This view looking north down the London Road was taken circa 1912 and shows, on the right, the white-painted Corn Store on the corner of Madan Road. In the foreground three Victorian houses are ‘Haldon’ ‘Providence Villa’ and ‘Dettingen’ and beyond the Corn Store, the large house is ‘Fairlight’. This section of London Road was ...
Reference: WH1058
The building just in frame on the left that houses today’s (2018) ‘Touchline Physio’ was in the early 1900s the site of Stanley Vaus’ plumbing, painting and decorating business. The advertising hoarding erected next door on vacant land promotes ‘Cannock Chase Coal’ for sale by Benjamin Horton from his coal and timber yard to be ...
Reference: WH1059
Proposals to fill-up Westerham’s Long Pond and put a petrol station on the site got no support from Westerham Parish Council on Monday evening. It was clear that, expense apart, there would be support for a campaign to clean out and beautify the pond… Thankfully this story which appeared in the Sevenoaks Chronicle in 1960 never ...
Reference: WH0044
A view from circa 1902 shows the houses built on the south side of Madan Road, looking from the London Road end. Two different builders were responsible for this development, one being Thomas H. Weller and the other being Joseph Wintle, who had his builders yard in Madan Road and, like Weller, retained ownership and ...
Reference: WH1060
This section of the 1891 O.S. map shows the North Lodge, Dunsdale Farm and the Victorian gothic mansion itself, built for and occupied by a wealthy industrialist Joseph Kitchin in 1858. In 1880 the estate was sold to William Bryant, but by 1885 had been resold and purchased piece by piece over then next four ...
Reference: WH1045
The ‘modern’ story of Dunsdale begins when the mansion had been converted into a V.A.D. hospital in 1914 having been unoccupied since 1911 when Francis Johnstone, the tenant, and Norman Watney, the owner, both died. From 1914 the Dunsdale Hospital (V.A.D. Kent 38) was fully occupied until 1917 when it was decommissioned from its V.A.D. status to ...
Reference: WH0990
This 1939 section of O.S. map shows the mansion – internally converted into several apartments and let to tenants – to be externally unaltered at this time, albeit run-down with the gardens and grounds in a sorry state. Note that the lake had dried up beyond the stone bridge carrying the coach road.
Reference: WH0991
In 1949 the Valence estate (only) was purchased by Kent County Council to rehouse Laleham School for girls that had outgrown its earlier premises in Hartfield, Sussex. In 1951 the status was changed to that of Valence School for physically handicapped children. In 1949 the run-down Dunsdale estate and Valence Wood were sold to Llewellyn Jones, ...
Reference: WH0992
The Gardens of Hosey date back to 1815 when ‘commons waste’ was mapped-out and ‘allotted’ to the families of the poor of the district, the menfolk of whom had fought for Britain in the Napoleonic wars – penniless men came home to starving families. Enclosure of commons waste was being established in rural areas throughout the country at ...
Reference: WH0445
This 1934 O.S. map shows the northern half of the ‘Kennedy Garden’ allotments, being plots 27 at the south end and 41 at the north, behind the school. Between the two divided sections of the Gardens can be seen the haul road for movement of ragstone excavated from the Hosey mines in the nineteenth century.
Reference: WH0429
Allotments under threat. Following the second World War local planning was well under way for the development of much needed social housing to expand on that first built on Nursery Site in 1927 and at the Paddock. Some allotment sites were put under threat by these development plans and to that end Westerham Allotment Holders ...
Reference: 0048