Brief visit over the North Downs to Longfield in Kent. It’s the first stop after Bromley South on the fast train to Dover. Brian showed me a short hike up to Ruffet’s Wood for the views towards the skyscrapers of Canary Wharf in the London Docklands. There’s a feeling of wide openness under a huge and distant horizon but it’s impossible to ignore the pylons in every direction.
Longfield is an intriguing place because it stayed small for so long; it’s recorded by its Norse/Danish name as Langafel in the Doomsday Book and before but there are only the church and rectory shown on the OS map of 1869. The railway passed through but didn’t stop here until a station was paid for in 1872 by a landowner in nearby Fawkham. By 1897 the OS map shows a smithy, a children’s nursery near the station, chalk and clay pits, brickworks, farms, orchards and pub: an infrastructure has been established, including a National School in the next village for “Lost Boys” (orphans), presumably also to supply labour.
Longfield has a small church, the tradition locally is that much of the early church was built c.1343 with major additions in 1886, including the tower.
Ruffet’s Wood
The old telephone exchange building is tiny
Pond House,built on the site of a village pond
Church of St. Mary Magdalene, Longfield. The north window is 13th century (on the right of the tower, added in 1886)