road in the hamlet of Priestwood (perhaps a reference to the former connection between the manor and the church).

The footpath continues on the other side of the lane through a mix of woodland and more open country. Still tracking the contour, it rounds another patch of woodland, Deanmead Wood, then bends left to Dene Garth, where it joins Dean Lane, another road from Dean Manor, to the green at Harvel.

Harvel

No place for evil spirits: converted oast house in Harvel.

The unusual village name is of uncertain origin: it may derive from a ‘holy field’ or a ‘hart [male deer] field’ mentioned on Anglo-Saxon charters. For centuries Harvel was a tiny southern hamlet of Meopham, a few farm buildings, cottages and a pub around a green and a pond, and though it grew a little in the mid-19th and early 20th centuries, it’s still small and isolated, with a population of only 250.

Judging by the Meopham chronology on the history pages of the parish council’s website, life in Harvel has been quiet for centuries, with nothing listed for the hamlet before the 1830s and then mainly petty crimes and incidents like traction engines accidentally reversing into the pond. Its greatest claim to fame seems to be that in 1950 it was the site of a BBC microwave relay station for the first live television pictures broadcast to the UK from mainland Europe, covering a street festival in Calais.

The Countryway emerges by a curious cottage with a cylindrical wing. While some houses were deliberately designed in circular shapes for superstitious reasons, to prevent evil spirits from hiding in corners, this one was converted from an oast house, a characteristic Kentish structure designed for drying hops: there are some more complete examples further along the trail. Your route from here is across the green, now a pleasant public space equipped with a millennial village sign depicting agricultural silhouettes of tractors, sheep, shepherds and ducks. But there are a few features of interest close by in the opposite direction, including the surviving pub.

Just past the round building, set back from the road and overlooking the pond, is Old Pond House, a Grade II-listed 15^th century timber-framed and thatched farmhouse on a mediaeval hall house design. Right along Harvel Street is Crickfield Farmhouse, another hall house of similar age, no longer thatched but with classic exposed timber and plaster facings. Further along on the same side is the wooden village hall, built in 1912 as a nonconformist chapel.

Forge Cottage, opposite, is a Grade II-listed 16^th century building: this was once an alehouse as well as a smithy. Its refreshment function was superseded by the Amazon and Tiger, which was originally the building opposite the current pub, now a private home. Today’s pub was purpose-built in 1914 at a time when the population was expanding. It was designed to look like a range of cottages rather than a public house in deference to the wishes of the chapel congregation. A very occasional bus stops outside here.

Back on the trail, there’s a reminder that the agricultural functions of the area aren’t quite what they used to be. White Horse Farm is now a large equestrian centre, and the Countryway threads past horse paddocks over some very chunky wooden stiles. Crossing into the last small field before Leywood Road, the trail returns to Luddesdown parish. The original Countryway route cut a corner across the field on the other side of the road, but this path now seems to have been lost to ploughing and cropping, and it’s not too much of an imposition to follow the lane to the next bend, where the Wealdway rejoins from the north. A broad field-edge path now heads south, passing another patch of ancient woodland, Round Wood, on the right, to reach White Horse Road by Poundgate Farm.

Halling to Trottiscliffe Escarpment

Ancient boundaries, coppices and plenty of mud in Whitehorse Wood.

On the other side of White Horse Road, the trail enters Whitehorse Wood, part of a large and rich patch of woodland, much of it ancient, covering the shallow dip slope of the main North Downs ridge as it passes between Wrotham and Cuxton. The white horse Invicta is of course the emblem of Kent, but the wood and the road take their names from a long-vanished White Horse pub which once stood just to the right of the path into the wood: the site now contains modern houses.

The woodland here is still managed commercially by the ancient practice of coppicing: cutting the trees right back to stumpy coppice ‘stools’ just above the ground on a decades-long cycle to encourage the growth of a profusion of thin trunks for use as poles. Coppiced trees live to great ages and often grow into spooky shapes, like massive gnarled hands, the sort that come to life in twisted fairy-tales. The various patches of woodland each side of the path have different names, and soon you’re passing Lodge Wood right, Evers Broom left and Goldings Wood right.

The 1981 trail guide records that parts of this wood are being cleared, making it difficult to find the way; the stick-cluster trees seen today have grown back in the decades since. Wayfinding is easier now thanks to a profusion of Wealdway waymarks and a well-defined path, but more of a problem is the mud, a thick and sticky wet clay that sucks on your soles. Deep in the wood, a crossroads of tracks has become a virtual pond, though it’s possible to avoid it by picking through the trees.

Immediately south of the muddy crossroads, a low woodbank crosses the path, marking an ancient boundary between Lullingstone in Toltingtrough hundred and Addington in Larkfield hundred. The path originally followed a north-south kink in the east-west boundary line before plunging into Addington, but the modern civil parishes have been rearranged so you immediately enter Trottiscliffe. The trail also enters its second district council area here, leaving Gravesham Borough for Tonbridge and Malling Borough, created in 1974 by merging Tonbridge Urban District, Malling Rural District and parts of Tonbridge Rural District. A few paces further, a sudden flash of open country through the trees reveals you’re on the crest of the Downs, in fact the highest point of the trail so far at 200 m. 

The path instantly starts to descend steeply, cutting a diagonal line across the sharp slope. The woodland here, Ley Shaw, is part of a 600 ha area known by the cumbersome label of the Halling to Trottiscliffe Escarpment Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI), designated in 1951. You’ll notice the character of the woodland has changed: rather than the oaks and hornbeams that grow on the clay above, the trees here are birches and yews which prefer the more meagre environment of the steep and exposed chalk hillside. Between them you might spot rare orchids and the delightfully named Stinking Iris.

Trottiscliffe, which may originally have meant ‘the tract of cliff’, is another name spelt in a way that seems designed to expose strangers to ridicule: it’s pronounced ‘Trozlee’ and sometimes more logically spelt ‘Trosley’, including in the name of the country park a little further along the ridge to the west. It first appears in records in 788, and at the time of the Domesday survey was part of the property of the Bishop of Rochester. The bishop had a palace here, and the parish church is interesting, though off our route to the southwest.

Trottiscliffe itself has since been eclipsed by the much bigger village of Vigo, just to the west of the trail and accessible via the North Downs Way. This originated to serve a late 19^th century estate, Trosley Towers, which now forms the basis of the country park, then during World War II it became home to the biggest army officer training camp in the UK. After the war, the camp was used to rehouse people who’d lost their homes in the Blitz and was turned into a permanent settlement in the 1950s. The unusual name is from a once-isolated pub, which in turn was named after Vigo Bay off the coast of southern Spain, site of a naval battle in 1702 during the War of Spanish Succession. Beware of another pronunciation trap: the locals rhyme the first syllable with ‘eye’.

