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| North Downs |
I used to live in Ashford, Kent as a child, teenager and well into my twenties, and remember it as a small market town on the main rail route from London to the channel ports. Down this route thundered the Golden Arrow, perhaps the only touch of glamour for this corner of Kent, the iconic luxury boat train that linked London Victoria with Dover where passengers caught the ferry to link up with the Fleche D’Or or Chemin de Fer du Nord on the other side. I still to this day remember catching a glimpse of this iron horse at Ashford station.
There was nothing particularly special about Ashford apart from its parish church surrounded by a gaggle of old buildings, but it was in the county of Kent, the Garden of England. I wonder how much more beautiful Kent was before they cut down some of the cherry trees which I heard about when I was very young. You know Henry VIII ordered cherry trees to be planted in Kent, they go back a long way. I’d maybe forgotten the lovely countryside that surrounds this quite ordinary market town and where I’d spent most of my childhood and youth, travelling out to places like Wye, Hythe, Folkestone, Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells. This area has a rich history. Barely 14 miles to the north east lies the beautiful cathedral city of Canterbury reached by the verdant and pastoral Stour Valley. Not far away is Pluckley, supposedly the most haunted village in England. HE Bates, writer of that carefree Kentish family in the Darling Buds of May, lived just down the road in Little Chart.
I returned to old haunts when I recently explored Eastwell and Westwell at the northern end of the town, in the lee of the North Downs. Here you can be in gorgeous countryside a mile or two from the Towers School on the edge of town. You pass the locally famous Eastwell Towers on the left as the road first swings to the right, at the entrance to Eastwell Park, then this A251 Faversham road swings round to the left and up to Boughton Lees. By now you are ascending the scarp slopes of the North Downs which rise enticingly to your left while the views right look way down into the Stour Valley. Further up you get to the village of Challock where you turn left onto the A252 Canterbury Rd. Here a wide grassy strip spreads out to the left of the main road and gives an expansive and scattered air to this hilltop village.
A rip roaring blue sky day always helps to bring the countryside to life, no less today as the sun washes away the winter gloom. At Challock or more specifically Paddock you turn left off the main road and get lost in the narrow lane that slips back down the hill towards Westwell, but away from the hustle and bustle of a main road. Here in a hidden valley you can park the car in a wooded leaf filled hollow and just walk. So out of the car I got and first I followed the lane past isolated farms like Dean Court Lodge and through wooded stretches until finding a path into Eastwell Park at Dunn Street. Looking at the Ordnance Survey map you can see the ancient Pilgrims Way heading west from this very point along the slopes of the North Downs. But my destination is in the opposite direction. The path slopes invitingly down a gentle gradient flanked by the hills to your left and the lowlands to your right, a wide sweep of country flecked with patches of woodland with evocative names such as Squintels, Skeat’s Wood and Black Shed. The only sound that shatters the peace might be some pheasant flying across your line of vision as its resting place is disturbed.
The views here are expansive, wide open, featureless fields splashed with indiscriminately placed woodland that creates a perfect picture of harmony, a lone track furrows like an arrow towards Eastwell Lake, with Home Farm on the left. We are now in Eastwell Park, home of the prestigious Eastwell Towers Hotel and former home of Sir Thomas Moyle, the Earls of Winchilsea and Nottingham, and Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh, the second son of Queen Victoria.
The path ends up near the ruined estate church of St Mary the Virgin, which sits on the edge of Eastwell Lake, unused since after the First World War. Here there is a memorial to the grave of Richard Plantagenet, allegedly the illegitimate son of Richard III and who once was employed on the estate. There’s a mystical air about this spot, an abandoned roofless church perched on the edge of a large shallow lake. Up the road is Eastwell Manor, the hotel, but I don’t really have the time to explore any further on this occasion. Before I’m mistaken for a lost guest I retrace my steps back through the parkland.
Eastwell Manor itself was built in the neo-Elizabethan style between 1793 and 1799 and now looks a pretty impressive pile surrounded by landscaped gardens. A Victorian Tudor style wing was later added. England is stuffed to the gunnels with ancient mansions like this, round corners of leafy lanes, hidden in wooded valleys, and towering over rolling parklands full of deer and that most batty of creatures, the pheasant. Ashford itself has three estates virtually on its doorstep, Eastwell, Godington Park, and Mersham Hatch, seat of the Knatchbull family. Spoilt for choice!
