Where is bexley village

This commemorates the residence of John Thorpe, a famous historian from the eighteenth century. The iron railing around the house is one of the few pieces of iron which were not scrapped for the war effort in Note the positioning of the main floor at a higher level to allow for the possibility of flooding from the nearby River Cray. Continue along the High Street. This church dates from the twelfth century.

At that time, the church was at the centre of village life. The building was re-modelled in the nineteenth century with additional extensions and an unusual triangular spire. The church grounds tell us much about the development of the village. The small shed near the gate where you came in would have contained the charnel house where the church authorities stored dug up bones to make room in the graveyard. Grave robbery of fresh bodies for medical purposes was also a constant problem.

Gangs came all the way from distant London at the dead of night for this gruesome purpose. John Thorpe himself had a massive boulder placed on the grave of his wife Catherine when she died in to discourage grave robbers.

You can find this grave just along the Tudor brick wall the churchyard shares with his house. As you walk through the church grounds, note the more ornate graves from the eighteenth century. These reflect the growing wealth in the village, among those earning an increased income from industrialisation and overseas colonies.

Leave the churchyard by the main gate then turn left into Manor Road. Keep the church on your left turn left and stop at the entrance to the Manor House. This is Manor House. Today it is divided into apartments. There was an older Saxon structure here, but it was replaced in the twelfth century.

In Saxon times, the Manor House and the church were at the centre of the village. In , after the Norman Conquest, ownership of the village would have passed to new Norman overlords. But ordinary life for the common folk would have carried on as before — tilling the land, planting and harvesting the grain. The Domesday survey reveals that in the settlement had a population of 41 villagers, 15 small holdings, 10 ploughs, pigs, a church and three mills.

Grain crops were grown on the surrounding fields of the floodplain to be processed in the three mills. Chalk from the Dene Holes in nearby Joydens Wood provided an essential mineral for these farms.

By the fifteenth century, a small industry was established making bricks in Tile Kiln Lane. In he bought 3, bricks for 75p to construct a manor house in nearby Dartford. By the nineteenth century, the role of both the manor and the church in the village had diminished.

After , the inmates of the workhouse were sent to the larger Dartford Union institution as the government encouraged smaller village poorhouses to amalgamate for economic reasons following the Poor Law Act of Go through the gateway that lies between the entrance to Manor Farm Cottages and Manor Cottage into the cemetery.

Follow the track to the big tree, stop at the information board round the corner. As the village population grew, the church graveyard became full and so this cemetery was opened in the middle of the eighteenth century. Here you can find the graves of a few famous individuals, such as William Stanhope Lovell, who fought as a Midshipman at the Battle of Trafalgar and later rose to be Vice Admiral of the Fleet.

His ornate grave includes anchors and fish carved in stone. But there are also the graves of more ordinary individuals. Look around and compare the life expectancy between those who died in the s and s. You will see that very few people lived to what we now consider as old age and many died in infancy.

Since this cemetery has been a wildlife conservation area. Look out in particular for birds such as dunnock, wrens and wood pigeons. Follow the footpath straight up through the cemetery and leave through a small gateway.

Turn left onto a tarmac path. Stop after about 50 metres. Living in Bexley means living with traffic on a constant basis. The old medieval route which we saw in the High Street is not suitable for the volumes of traffic which pass through the modern village. Many villages and towns have bypasses to alleviate such problems and here in Bexley there have been proposals to build a bypass across this open land to the east of the village.

It would only be a mile or so long but it would eat into the Green Belt, particularly here between the railway line and Churchfield Wood. It would also damage a rich ecosystem which resembles the regeneration of ancient woodland.

The bypass has been proposed for a very long time. It appears on street maps in the late s as a proposed route but disappears again from subsequent versions. To date there has been no action and the current status of the proposal is unknown. Continue up the path. Just before the houses, turn left onto the footpath number into Churchfield Wood. Follow the footpath on the edge of the wood. After a short distance, the path bends slightly to the right and there are four electrical junction boxes.

Go about ten metres further and stop at a spot with a clear view of the gravel heaps. The main administrative centre of the area is Bexleyheath. This was a new town established in on the heath along the line of the old Roman road.

It also benefitted from its own railway line in and rapidly became suburbanised. You can see some of modern Bexleyheath on the ridge in the distance. In the s, the area here to the east of the village was saved from development by its location next to a floodplain.

Then in this land was included in the London Green Belt. A Green Belt is an area of protected land where development and building is restricted.

Through the trees on the right of the path you may glimpse some houses which are part of the post-war development of Coldblow.

This is a small extension to Bexley village that replaced some large Victorian villas. People moved here from inner London to get away from the smoke and grime of the city.

Those who had prospered in the post-war boom wanted to experience the convenience of the city next to the countryside. The transport infrastructure that linked Bexley to the capital allowed suburbanites to live at the edge and work in the service sector of the city. The housing in Coldblow is now made up of Victorian buildings converted into apartments, some s modernist houses and a mix of estates from the s.

Continue along the footpath on the edge of the wood. At the end, go over the stile and turn left down the tarmac footpath with the embankment and road on your right. Stop where the path meets the railway line. We noted earlier that settlements are frequently located beside rivers. People depend on water for their survival and use water and its kinetic power for their industries and economic activities.

The River Cray has had 14 mills from source to sea which have made use of this energy facility over the centuries, including the one we saw earlier in Bexley village. However, living beside rivers can also pose a risk. Notice that the land here is absolutely flat.

You will often find such level areas of land at the side of a river. They are known as a floodplains. These areas of land periodically flood when river water levels increase after particularly heavy rains. Floodplains offer both advantages and disadvantages. For one thing, the flat land provides ample space for urban expansion.