Looking south from the Pilgrims Way near Little Commodity at the foot of the Halling to Trottiscliffe Escarpment.

The path emerges on a trackway following the line of the ridge, traditionally known as the Pilgrim’s Way, which here, as in several other places, also provides the official street name. Despite its Chaucerian flavour, the name is likely a Victorian invention, though the track itself is much older, one of the chalk ridgeways in use from prehistoric times.

This section also carries a more modern invention, the North Downs Way National Trail (also here part of European long-distance path E2) -- we’ll have more to say about both routes when we follow lengthy sections of them later, but at this point we share only a few metres of their alignment before both Wealdway and Countryway turn decisively south. Sitting just above the Pilgrim’s Way opposite this junction is a Grade II-listed house by the unusual name of Little Commodity, something of a patchwork of weatherboarding and plaster over a timber frame. The core of this is 16^th century though the facing was rebuilt in the 18^th century.

Coldrum Long Barrow

Favourite rendezvous of modern mystics: Coldrum Long Barrow near Trottiscliffe.

The path descends more gently along the edge of a field, shortly passing Coldrum Long Barrow, a prehistoric burial chamber: you can see more of it on a very short diversion off the path. It was constructed in the early Neolithic period around 4000 BCE, at a time when humans in Europe were adopting a more settled lifestyle based on agriculture, rather than surviving as nomadic hunter-gatherers.

The earliest stone monuments in Britain are from this period, including this one. It’s the best-preserved of a cluster of similar structures known as the Medway Megaliths, communal tombs oriented on an east-west axis, consisting of a stone chamber buried under an earth mound and surrounded by sarsen stones. Coldrum, which sits on an artificial lynchet ridge of a type associated with prehistoric agriculture, originally consisted of around 50 stones and was wedge-shaped, about 20 m long and varying from 12 to 15 m in width.

The millennia have taken their toll in erosion, landslips and deliberate pillaging, as most of the stones aren’t in their original positions and the burial chamber is exposed. Archaeological excavations in 1910 and between 1922-26 retrieved human remains as well as pottery and tools, which were all removed and taken to Maidstone museum. Various examinations since have concluded they represent at least 17 individuals, both adults and children, interred around 3900 BCE.  Indications that the corpses had been systematically dismembered led 1920s archaeologists to speculate they were sacrificial victims, but there’s no strong evidence for this. It’s more likely they were excamated, with their flesh and organs ritualistically removed. The barrow was very likely not just a tomb but a site for ongoing ancestor worship, with bodies added, removed and rearranged over time.

The long barrow was given to the National Trust in 1926 as a memorial to Kent historian Benjamin Harrison, still commemorated with a plaque which erroneously describes it as a stone circle. It remains in the Trust’s management and is free to visit, now a favourite rendezvous for modern-day mystics and pagans who have turned some of the surrounding trees into ‘wish trees’ bedecked with votive ribbons. Morris Men dance here at dawn on Mayday, and in the late 1990s the site hosted a ritual aimed at preventing the building of the High Speed 1 rail line. As Countryway walkers who crossed this line south of Gravesend will realise, the attempt was unsuccessful. But even if, like me, you’ve little patience with such stuff, you may still find the stones have a striking atmosphere even on bright and sunny day, especially in their dramatic setting below the Downs.

The path past the barrow once followed the parish boundaries of Addington to the east (left) and Trottiscliffe to the west but is now entirely in the latter. It continues through another patch of ancient woodland, Ryarsh Wood, named after another village and parish to the east thought to have a Saxon history. The trail finally enters today’s Addington parish at a road junction where the Wealdway peels off again to the west, while you continue straight ahead: the trees to the right conceal one of several still-operational chalk quarries in the area. Then you leave the AONB by crossing the bridge over the M20, the main route from London to the Channel Tunnel and mainland Europe and part of European route E15 from Thurso to Algericas, unsigned in Britain. This section was built in the early 1970s, some time before the tunnel.

Addington

Addington Green and the Angel pub. All together now: "Rambler!"

The first time I visited Addington was also the first time I walked the London Countryway. Pausing on the pretty village green to check my map, I was surprised to hear a passing driver bellowing at me over a thudding baseline from his 4x4 -- “Rambler!” -- in that singsong football chant tone that people once used to shout “Skinhead!” at anyone with slightly short hair. I don’t imagine it was intended as a compliment, but as I worked for the Ramblers at the time, the incident provided much amusement when recounted to colleagues and became something of a running joke.

A few minutes later, on the same green, I witnessed a toddler taking a few stumbling steps to the evident pride and delight of his father and recalled how I once read that walking is a controlled form of falling. So natural is walking to us as a species that, alongside first words, first steps upright on your own two feet are treated as a significant milestone on the journey towards being fully human. How odd, then, that something everyone does should yield its own special class of people identifiable enough to get shouted at from passing cars.

Addington claims over 5,000 years of continuous habitation based on the presence of further Neolithic sites: there are two other long barrows here, both from the same period and of the same design as Coldrum, but less well-preserved. The name, though, derived from a personal name and meaning ‘Eadda’s property’, dates from Anglo-Saxon times and there’s no documentation of what happened in between. At the time of Domesday, Addington was yet another page in Bishop Odo’s bulging property portfolio, but the most enduring lords of the manor were the Watton family, who held it from the early 15^th century until the 1750s.

Pleasant pub the Angel Inn, overlooking the green, was originally a timber-framed farmhouse dating from the 16^th century, though the outer facings were rebuilt in the 18^th century. The red brick stable block across the yard behind the pub is early 19^th century and is also Grade II-listed. The trail follows Park Road away from the green then down the church drive, though by staying on the lane a little further you’ll cross the site of Addington Long Barrow, with a few sarsen stones visible in the adjacent private field. The village’s second prehistoric site, Chestnuts Long Barrow, is just to the north of this, and can only be viewed by prior arrangement with the landowner.

Various buildings and other facilities attached to the manor house once occupied the land to either side of the church drive. The house itself, known as Addington Place, was immediately behind the church, but was demolished in 1949 following a serious fire. In 1932, a spiritualist organisation called the Seeker’s Trust bought the manorial complex and still occupies it today, using the old stable block to the right as well as various newer buildings. Aerial photographs reveal a star-like symbol on one of the lawns. The Trust describes itself as a non-denominational Christian “Centre for Prayer and Spiritual Healing” and according to the website, its work is “guided by a ‘Dr Lascelles’, a medical practitioner already in the spirit world.” Between the Trust and the long barrows, the locality certainly has its attractions for the less scientifically-minded.

