Swanley Heritage No 10 - Built Heritage No 1 Quick General Overview

Much of the built heritage of Swanley town' (limited as it was) and Hextable (which had and has more of  interest) has been destroyed. The causes are diverse, including:

• enemy action during World War 2 took out individual buildings or so seriously damaged others they were demolished or adapted beyond recognition;
• commercial redevelopment resulted in the loss of a limited number of noted buildings; 
• residential redevelopment of the vast areas of the horticultural industry's glasshouses; and,
• national policies on the NHS resulted in the 19th Century hospital buildings being lost (except Parkwood Hall School and smaller buildings at the other hospitals).

[Fortunatly, we have many postcards of the area and buildings in the areas around.]


Swanley Village
However, the gem of the area is the centre of Swanley Village - with many fine historic and architectually interesting properties. The addition of the unusally enclosed village green (of recent years) is a delightful feature. The green is encircled by many out-facing buildings but is nevertheless a charming addition to already "perfick" place of "Kentish" land.


As a "conservation area" the buildings and trees of the village are protected from much that has happened elsewhere in the area. The beauty of this historic place is captured in the document linked below


http://www.sevenoaks.gov.uk/documents/swanleyvillagespg_2.pdf

Swanley Heritage No 9 - Hospitals in or near Swanley (Update No1 - 20 December 2011)

Around the end of the 19th Century Swanley became the place for hospitals. This was mainly determined by the quality of the air which at that time was one of the best "aired" places in England. Also, the close location to Charing Cross (to Swanley Junction railway satatio) which travellers would find convenient, and hence make Swanley attractive to them. Finally, Swanley was on the road from London to Maidstone, and near the old Roman highway - Watling Street - the London to Dover  road.


Three hospitals were located at Swanley, namely:


1   Kettlewell Convalescence Hospital (which was also known as Alexandra Hospital). It was built in 1885 and was situated on London Road on a large site opposite the present day Swanley Police Station where its gates can still be seen.


2   Parkwood Convalescence Hospital (Beechenlea Lane) was built in 1893 for recovering surgery patients. During World Wars 1 and 2 it was a military hospital and specialised in treating facial injuries. It closed about the middle of the 1960s and then became the LCC's Junior Firemen's College and is now Parkwood Hall School.


3   White Oak Hospital (may also have been known as St Bartholomew's Hospital) was built in 1897 and closed in 1959. It was an eye hospital for children in its earliest days but was a military establishment in World Wars 1 and 2. The present day community centre Woodlands was part of White Oak School on the hospital's site and hospital's chapel became St Bartholomew's Roman Catholic Church.

Modern Hospital Services
At present hospital services are mainly provided by Darent Valley Hospital (DVH) but patients needing specialist treatments are sometimes re-routed to a London hospital or elsewhere in Kent. DVH and Medway hospital(s)(?) are being merged in 2012 so there is some uncertainty in my mind of the prospect of difficuties for patients needing to travel from Swanley to somewhere in the Medway towns.

Swanley Heritage No 8 - Forges in or near Swanley (Update No 3 - 5 January 2012)

For centuries blacksmiths would have been a traditional feature of life in the Swanley Hills. I have found several references which are suggestive of former forges having existed in Swanley Village, Swanley and Crockenhill. At least two are thought to have been "lost" to forge work after the start of the motoring era - eventually to become garages offering motor service workshops.

Questions:

1. Did Hextable ever have a forge - perhaps in Home Hill?
2. When did the 'forge' at Stonehill Farm begin?
3. Are there any photographs etc of a forge in Swanley Village?

Old Forge Yard (Swanley Village)
Swanley Village's Old Forge Yard of Swanley Village Lane suggests that a working forge was situated there in the past. (It may still be there but no evidence is forthcoming!) A residence called Forge House exists nearby.

Brasted Forge (Brasted)
Although remote from Swanley the link describes another relatively modern blacksmith's forge in Kent . The website refers to the building company of R Durtnells and Sons having a blacksmith's shop. The company was established in 1591 and may well have had a blacksmith at that time.
http://www.brastedforge.co.uk/

Darenth Valley Forge (Eynesford)
Another modern forge is described at ther link below.
http://www.darenthvalleyforge.co.uk/history.html

Forge (Crockenhill)
There has been a forge in the Crockenhill area for about 200 years - firstly, in the village centre and later on Couch Farm. One family has had several generations of blacksmiths in or near the village.
 (See link http://www.curtismetalwork.co.uk/   )


Forge, Stonehill Farm
A building named "Forge" stands at or close to Stonehill Green / Farm. [More information is sought.]

