Peter Finch “My dad wasn’t a rich man but he looked after his pennies. He worked for the two Doctors, Hay and Cotton. He split his week between them, as a gardener for Dr Hay and a groom for Dr Cotton. He only got labourer’s wages, about two pounds a week, but he’d put something ...
Reference: WH0164
Alongside being Dr. Hay’s gardener, Arthur Finch appears to have become his chauffeur as well, probably in the early 1930s when Dr. Cotton retired. Here he is standing on the front drive of Dr. Hay’s house, then called ‘Borde Hill’ on Vicarage Hill (now renamed as ‘Old Mill Leat’). Rosemary Pearson recalls “…Doctor Hay’s daughter Jean moved ...
Reference: WH0165
Retained as a convenient place for the bus to stop off the road, this is the site of the station forecourt, as shown on the adjacent 1896 map. L.B. denotes a letterbox which is still there albeit of modern design.
Reference: WH0168
An afternoon train photographed at Brasted station on the last day of services, October 28th 1961. Adorned with a Union Jack, someone had chalked on the boiler plate door “Farewell to the Flyer 1881 – 1961” the Westerham Valley Railway, come and gone in only eighty years…
Reference: WH0154
Looking south-west across Dunton Green station carpark shows the overgrown track-bed of the branch-line curving away to the west in the direction of Chevening Halt, Brasted and Westerham.
Reference: WH0152
On October 30th 2011 the Spa Valley Railway simulated the final days of the Westerham Valley Railway to commemorate 50 years since the closure of the branch line. Here a train of four coaches recreates the final day of services, Saturday October 28th 1961 appearing to chuff its way past Chevening Halt heading for Brasted. ...
Reference: WH0153
Trains leaving Dunton Green junction bound for Westerham would have chuffed under this roadbridge on the way to their first stop at Chevening Halt, slightly less than a mile away.
Reference: WH0140
The first motor dray employed by the Black Eagle brewery was a 1921 ‘Peerless’ originally built for troop carrying in the first World War. Note this example has no windscreen! Draymen Frank ‘Cracky’ Blake and Jim Obediah Waterhouse would have suffered a chilly journey quite often. Previous drays had been road locomotives (Traction-engines) preceded by horse-drawn ...
Reference: WH0133
Obviously now with a much-elevated ground-level, what is now a tarmac footpath to the village school at Dunton Green was the track-bed of the branch-line going under the A224 London Road heading towards Dunton Green station junction.
Reference: WH0135
The tree line moving away from the main-line at Dunton Green is the overgrown track-bed of the Westerham branch-line photographed in September 2017. Fifty-five years without a weed-killing train produces a lot of growth.
Reference: WH0134