The nave of the rather blocky and squat Grade I-listed St Margaret’s Church likely dates from the 11^th century, though windows and doors were replaced at various times from the 13^th century onwards, the tower was added towards the end of the 15^th century and there was some Victorian rebuilding too. The church includes a 15^th century private chapel added by the Watton family, including a lavish 17^th century monument. There are two other listed structures in the churchyard: an early 18^th century chest tomb with a now-illegible inscription, and a 6 m stone obelisk commemorating William Locker, a late 18^th century Governor of Greenwich Hospital.

Half-buried but definitely non-prehistoric garages at Addington.

The path from the church passes some curious half-buried buildings: not more prehistoric tombs but modern garages. You then walk alongside what’s thought to be one of the oldest cricket grounds in the world: it’s not known quite when Addington Cricket Club was founded but in the mid-18^th century it was noted as one of the best teams in England despite drawing its players from such a tiny village.

On the other side of the ground is the first, but by no means the last, golf course we’ll encounter on the trail, West Malling Golf Club, opened in 1974 on former parkland attached to Addington Place. The footpath runs rather dangerously straight across a driving range in direct line of fire of golf balls. Yet another pronunciation trap here: for Malling say ‘mawling’. Beyond the course you cross the A20 London Road, originally built as part of the turnpike between Foots Cray and Maidstone by the Wrotham and Maidstone Turnpike Trust in 1773. It’s no longer a trunk road here, as through traffic is directed to the M20, but remains a busy local road.

A traditional orchard, long abandoned and overgrown but still with trees that produce copious apples in season, lies beside the road here, and the Countryway originally followed a public footpath through it. But last time I tried to walk this, it was near-impassable, thick with nettles and brambles in the orchard and obstructed by fences in the meadow beyond. So it’s better to continue a little further on the pavement beside the A20 then duck down quiet Aldon Lane to the railway bridge where the original route rejoins. The orchard was once in Ryarsh parish, with the boundary partly following the lane: today the parish boundary between Addington and Offham simply follows the railway, the Maidstone East line which we’ll meet again at the end of this section.

Offham and Wrotham Heath

Matrix-style orchards at Wrotham Heath.

The village of Offham – ‘Offa’s homestead’ – is some way to the east of the Countryway, which passes through the wider parish. There are property records here from the 9^th century and a Domesday record that notes this was yet another of Odo’s properties. Divided into several sub-let manors, it was owned by Christ Church Canterbury until reclaimed by Henry VIII who divided it between various cronies. One of the smaller manors, Pepingstraw, was likely the birthplace of Jack Straw, a leader of the 14^th century Peasants’ Revolt. On the village green is a mediaeval quintain, a device used for jousting practice, the last surviving example of its kind.

There’s a pleasant cluster of listed buildings at Aldon Farm, just over the railway, the most obvious feature of which is a trio of oast house cowls sprouting above a fence. A granary is also part of this mid-19^th century construction which has since been converted into private houses. The farmhouse is much older, with parts dating from the late 16^th century. The big house opposite is an 18^th century former rectory.

Leaving the lane on a footpath you would once have been entering a ‘detached part’ of Addington. Across Teston Road, which likely follows the course of a Roman road from Wrotham towards the Weald, large traditional orchards stood as recently as the last edition of the Countryway guide in 1981. But they’ve since gone decidedly hi-tech, with grey plastic cloches partly occupied by strange arch wire frameworks to which twiggy saplings are wired, threaded by plastic tubes like something from The Matrix. Bending around these you’re back in the historic territory of Offham.

Today’s second golf course is Wrotham Heath Golf Club, created in 1906 on an area of former heathland to the southeast of Wrotham described by historian Edward Hasted in 1798 as consisting of “a barren sandy soil, both red and black, but on which great quantities of peat is dug”. You pass the clubhouse, in a former now cowl-less oast, then, turning onto the main part of the course and reaching the end of a line of trees where the path becomes a track, you cross another ancient boundary, entering what was once the parish and hundred of Wrotham (pronounced ‘Rootem’). This was a very large parish and as some of the villages have grown and developed, it’s been subdivided, so you’re now in the modern civil parish of Platt.

Platt

Rhododendrons in Platt Woods.

Beyond the golf course, the trail crosses Platt Wood, an atmospheric, park-like place where broadleaf trees mix with rhododendrons and pine. This mixed complexion is the result of deliberate planting in ancient Wealden woodland which formed part of the Great Comp Estate a little to the south, creating a space that was used partly for private leisure, partly for commercial forestry. 

Some of the trees were felled for timber during World War I, then the wood was threatened with development after World War II but saved as a public amenity following a local campaign. The 17.5 ha site is now owned by Tonbridge and Malling borough council and managed by a parish council-led committee with help from the Forestry Commission. Among the oaks, chestnuts, Scots pines and Douglas firs are a few tall giant sequoias or Wellingtonia (Sequoiadendron giganteum) planted in Victorian times.

The Wealdway rejoins along the lane before the wood but peels off again for the last time just inside the trees, heading definitively south, while the Countryway slowly starts to bend west. Just over halfway through the wood to the right is an area known as Potters Hole, a former clay working, then the path descends steeply to reach the village and its rather imposing church at the bottom of St Mary’s Slope.

St Mary's Church, Platt.

The church was a response to the village’s 19^th century development. Originally this was a tiny hamlet attached to Wrotham, with no church of its own, but as the population increased with the establishment of a flour mill and other industries along the Maidstone Road to the north, demand for more local facilities increased. Local landowner William Lambard donated the site in 1841, and the church, designed by Whichcord and Walker architects of Maidstone, was consecrated in 1843, originally as a chapel of Wrotham. The date is commemorated in a weathervane atop the tower, in fact an addition from 1900. Just inside the churchyard on the other side of the wall from the car park is a mounting block, a reminder of the days when some parishioners arrived on horseback.

Platt, subsequently sometimes known as St Marys Platt after the dedication of the church, became a civil parish in its own right in the late 1860s. A little north of the church and just off the trail is Captains Walk, a terrace of Tudor-style almshouses dating from 1850 and managed by the Betenson Trust, a charity established in 1788 with a bequest from a well-off local resident.

But your way is south along Long Mill Lane, past more chocolate-box cottages. Rose Cottage on the left and the former farmhouse known as Dales with its exposed timber frame on the right both date partly from the 16^th century. The Countryway uses a bridleway beside the latter, but a little further along the lane, past a thatched barn, is a particularly well-preserved oast house, Platt Oast, with three 19^th century cowls attached to 17^th century building with more exposed timber framing.