Forge (Swanley Lane)
The now demolished building which was the home of Team Engineering Ltd is thought to have originally been used as a forge.

Swanley Heritage No 7 - Early Education Establishments around Swanley Update 2 - 1 December 2011

Although the early educational developments took place in Swanley, Hextable or Swanley Village they are relevant ot the heritage of Swanley.

Swanley Horticultural College 
Hextable House -The college was started in 1989 in Hextable House. Originally it was a women's college and took many female students who later served horticulture in the United Kingdom and elsewhere in the world. The property was bombed during World War 2 and ceased there in 1944.

Northbank - A branch of the horticultural college was housed at Northbank from 1902 to 1916 - to educate women horticulturists going to the colonies. After the college premises in Hextable House were bombed studies were continued in College Road.  

Students: 
Lilian Gibbs (1870 - 1925) was astudent at Swanley Horticultural College who subsequently studied botany and travelled the world as a plant collector. She visited Africa, Australia, Borneo, Fiji, and New Zealand Does any one have the bamboo Bambusa gibbsiae.


Dame Sylvia Crowe (1901 to 1997) was a student fom 1920 -1922 becoming a landscape gardener and President of the Institute of Landscape Architects.
http://www.landscapeinstitute.org/PDF/Contribute/SylviaCrowepreface.pdf

Kent Careers College
When horticulture ended in Hextable the Kent County Council formed the Kent Careers College in College Road.

Home for Little Boys:
As a boy Christopher P Casstine, an orphan, stayed at Homes for Little Boys in Hextable. The 19th century buildings were the home of numerous boys and later on girls as well.

Furnness School:
Furness School was originally the Home for Little Boys. It later became co-educational.

St Davids School;
Uplands the home of Arthur Mee was bought in 1915 and made into a school by Miss Jessie Hogbin - the school use was originally opened in another house on St David's Day in 1910 where it had been called "St David's". The name was retained and Uplands became St David's. (From 1905 Arthur Mee had created the Children's Encyclopedia in Uplands.)

Parkwood Hall School
Parkwood School was originally a hospital but became the London County Council's Junior Firemen's College and later became Parkwood Hall School (Royal London Borough of Kensington and Chelsea) and remains so now.
[See http://webfronter.com/rbkc/phs/menu/mnu1.shtml ]

White Oak Schools
These senior and junior schools are no longer  schools but part of the community centre Woodlands. As schools they are believed to have been created to educate the poor London children who were patients at White Oak Hospital. The children arrived for treatment suffering from infectious diseases, eg eyes, head and skin.

Swanley Heritage No 6 - 1 Basket Making in Swanley Lane 2 Casstine's Photographic Studios (Update No 1 - 25 December 2011)

1  At the meeting in the Youth and Community Centre (St Mary's Road) several photographs of the basket factory in Swanley Lane were passed round. Vehicles piled high with "Woods" baskets were shown standing in front of the two storey building fronting the lane.

The building was destroyed by a bomb during World War 2 and a terrace of houses was erected on the cleared site in the mid-1950s. It is believed the business making baskets was transferred to other premises near the Team Engineering building off Swanley Lane. 

2  Casstine's Photographic Studios of Hextable made many postcards of scenes around Hextable and Swanley Village area - from photographs taken by the professional photographer, Christopher Casstine. (CFC lived at Homes for Little Boys School in Hextable as a child.)

It is likely that the many photographs / postcards on sale on the internet come from this former Hextable Photographic Studios.

http://www.swanleyvillage.com/photos/photos.htm

Swanley Heritage No 5 - Allotments in Swanley

Swanley has a long history of allotments - there are at least four sites in and near Swanley, Swanley Village and Hextable.

Two are of recent establishment, namely:

• 1  The relatively new allotments in Swanley Park - installed by the Swanley Town Council.
• 2  The very new allotments in Hextable Gardens, near the Heritage Centre - installed by Hextable Parish Council.

Two others are in Swanley and Swanley Village respectively.

• 3  A site to be devoted to allotments was given to the "poor men of Swanley" (or some such words) by the head of the Hart-Dyke family of Lullingstone Castle many years ago. It later became part of the St Georges Estate and the allotments use was transferred to another site.
• 4 Swanley Village has the fourth allotments site.