Secondly, a river at times of flood deposits sediments on the floodplain called alluvium. These sediments create a rich type of soil, which is good for farming and food production. Just to the left of the railway line here is a gravel pit where materials were extracted for building the main road beside you.

You may be able to see piles of gravel there today as this is still used as a depot for construction materials. Follow the footpath under the road bridge. Follow the footpath to a fork. Turn right up the slope to the main road. Turn right onto the road bridge over the railway. Take great care here because the traffic is very busy. Immediately after the bridge, take the steps down to the right. At the bottom, go through the gate into Hall Place Gardens.

Keep the hedge on your left, even when it makes a left turn. Stop at the first break in the hedge where there is a wooden bridge over a ditch. We heard at the last stop that the floodplain has had a positive effect on the development and growth of Bexley village. But there are also negatives that come with a riverside location. Floodplains — by their very nature — are prone to flooding. Indeed, Bexley village has suffered from periodic floods. For example, there was severe rainfall on September 5th — over 50mm fell in two hours.

The Cray overflowed here at Hall Place. There have been a series of works since the s designed to protect Bexley. These have included redesigning the mill that we saw earlier and limiting building around the village. Here in Hall Place Gardens, this ditch has been created as an overflow in times of high water. Excess water from the river, which we shall reach in a few moments, is diverted along this channel, taking it away from houses and roads.

It might seem quite amusing to see the signs for no swimming and strong currents when the ditch is completely dry but this is a vital attempt at alleviating flood risks. And the risk of flooding is set to continue. Towns and villages are full of impermeable surfaces — tarmac, pavements, driveways, buildings. These materials do not absorb rain water so it runs on the surfaces and down drains.

Sometimes there is too much for the drains to cope with and they overflow. This is known as flash flooding. Continue following the path beside the hedge. Cross over the river using the footbridge to the left. Follow the footpath beside the brick wall through the car park.

Turn left, still with the brick wall on your left. After a short distance, turn left into Hall Place Gardens. It is open daily from 9am to dusk. Go into the gardens and turn right down the central path following signs for the Visitor Centre and Historic House. When you are ready go through the far side of the Visitor Centre and stop in the gardens outside to look at Hall Place house. This is Hall Place, built from It replaced an earlier manor from with a newer building style which was fashionable at the time.

Sir John lived quite a different life to his neighbours in Bexley village. He would have had a luxurious lifestyle dining on such fine foods as roast peacock, while the villagers would have dined on the more humble pottage stew.

The extensive gardens on this 65 hectare site would have provided space for formal gardens as well as supplying the big house with produce. The building was extended between and in brick by Sir Robert Austin, who managed to keep his head and prosper under both the Roundheads and the Royalists during the turbulent times of the English Civil War.

During the eighteenth century, the house was inherited by Sir Francis Dashwood, a notorious rake and member of the Hellfire Club. His family leased the hall as a school for a considerable period before renting it to a number of tenants who required a country mansion near to London. The last tenant was Lady Limerick who died in She hosted famous social events at Hall Place.

They were installed in to celebrate the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II and depict animals from royal coats of arms.

The unit intercepted Luftwaffe coded communications, which were then forwarded to Bletchley Park for decoding. It is reputed that a white lady wanders the building seeking her lover who died while out hunting. Legend has it that Dick Turpin and his horse Black Bess jumped over them.

Do go inside the house if you are interested. It is open daily from 10am to 4pm but there is an entrance charge. When you are ready, retrace your steps through the Visitor Centre and the garden. At the exit, turn left and follow the perimeter wall of Hall Place through the car park and on to Bourne Road.

Stop at the main gates of the house for a fine view of the other side of the building. Continue a short way along the pavement and stop in a safe place at the roundabout. This busy roundabout would be unrecognisable to an inhabitant of Bexley village over a hundred years ago.

In , Gravel Hill on the other side of the roundabout was a small lane which wound its way up the slope to Bexleyheath. This area between Bexley and Bexleyheath was full of small-holdings and plant nurseries. The agricultural produce supplied local markets as well as the main London markets. At harvest time, hundreds of women migrated to the area to collect the fruit. The baskets were then transported by train to Covent Garden fruit market in central London.

Meanwhile, on the other side of Gravel Hill were farms such as Warren Farm, which grew wheat. Men worked the fields, tilling and reaping, while horses were used on its undulating slope. Potatoes were grown in Pincott Fields. Groups of local woman were employed to pick them. The potatoes were sent to Mandrews Limited, a new potato crisp factory at the top of Gravel Hill, established in the early s. This rural scene changed dramatically between and with the rapid expansion of suburbia in the fields to the west of Gravel Hill.

Smallholders were bought out by builders erecting new suburbs at a fantastic rate. In turn, the growing population had other demands such as improved road access - hence the development of the road layout that you see today.

The Strawberry train at Bexley station c. Keep left at the roundabout, following the signs for Bexley. Stop on the bridge over the A2, or if you prefer, find a quieter place a little further on. Car ownership grew after the First World War and this placed pressure on the existing road network which had often followed Roman or medieval road patterns.

So the A2 was built in to try and deal with these modern changes. Bexley enclaves always in demand include Blendon and Baldwyns Park. Click for Bexley Village's council tax rates. Living in Bexley Village. Property for Sale Property to Rent. To Buy. To Rent. Cookie Policy We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can use the browser setting to change your cookie setting. Otherwise we'll assume you're OK to continue. Welcome to Bexley Our area guide for living in Bexley offers a brief overview of the area, its attractions, properties, schools, history, council tax and public transport links.

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