Borough Green

Farm signs on Crouch Lane near Borough Green.

The bridleway leads straightforwardly beside fields to Crouch Lane where another bridleway parallel to the road hides behind a line of trees opposite. This section of the trail ends here, with the next section heading south, but to end the walk there’s an easy link north on the bridleway, across the end of the drive to Black Horse Farm and along the lane towards the station at Borough Green. Long Wood on the left is partly ancient woodland, and around the bend just past the drive to Beech House you cross from Platt into Borough Green civil parish.

Borough Green is a large village, really a small town, which Keith Chesterton terms ‘workmanlike’. Wrotham, further to the north just under the Downs, was historically the more important settlement, centre of an ancient parish and hundred, attached back in the 10^th century to Canterbury cathedral and remaining among its holdings until Tudor times, with an archbishop’s palace next to its church. But the changing pattern of transport by road and then railway saw Borough Green grow to eclipse its northern neighbour, becoming a separate parish.

There was indeed a small green here, and ‘borough’ usually indicates a Saxon fortification or, later, a unit of local government, but in this case, it might be derived from ‘barrow’, as there’s a tumulus in the village which has yielded Celtic and Roman remains. Before the 19^th century it was a tiny and insignificant hamlet amid orchards, hop gardens, fields and sand, clay and ragstone quarries, at the point where a road from Gravesend to Hastings crossed an east-west route from Guildford to Maidstone paralleling the Downs. The latter is now the A25, a road perhaps best known for sharing its number with London’s orbital motorway, which superseded part of it. By the 17^th century a cluster of coaching inns had appeared, but it wasn’t until the 1820s, after both roads had been turnpiked, that a distinct high street developed.

The settlement became more substantial after the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR) opened a station just north of the village centre in 1874. By the end of the century several large farms nearby had been redeveloped and the area was populous enough to justify becoming part of Wrotham Urban District Council in 1894. The most dramatic expansion, however, followed World War II when reconstruction prompted the appearance of both large social housing estates and private developments, increasing the population from 400 in 1946 to 1,300 in 1982. This pattern of post-railway age developments is also typical of many outer London suburbs and Borough Green looks just like one, with a distinctly urban feel. That may be about to intensify as current strategic plans envisage a 3,000-home Borough Green Garden Village on tracts of former Metropolitan Green Belt.

Hunt’s Farmhouse, on the A25 opposite the Crouch Lane junction, is a mid-18^th century Grade II-listed building, while the Black Horse pub dates from early coaching days. It opened in 1592 as the Black Bull, though has been rebuilt several times since: the current pub dates largely from the 1920s though the centre block preserves part of an earlier iteration. The trail swings off the main road along Station Road, passing a couple of rustic-looking Grade II-listed cottages: late 17^th century Forge Cottage, a timber-framed ragstone building, and no 89 next-door, the remains of a 16^th century hall house. At the next junction the high street is a few steps away to the left, while the station is to the right.

Borough Green's civilised station booking hall.

It’s an indication of how the relative perception of Borough Green has shifted that when it opened the station was known only as Wrotham, even though it was a considerable distance from that village. It was shortly renamed Wrotham & Boro Green, but the names didn’t swap to the current Borough Green & Wrotham until 1962.

It’s on the Maidstone East line, originally a branch line from the LC&DR’s Sevenoaks line at Otford to Maidstone, but later extended to rejoin the company’s main line at Ashford. The cottagey red brick station building is original, and today looks rather incongruous amid car parks and a modern late-opening supermarket. There’s a welcoming touch, though, in the homely ticket office with its pot plants and second-hand books, and after a day’s walking through some of the more remote parts of west Kent, the conveniences of urban life may seem surprisingly welcome.

• Detailed route description (PDF)
• Google map

London Countryway alternative: Gravesend - Cobham - Sole Street

Gravesend Town Pier and the ferry pontoon

SECOND THOUGHTS ARE ALWAYS WORTH PURSUING. In this case, they’ve yielded what I believe is a much better way of starting your journey around the London Countryway if, like me, you choose to set off from the river Thames at Gravesend. It takes advantage of opportunities which weren’t available when the route was first devised, including a linear park reclaimed from an abandoned stretch of trunk road, and the community woodland gradually taking shape on former farmland at Jeskyns, one of the most fascinating green spaces on the route. It also encompasses a classic English village with one of Charles Dickens’ favourite pubs.

For convenience I’ve repeated material about Gravesend and Sole Street from the commentary on the original route, and discussed the background to the new route and how it compares to the previous one at the end. For a general introduction to Kent, see the London Loop alternative route from Dartford Crossways to Crayford. If you'd rather keep the faith with Keith Chesterton's original, I've also described the route via Wrotham Road.

Gravesend

Princess Pocahantas, Gravesend Church

Keith Chesterton, the London Countryway’s originator, is less than kind to Gravesend: having approached it by ferry from across the river he finds that it’s less attractive than it looks from afar, compared to Tilbury, its opposite number on the north bank, which is the opposite. The town isn’t helped by its rather morbid-sounding name, though the derivation is from “grove” not “grave”, and it has its points of interest as you’d expect from a place with a maritime history. Some pleasant old streets and bits of proud Victoriana such as a fine clock tower mix with shopping malls and the endlessly fascinating river.

The Thames, broad and estuarine here and with the smack of the sea, is the town’s inescapable link to London and the defining feature of its development. It’s the last major town on the straight run of the river from the capital before it becomes entangled in the complications of the Medway and the Swale, and prior to the opening of Tilbury Docks it was the first and last port of entry along the river. For centuries it was the terminal of passenger boats from the capital and its boatmen enjoyed important rights to operate this traffic. The Victorian era brought day trippers and the town became something of a resort. The City of London traditionally controlled shipping as far as Gravesend and the Port of London Authority is still headquartered here, its jurisdiction now extending as far as Margate. These days the town is even more deeply in London’s shadow, though the comings and goings are by train and car.

The Tilbury ferry, which accepts pedestrians and two-wheelers only, also enjoys a long history, considered in more detail when we finally use it to complete our circuit. It is the lowest possible crossing point of the Thames for walkers and therefore a natural destination for walking routes. The Countryway passes through and the Wealdway starts here — more of the latter later. The Saxon Shore Way also starts here, running eastwards along the shoreline as it was in Roman times, and all the way round to Hasting. This connects with the E9 European Coastal Path and if you walked downstream from the ferry terminal you could continue on signed paths for over 1000km all the way round to Minehead, Somerset. The long-held aspiration to extend the Thames Path from the edge of London to here has been superseded by the development of the England Coast Path, which should run via Gravesend and on to the Woolwich foot tunnel some time in the next few years. It’s already possible to walk upstream from here staying reasonably close to the river on existing rights of way.