Questions:

Are there any other sites or former sites?
Did the allotment site (No 3) stand on the site of a former bottle factory (see Swanley Heritage No4)?
Is there more information available about any of the allotment sites (Nos 1, 2, 3, and 4)?

Swanley Heritage No 4 - Bottle-making in Swanley

A bit specialised perhaps but this post is intended to gather information about any history of making bottles in Swanley.

At the recent meeting on Swanley which was held at the Youth and Community Centre one participant brought along a clear glass bottle with the imprints "Hotel" and  "Swanley". Little information was forthcoming at the meeting.

However, another participant recalls that when she had an allotment (adjacent to London Road on the St Georges Estate),she was frequently digging up bottle tops.


Questions:

• 5.1 Was the bottle made in Swanley?
• 5.2 Is there any history of a bottle-making "factory" on the site of the former allotments?
• 5.3  How many hotels have been run in Swanley?
• 5.4  Which hotel had bottles with the inscriptions "Hotel" and "Swanley"? 

Swanley Heritage No 1 - Mesolithic Period (10,000BC to 4,000BC) (Update 1 - 1st December 2011)

Mesolithic Period (10,000 BC to 4,000BC)
Near the end of the Palaeolithic Age, about 30,000 years ago, it seems likely that our human forebears first came to what is now Kent. They arrived in small groups and as individuals. The first few walked from  the northern part of what is now France (and from beyond) and settled sporadically in parts of the DV. They moved on from time to time following the animals which they hunted. They were hunters of animals and gatherers of seed, fruit, berries and nuts. They had thought they might go back but life was pleasant, albeit cold, and hunting was good - they stayed when it was warm enough.

Some found caves or dug out shelters: others made branch shelters. At times the cold was intense and from the Swanley hills some of them might have seen to the north, the cliff-like edge of the ice which just about covered the river running from east to west (Thames). At some time they may have retreated from the ice to France but by about 10,000 BC they were back for the last time. Life was subject to climatic warming, the melting ice retreated  northwards, and the valleys to the south (the English Channel) became impassable to any but the bravest. A family group (or tribe by now) stayed (or wer trapped) and had already claimed lands as theirs. It does not seem that the site of their abode was in the area of Swanley but most probably nearer the fresh clean waters of the DV river. Some settled on the slope above but to the south of Lullingstone Castle but this was about 6,000 years ago when settlements may have been well spread about the countryside in Britain. 

The use of stone for implements for all kinds of work was well established  by this time. For example some 20 or so of their kin-folk's leading family were buried within the the huge stone chamber, a longbarrow, at Coldrum not 15 kilometres away to the east of Swanley Hills.

The site was situated not far from the newly cultivated fields on the lower ground below Trottiscliffe. Sometime before the hunter-gatherers had taken up farming and enclosing land. Much of the land was available to the takers but certain areas were common land. It could be that some roamed as far as the Swanley Hills which they may have regarded as their common land.

When attending the burials some of the DV folk probably admired the field system of their neighbours. It seems that these neighbours of the DV people liked funerals because they and others had erected several other dolmens, ie stone structures, along the valley of the Medway, eg Kitts Coty House and its nearby Little Kitts Coty House - the river may have been a good route for raft-transporting the huge Sarcen stones used at Coldrum Longbarrow and elsewhere. However, these may have been as recent as 3000 years BC.

Swanley Heritage No 2 - History of land ownership to before the Kentish Kingdoms

Land Ownership before the Kentish Kingdoms
Land "tenures" were alloidal before) the Norman Conquest. In Pre-history anyone could take land for occupation provided it was not already occupied. He or she would call it his or her own.

Thus, it is probable that land ownership from Pre-history until the end of the Anglo-Saxon Era was characterised by individual family estates with others becoming land owners/occupiers as followers of the principal estate owner. Thus, a tribal leadership heirarchy came about by the likes of the following:

• an individual (as leader) took and enclosed unoccupied lands and created a settled place for his/her family and any followers;
• the  leader had gifted portions of land to a family member or some other person (in recognition of fealty);
• strangers with knowledge or skills, say a warrior, would be given land (in exchange for fealty);
• amalgamations of lands or even estates might take place at the time of a "strategic" marriage (fealty may have been one result) ; 
• land or estates were taken over as spoils as a result of a victory in disputes (survivors became slaves or admitted fealty); and,
• customary laws were invoked to enforce surrenders of land to the leader from a miscreant follower (who may have become as slave or an outcast).

