Sevenoaks; Saturday, 13 November, 2021

An early breakfast and then out of the hotel and over to the station to pick up the train to my first stop of the morning, Eynsford, a small Kentish village, lying on the valley of the River Darent that holds a surprising amount of history for a settlement of it’s size. My first stop was just to the south of the village, right by the River Darent at the Lullingstone Roman Villa.

Work on the villa started some time in the first century and carried on for much of it’s existence. It was in use right upto the end of the Roman occupation of Britain but was soon abandoned. The villa itself has a number of unique features from all of it’s rebuilds and expansions, but perhaps the most important are the cult room – which was used for worshiping Roman Deities, and the chapel, built in the 4th century which is one of the earliest traces of Christian worship in Britain.

About a 20 minute walk along the river bank from the villa and through the village centre you reach it’s Norman Castle. Originally built just after the conquest the castle was abandoned within a couple of hundred years and as such serves as a good example of what an early Norman castle would have looked like without any later additions.

Large parts of the outer curtain wall, as well as significant sections of the floor plan of the keep remain and you can explore round most of the site.

Having taken in the castle and the villa I headed back to the station. My next stop was north of here and the logical thing would be to pick up the same train I came in on and head north – but due to the way the railways were designed round here in the Victorian era with competing companies that isn’t possible – instead it would require two changes of train and take close to 90 minutes. Instead I headed back to Sevenoaks and picked up the train there north to Chislehurst.

From the station it was a short walk down to the entrance to my next stop of the day, Chislehurst Caves. Caves is a bit of a misnomer for them as the whole system has been carved out of the chalk by humans over a few thousand years – so it’s more abandoned mine workings than caves. The first tunnels were dug possibly 4,000 years ago when hunter gatherers were looking for flint which are in abundance in the chalk rock. During the Roman occupation further workings were made extracting both the flint and chalk for building material and also using the chalk to turn into lime for creating concrete. The final set of workings were undertaken during the Saxon era.

Mining had ceased long before the 20th century at which point the caves were turned into a successful mushroom growing business that prospered right up until 1939 when the caves became impromptu air-raid shelters. Over time the numbers staying underground grew from a few hundred locals to around 15,000 people – many of whom lived here permanently after their homes were destroyed in bombing raids. After the war the caves hosted music concerts and discos, but with the building of houses near the entrance in the 1990s that all came to an end as the new neighbours immediately started complaining about the noise from the revellers kicking out at 2am (it would be impossible to hear the actual noise of the disco from the surface).

Access to the caves is by guided tour only, and the 45 minute walk takes in all three different sections of the workings, as well as focussing on what life would have been like for the people sheltering down here from the bombs during WWII.

From the caves it was a short walk back to the station and I picked up a train back to Sevenoaks for another evening in the hotel.