Since autumn 2012 the ferry has once again arrived at the restored Gravesend Town Pier, or rather at a 45 m pontoon attached to this handsomely restored structure, the oldest surviving cast iron pier in the world. Built in 1834 on the site of the mediaeval Town Quay, in its early days, before the opening of the railway, it numbered its annual passengers in the hundreds of thousands. It eventually passed into railway ownership and then into private hands, but had fallen derelict before being rescued and restored by Gravesham Council in 2002. A restaurant and bar installed in the hope of generating an income from the structure has had mixed fortunes, but the glass corridor that ushers passengers ashore from the ferry and other visiting vessels like the paddle steamer Waverley provides a fine way to arrive at the town’s ‘heritage quarter’.

That ‘heritage’ epithet is justified. Gravesend’s market charter, one of the oldest in Britain, was granted in 1268, the same year the town elected its first mayor. A few paces downriver from the pier, through the neat but slightly bland gardens and promenade that now occupy the historic quayside, is the oldest surviving building, the Grade II*-listed Milton Chantry, dating from 1322 and once the chapel of a leper colony. It’s been a private home, a pub known as the New Tavern, a gas decontamination chamber during World War II, and is now a heritage centre run by the local history society. Nearby are the remains of Gravesend Blockhouse, built in 1543: alongside Coalhouse and Tilbury forts (visited on the last section of the Countryway) and two other nearby structures, this formed part of a complex of defences commissioned by Henry VIII. In 1780 it became part of New Tavern Fort, which incorporated the Chantry in its incarnation as a hostelry. The original blockhouse was demolished in the mid-19th century and the fort decommissioned in 1932.

A little beyond the fort is Gravesend Basin, a remnant of the Thames and Medway Canal just before it joined the Thames through a lock. Designed to cut out the lengthy journey between the two rivers around the Hoo peninsula, the canal was begun in 1800 but only finally completed in 1824 following the difficult boring of a tunnel through chalk between Higham and Strood. The canal and the North Kent Line railway shared this tunnel for a year or so from 1845, until the South Eastern Railway bought out the struggling canal company and converted the tunnel entirely to rail use, a role it still has today. The first Gravesend station, a terminus for trains to Rochester, was adjacent to the basin. The rest of the canal limped on until 1934 when it fell into disuse: the towpath is now a walking and cycling route, carrying parts of National Cycle Network Route 1 and the Saxon Shore Way, and there are plans to restore navigation too. Further downriver is Gordon Gardens, named in honour of General Charles George Gordon (1833-85), who served in Gravesend as commandant of the Thames Forts in the 1860s and helped set up schools in the town before being famously killed in action at the siege of Khartoum. An obelisk in the gardens once marked the limit of the City of London’s taxation powers, a more substantial version of the coal posts we’ll encounter elsewhere on the Countryway, although it’s been moved a little from its original location.

Gravesend’s main claim to fame, though — at least since 1995 when Disney released its romanticised and largely fabricated version of the story — is as the last resting place of Princess Pocohantas (1595-1617). From the Powhawtan Confederacy in Virginia, Pocohantas allegedly saved the life of English colonist John Smith, later meeting and marrying tobacco grower John Rolfe, who brought her to England in 1616, where she lived with him in Brentford (on another London orbital walk, the Capital Ring). Next year the Rolfes took ship from London back to Virginia, but Pocohantas became ill, perhaps of pneumonia or smallpox, just off Gravesend, where she was taken ashore and soon died. The town has been quick to capitalise on her post-Disney fame. The life size bronze statue in the churchyard of St George’s Church (a handsome building with an imposing square tower, built in 1732, over a century after her death, and it’s by no means certain she’s buried in its precincts) dates from 1958. It’s actually a replica of one at Jamestown, Virginia, sculpted by William Ordway Partridge in 1922, but to me it bears a strangely appropriate resemblance to a ship’s figurehead, looking out across the river.

Gravesned Old Town Hall and k6 phone box

You’ll need to make some short but worthwhile detours to explore all this heritage: I’ve described a loop taking in the Pocohantas statue but the direct route runs straight ahead from the pier along the pedestrianised High Street, dating from at least the 14th century although largely rebuilt following a fire in 1846. The grand neoclassical portico of the Grade II*-listed Old Town Hall with its Doric columns dates from 1836, although previous town halls have stood on this site since 1573. Behind it is the market place. The two cast iron red telephone kiosks outside it are also listed, as examples in particularly good condition of the classic 1935 K6 design by George Gilbert Scott. The town hall is now used as a magistrates’ court and an events venue: it hasn’t served as a civic building since being succeeded in 1968 by the rather less distinctive Civic Centre, headquarters of Gravesham District Council and also known as the Woodville Halls, a little further along the walk, beyond the crossing with New Road.

For years the Civic Centre sat on an island choked by traffic, but the relatively calm environment of the town centre has now been extended southwards, with improvements to the public space creating the contemporary but very pleasant Community Square. New Road itself is an identikit pedestrianised shopping street that leads west towards the station, originally opened in 1849 when the North Kent Line from Rochester via the former Thames and Medway Canal tunnel was extended from Gravesend Basin through the London Bridge. Since 2009 it has also been served by high speed trains to St Pancras International via the HS1 line, of which more below, and is due for further redevelopment as part of a new transport hub and, possibly, the terminus of a future eastern extension of the Crossrail 1 line.

The first section of the route is coincident with the Wealdway, which soon heads off across Community Square to Wrotham Road: we’ll tangle with this signed route several more times over the next few sections. Linking the Thames at Gravesend with the coast at Hastings via both the North and South Downs, this signed route was first proposed by local volunteers from the Ramblers in the 1970s, with the first definitive guide issued in 1981.

Windmill Hill and Kings Farm

The route soon climbs the well-loved local viewpoint of Windmill Hill, a 59 m-high promontory of Thanet sands rising from the surrounding chalk to overlook the town centre and the river. Named for the windmills that surmounted it from the 14th century, it was also used for beacons to warn of approaching invasion forces, including the Spanish Armada in 1588 – the current beacon dates from the 400-year anniversary of that date in 1988. In the early 19th century the hill became a pleasure ground for visiting Londoners, with a camera obscura, hotels, pubs and restaurants. But Gravesend’s glory days as a resort soon passed, and in 1846 most of the site was acquired by the council: it’s now a protected open space and the heart of a conservation area. The view across the river to the Essex shore is superb: unless the weather is bad, you’ll easily spot the two forts, the power station, the docks and the forlorn grandeur of the landing stage. You can look forward to a closer view of many of these landmarks in 330 km’s time, on the final section of the London Countryway. Descending, the route briefly follows Rouge Lane, which enfolds the west side of the hill and reminds us that before the windmills this was known as Rouge Hill, possibly an alternative spelling of ‘rough’, and a little further on there’s a view to the south, with the unmistakeable line of the North Downs rearing up ahead.