As far as is know land in Swanley was not owned and would have probably been common land - perhaps subject to tribal customary law for grazing (pigs?) and other rights of common as we now call them.

Roman Era
The only period (known to me) when a different system was imposed was during the Roman Era. Even so in general the Romans recognised tribal customs of friendly tribes. Examples included tribal "tenure" and, for instance, inheritance of of tribal lands. Roman law was only applied to Roman settlements and rural areas and perhaps the lands of unfriendly defeated tribes. One principal exception was the treatment of Boudicca (Queen of the Icenii) and her daughters. On his death Boudicca had inherited the tribal lands from her husband but the Roman leader, Vespasian, ignored the tribal customary rights of the friendly tribe and demanded tribute. As a result the Romans lost Colchester, London... before finally supressing the rebellion lead by Boudicca. 

Romano-Britons
From about 410 for about 50 years the Roman way of life may have survived in the Dareth Valley (DV). The villas would have continued in occupation unless the occupiers joined the military withdrawal to Rome. As with all failing economomies commercial  life withered and trading is likely to have ceased because of the following:

• military defences were absent;
• roads became impassable;
• buildings became derelict; 
• travelling traders could not travel;
• lawlessness became prevalent; and,
• foreign warlike groups arrived - Jutes, Saxons and Angles.

The times were truly darkened!

Dark Ages
The representatives of the invading tribes soon established settlements and may have taken over some of the countryside villas (but I have no evidence of local happenings). Life became one of disputes to be settled by combat between such groups. The period is one of no contemporary records! Archaeological evidence of any life in the Swanley area in this period has not come to notice - it would have been a peaceful place of woodlands to camp and chill out with the swine.

Kingdom of Kent
At some point at this time, say 550, (for now until corrected) Kent became unified as one of the Kingdoms of what was later to become England  - 300 years or so later.

Swanley Heritage No 3 - History to Roman Times (Update No1 23 November 2011)

This Blog examines life in the Swanley Hills area from earliest times. It examines the settings of Swanley Hills and environs. I shall try to link us to the life which our ancient relatives may have enjoyed (or not) at different times.

Swanley Hills lie on relatively high ground between two of the local south-to-north  tributaries of the Thames - the River Darenth (in the Darenth Valley (DV)) and the River Cray. Swanley has no surface rivers but there is some evidence of underground waters, ie at least two streams or rivers. One of these runs underground to join the River Darent towads Dartford. [ Note: To be confirmed from plans.] 

So far no pre-history has come to my attention. However, the name Swanley seems to mean "swine fields/clearing" or the like (ie in Anglo-Saxon). To me this is suggestive of the ancient or customary rights of common ("pannage" with "estovers" - both in the woodlands around). If pre-history settlements existed in the two valleys mentioned, it is possible that the area of Swanley was alloidal common lands. (See later post: Norman Era.)

Certainly, the western hills at Lulllingstone show evidence of Neolithic settlement and a similar settlement was uncovered east of Hextable (off Wested Lane) when the M25 was constructed (in the late 1970s) - it was reburied but is not beneath the motorway. [Note To be confirmed.]

Roman Times
The Cantii Tribe of Britons lived the high life in Kent before the two Roman Invasions - so the lands of Swanley may have been alloidal common land to them (no evidence). One might speculate that detachments of Ceasar's early invasion force roamed about Swanley chasing down escaping Cantii Britons, eg from the Battle of the Medway (say, 12 kilometres away). (No evidence.) [Ceasar did, however, write (a) that the Men of Kent were the best warriors of the Britons (and did not hang about in Kent Land after subduing them).]

So far, no Roman archaeology in Swanley itself as come to my attention. The Darenth Valley has a string of Roman villas about one to three kilometres apart. The Lullingstone Roman Villa (English Heritage) is the closest discovery near Swanley; it is nice to make-believe that it is possible that the area of Swanley was known to the Roman or Romano-Britons who lived at Lullingstone for 300 years or so. Perhaps Roman rambling groups or famillies walked the woodlands at Swanley! In the early days of the Romans settling the DV it is possible that Roman military patrols entered the hilly environs of present day Swanley to chase of poachers or worse (from their point of view)!

(a) Ceasar, Julius (c 47 BC)  The Conquest of Gaul, Penguin Books.