After Windmill Hill we’re compelled to trudge the pavements of residential streets for some time, but they’re mainly quiet and traffic-calmed with occasional glimpses of interest and unexpected attractiveness. One of these soon appears at Echo Square, a six-way junction evocatively named after a landmark pub. Now a small roundabout, it retains a 1903 horse trough, drinking fountain and lamp standard and, with its benches, plantings and generally pleasing arrangement, something of an Edwardian charm too, though the former public toilet has long been closed and sold off.

The walk through Gravesend’s suburbs turns out to be a journey through successive layers of urban development. The hill was built up from the early 19th century, and substantial Victorian villas still stand in the streets around it, now punctuated by later infill. Immediately south of Echo Square along Sun Lane, the houses are early 20th century: when the trough was first installed, one side of the lane was still open fields. Further on is the neighbourhood known as Kings Farm, which was indeed a farm until the late 1920s when it succumbed to interwar sprawl. It was expanded with social housing in the 1960s, punctuated by sports fields, neglected recreation grounds and a squat little library. But our route through all this is impressively direct, and the way it continues ahead as a footpath when Cedar Avenue peters out at a securely-fenced school shows its origins as a much older rural track.

Watling Street and HS1

Three generations of main road at Singlewell, looking west. The new 4-lane A2 on the left, the 1970s A2, now a walking and cycling track, centre, and the 1920s trunk road and former course of Roman Watling Street right.

The footpath emerges in the neighbourhood of outer Gravesend known as Singlewell, originally a separate village on what for millennia has been one of the most important roads in Britain. The constant expansion of this transport corridor has shaped and reshaped this area, leaving behind a fascinating accretion of abandoned partialities: dead ends, marooned shops and services and, most recently, a whole new linear park.

Traditionally the road is known as Watling Street, from the Old English Wæcelinga Stræt, after the Waecla tribe who lived in the St Albans area, but the route long predates Anglo-Saxon times. It was undoubtedly in use for many centuries before the Roman invasion as a Celtic and possibly pre-Celtic trackway linking the Kent coast, with its ancient ports serving mainland Europe, and a ford of the Thames near modern Westminster. The Romans improved and paved the route in the years 47-48, and it became part of Iter II, running all the way from Hadrian’s Wall via Wroxeter near Shrewsbury and London to the port of Richborough, with branches to Dover and Lympne and, via the Channel crossing, to Rome. The road continued in use after the Romans departed: as it ran through Canterbury on its way to Dover, it became an important pilgrimage route: this is the route Geoffrey Chaucer (c1343-1400) had in mind for the fictional raconteurs of The Canterbury Tales. But with no serious maintenance since the departure of the Romans in around 410, it became a broad and muddy scar across the landscape, with several parallel tracks trodden out to avoid problems.

Britain’s road system improved for the first time in around 1,400 years from the late 17th century with the advent of the Turnpike Trusts, businesses that invested private capital in road building and improvements in return for the right to levy tolls on users. In 1711 a turnpike opened between Northfleet and Strood, the second such road in Kent, effectively diverting through traffic on the main route between Dartford and Rochester Bridge to run northwards through Gravesend town centre, today’s A226. Later, sections of historic Watling Street were turnpiked: the New Cross Turnpike Trust took on the stretch between its eponymous southeast London suburb and Dartford in 1718. But the Singlewell stretch remained a local backwater for another couple of centuries.

By the 1920s, the determinants of road design had changed as the government began to plan for a road network enabling fast journeys by car, with bypasses to prevent through traffic from snarling up in urban areas. In 1924 the original Watling Street route was improved as part of the ‘Dartford Southern bypass’, and designated A2, providing much-needed work for unemployed locals as well as new infrastructure. In the late 1960s the road was widened to the south into a three-lane carriageway of near-motorway standards: in Singlewell this bowed slightly away from the original course to accommodate a strip of roadside housing. Then in 2008 an even wider road was created, deflected even further south to help reduce the nuisance to local residents.

Evidence of all these iterations is still visible today. First you encounter a straight stretch of local road, Hever Court Road, the alignment of the Roman road, as improved in the 1920s. A little to the east is the George pub, once a roadside inn. In the 19th century it was a popular destination for country walks from the town, and an annual fair was held in an adjacent field from the 14th century to the 1870s. Next is a grassy, landscaped strip with a broad tarmac path running through it – actually the remains of the 1960s trunk road now pleasingly reclaimed as a linear park and walking and cycling path. Westwards, this path leads to the Tollgate junction where the original Countryway route crosses the A2, and the adjacent Cyclopark, a venue offering cycling and other fitness activities also on the site of the abandoned carriageway. If you look carefully you can see the way the road bows slightly away from the straight Roman alignment to avoid the housing on the south side of Hever Court Road. Historically, this side of the road was part of a separate parish, Ifield, with its centre a little to the southwest: the original Countryway runs close to the site of its manor house.

Beyond this, its massive overhead signs clearly visible and its din still very much audible, if muted slightly by the landscaping, is the current A2. Prior to 2008, all this traffic on its way to and from Dover and the mainland would have rumbled precisely where you’re now walking. To your left, two neighbouring chain hotels on Hever Court Road, a Premier Inn and a Best Western, have supplanted the function of the old coaching inn. They’re rare examples of overnight accommodation right on the Countryway itself though they’re probably not most walkers’ notion of the ideal hostelry for a country stroll.

A Eurostar on HS1 st Singlewell

The landscaped strip ends at the next junction, Marling Cross, where our route crosses the A2 on a bridge sandwiched between two mini-roundabouts. From here you can appreciate the scale of the road’s latest incarnation, with four lanes in both directions: you can’t help thinking what a Roman engineer would make of it. The new route has isolated previous roadside services: off to the left, above the third roundabout in the cluster, stands a classic transport café, Nell’s, which once used to be right beside the main carriageway.

On the other side of the new road is another parallel stretch of transport infrastructure: High Speed 1 (HS1), officially, the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL). Opened in 2003 as the first phase of the UK’s first high speed railway linking the Channel Tunnel portal near Folkestone with London, the line was designed to follow main roads as much as possible, to minimise its environmental impact. Services from London through the tunnel started in 1994, originally using existing third rail lines. This didn’t entirely change until the second phase of HS1 opened all the way through to the rebuilt St Pancras International in 2007. The line, which is built throughout to French ligne à grande vitesse standards, with signing and signalling to match, has a complicated ownership history: it’s now ultimately owned by the state, but leased on a long-term deal to a Canadian pensions trust, and operated by Network Rail, partly from the track maintenance depot beside the line here. Look out not only for international Eurostars but also South Eastern’s domestic high speed services operated by Japanese Hitachi trains.

Jeskyns

Wood sculptures at Jeskyns near Cobham:
"A townie's idea of what the countryside needs."

Just on the other side of HS1 is Jeskyns, the first large managed green space on the route – and also one of the most interesting. Previously this 147 ha site was the sizeable Jeskyns Farm, which in 2005 was bought by the Forestry Commission with a grant from the Deputy Prime Minister’s Sustainable Communities Fund for conversion to a community woodland. Opened in 2007, it’s now slowly developing into a patchwork of woods, ponds and meadows, linked by accessible trails with numerous features of interest. At the time there was some criticism that no remnant of previous crop-growing use was to be retained on what was actually very high quality arable land, but instead the site nods to commercial agriculture with a cluster of orchards growing traditional varieties of apples, cherries and cobnuts. In its early days a neighbour branded it “a townie’s idea of what the countryside needs” – perhaps that’s why I like it so much. But I’m not alone, as Jeskyns has become extremely popular, particularly with local dog walkers. Sadly, considering the sustainable aims, many of them drive here, as the often-full car park attests. There’s no decent bus service and the site is just that bit too far out of town to encourage the average user to visit on foot.

Jeskyns is one of six adjacent large areas of public and semi-public open space managed by councils, government agencies and charities that together stretch from the east and southeast of Gravesend almost as far as the Medway. At the centre of this near-700 ha miniature regional park is the old estate and former mediaeval deer park surrounding Cobham Hall, an Elizabethan mansion that was home to the Earls of Darnley from the 1730s to the 1950s. The hall is now an independent school and its immediate surrounds are officially accessible only along rights of way and on intermittent open days, but the rest of the estate, including a spectacular neoclassical family mausoleum, is in the hands of the National Trust. Between Jeskyns and Cobham Park is the Woodland Trust’s Ashenbank Wood, while Plantlife’s Ranscombe Farm Reserve fills the space east of the park up to the M2 motorway. To the north, on the other side of the A2, is Kent County Council’s Shorne Wood Country Park, on the site of another mediaeval manor. There’s no collective name for this cluster of sites but the various managers work in partnership, and one of the fruits of this is the Darnley Trail, a 10 km circular route for cyclists and horse riders as well as walkers that links all the sites and connects with many other paths around the area.

Even the car park at Jeskyns has been thoughtfully designed, in a doughnut shape so that the paths across it don’t force walkers to cross fields of cars. In the central reservation, as well as a pond there are several information boards, with more scattered through the site, and on the other side is a decent park café. Just behind this to the left is an experimental area designated ‘The Forest of the Future’, planted in anticipation of global warming with a mix of trees likely to be more resilient of warmer climates, including native species like small-leaved lime and hornbeam and imports like walnut and oriental spruce, regularly monitored by research scientists. Our route soon picks up one of the historic rights of way that runs diagonally across the site, but you could detour along the signed loop routes to visit the biggest water feature, Henhurst Lake, and the orchards further south on the other side of Jeskyns Road. The main route passes wildflower meadows and, on the left, a restored chalk pit – a reminder that the chalk of the North Downs is only just below the surface here, and we’ll be seeing a lot more of it over the next few walks. You’ll soon spot one the site’s most distinctive landmarks: two tall figures flanking a path, sculpted with a chainsaw from a single tree by artist Walter Bailey.

By the sculptures the Countryway crosses the Darnley Trail, and enters the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, more of which in the next section. From here you can detour along the Trail to visit Owletts (see below), or continue straight to Cobham through another new woodland area, Jeskyns Glades, where, to the north, the adjoining ancient woodland of Ashenbank Wood is being encouraged to encroach into former farmland. Approaching Battle Street on the outskirts of Cobham, the distinctive cowl of an oast house rises above the trees. We’ll be seeing lots more of these structures, originally built to dry hops, as we pass through Kent.

Cobham

Drink with Dickens: The Leather Bottle, Cobham

The chocolate-box quaint village of Cobham is best known for its connection to novelist and keen walker Charles Dickens (1812-70), who regularly drank and stayed at the Leather Bottle inn, even taking American poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow there for a drink in 1842, and featured it in his work. In Dickens’ first novel, The Pickwick Papers, the bereft Tracy Tupman retreats here when his planned elopement with Rachel Wardle is abandoned. Pickwick and friends track him down, their walk from Rochester to Cobham retracing a route familiar to Dickens from his youth, when the family lived in Chatham. “Really,” remarks Pickwick wryly, “for a misanthrope’s choice, this is one of the prettiest and most desirable places of residence I ever met with.” Reaching the pub, “a clean and commodious village ale-house,” they inquire after Tupman and are shown into the parlour.

A stout country lad opened a door at the end of the passage, and the three friends entered a long, low-roofed room, furnished with a large number of high-backed leather-cushioned chairs, of fantastic shapes, and embellished with a great variety of old portraits and roughly-coloured prints of some antiquity. At the upper end of the room was a table, with a white cloth upon it, well covered with a roast fowl, bacon, ale and et ceteras; and at the table sat Mr Tupman, looking as unlike a man who had taken his leave of the world, as possible.

Needless to say, the Leather Bottle does its best to please heritage tourists and Dickens fans today by living up to this evocative description, though in truth it’s been considerably rebuilt since the author’s time, notably after a fire in the 1880s, and the current half-timbered look is a more recent accretion. Still, it’s an atmospheric place, with a fascinating collection of Dickensia.

Cobham’s other Victorian artistic connection is with the paranoid schizophrenic painter Richard Dadd (1817-86), who was taken here by his family to recuperate in 1843 after a delusional episode in Egypt. Dadd knifed his father to death in Cobham Park, apparently believing him to be the Devil, and fled to France, where he was arrested and returned to England. He spent the rest of his life in Bethlem and Broadmoor secure psychiatric hospitals, where he continued to draw and paint. He’s best known for his intricately detailed fantasy scenes such as The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke.

On the western edge of the village and on the Darnley Trail, Owletts is a late 17th century house that was the birthplace and family home of architect Herbert Baker (1862-1946), particularly noted for his work in South Africa and for designing South Africa House in Trafalgar Square. Baker extensively remodelled the house and gardens from the 1920s, and left it to the nation on his death, complete with a collection of artefacts amassed during his career. It’s now in the care of the National Trust and open to the public on summer Sundays.

Opposite the Leather Bottle and prominently sited at the highest point in the village, St Mary Magdalene is unusually large for a parish church. The oldest substantial surviving part is the chancel, built in 1220 with an endowment from the De Cobham family, though there are remnants of an earlier building on display. It was expanded significantly around 1370, and again in 1860. It’s particularly noted for its world-renowned collection of 15 De Cobham memorial brasses, dating back to the 1400s. Removed some time in the 17th century and bundled up in an old chest, they were relaid in 1837 and restored in the 1860s

New College of Cobham: Not that new at all.

Immediately behind the church is the village’s real hidden gem, The New College of Cobham. Despite its name, this was originally founded in 1362 as a training college for priests by John de Cobham, also a founder of the Rochester Bridge Trust which invested the tolls charged on the bridge for charitable purposes. The college was closed by Henry VIII during the Dissolution in 1540, and the place lay empty until 1598 when it was converted to almshouses following a bequest of William Brooke, Lord Cobham. The buildings were substantially unaltered for over 350 years until 1956, and were sensitively modernised in 1981, though remain in use as almshouses for pensioners of local parishes, still managed by the Bridge Trust. The site is usually open to the public during daylight hours, so don’t walk past without looking through the door behind the church at the secluded courtyard, as charming as a Flemish beguinage, with a central water pump installed by the Countess of Darnley in 1824. On the other side of the quadrangle and through another door are the remains of the 14th century kitchen, its fireplace still visible.

From Cobham there’s the option of continuing on the Darnley Trail, which keeps west through Cobham Park before looping back to Jeskyns via Shorne Wood. Alternatively, by the Darnley mausoleum, a connecting path runs southeast into Ranscombe Farm towards the chalk ridge and the North Downs Way National Trail, where ambitious walkers could keep east across the Medway via the M2 bridge then either on towards Dover or upriver to Rochester.

Sole Street

Path through orchards between Cobham and
Sole Street

The path between Cobham and Sole Street is almost entirely through orchards, a reminder of Kent’s much-reduced reputation as the Garden of England. These aren’t the dappled glades of tradition, but modern installations with dwarf trees strictly marshalled in rows, through which the right of way runs on a straight course as if sliced through with a giant razor blade. It eventually arrives at a footbridge over the Chatham Main Line railway, which runs in a cutting. The line was built in the 1860s by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) as an alternative route to the continent from London Victoria in competition with the South Eastern Railway’s line from London Bridge. In 1899 the LDCR was forced to merge with its competitor, eventually forming part of the Southern Railway and later British Rail, and this line became the main rail route to Belgium, France and southern Europe via the ferries at Dover and other channel ports. Even after the opening of the Channel Tunnel in 1994, Eurostar trains used the route, and it only lost its European connections with the advent of HS1 to St Pancras (above). This section of the Countryway ends in a field just on the other side of the line where it rejoins the original route a short stroll from Sole Street station.

Originally Sole Street was a mere outlying hamlet of Cobham. It grew substantially when the still-attractive station on the Chatham Main Line opened in 1861 and again in the 1970s when the Sallows Shaw estate was built amid willow woodland, though its population is now a relatively modest 1,400. From the late 18th century to sometime in the 1950s, Sole Street was known for its varnish factory, in a now-derelict site just west of the station. There’s also a pub, a shop, a pretty village pond known as Sweeps Hole – and an unexpected and unremarked collection of murals decorating the wooden shelter on the down (Rochester) platform of the station. These show local scenes in the style of an unusual selection of modern(ish) painters — Meopham as interpreted by John Piper, Vincent Van Gogh, L S Lowry, Wassily Kandinsky, Friedensreich Hundertwasser and Paul Klee. The pastiches are crude ones, the works are damaged by grafitti and the Hundertwasser piece is particularly garish, but they certainly have some curiosity value.

Finding a new way

I was never happy with the opening section of the London Countryway as first described in this blog, so I was delighted to discover an alternative which not only makes use of new and improved access but includes several points of interest that were originally just off the way.

In common with many outdoor writers and route developers of the day, the Countryway’s creator Keith Chesterton tended to deal with unavoidable urban areas by taking the most straightforward and direct route through them, even if that meant slogging alongside busy roads. Funnelled through Gravesend by the limited availability of river crossings, the original Countryway simply heads south down the A227 Wrotham Road, to the A2 junction at Tollcross. From here it picks up a succession of ancient but undistinguished field paths via Ifield Court to Sole Street. The same solution is adopted by the near-contemporaneous Wealdway, the original guide for which suggests the walker might consider a bus between the town centre and Tollcross – surely the walking route deviser’s ultimate admission of defeat.

The shortcomings of this route are offset in the original guide as it is only the second part of a longer section, preceded by a much more interesting riverside walk and ferry crossing. And as the original start and finish point for the whole route is Dorking, the section occurs about three quarters of the way round, with more than enough good walking behind you to make up for the occasional dull stretch. But for the very good reason of stressing the importance of the river Thames to a circuit around London, I was keen to start instead at Gravesend, in the process casting a particularly harsh spotlight on the section to Sole Street. I tried to mitigate this with my first attempt by at least finding a quieter alternative to the Wrotham Road, but wasn’t entirely happy with the result, which wiggled around a bit too much with insufficient justification, and included a stretch of path where the access situation wasn’t clear.

Since then I’ve been introduced to opportunities that simply weren’t available when Chesterton was working up his route in the late 1970s. Foremost among these is Jeskyns, which only opened as a public green space in 2007: prior to this there were some rights of way through here but the opening up of wider public access across the site and the creation of numerous new paths of excellent quality has made it much easier and more interesting to head southeast rather than south. And then there’s the tempting prospect of the new cycleway on an abandoned stretch of the A2, which was still under construction when I first researched the route in 2009. Heading this way has also enabled me to squeeze in not only the classic Gravesend viewpoint of Windmill Hill but also a visit to Cobham. This is particularly pleasing as Chesterton considered but abandoned including this picturesque and historic village with its Dickensian connections on the route back in 1979, nonetheless allocating several paragraphs to it as a ‘there and back’ diversion.

Inevitably there’s still quite a stretch of pavement walking through residential streets that don’t offer much of interest except the steady unreeling of the layers of Gravesend’s growth, but at least they’re quiet (and if you really, really must, there’s a bus this way too). Overall this new section provides a worthy introduction to this amazingly varied outer-outer-London orbital, and I have no hesitation in recommending it as the new definitive line.

Download a route description for this walk (PDF)