Kevington

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Post to the north St.Paul's Cray

Post to the east rural Crockenhill

Post to the south Skeet Hill

Post to the west St.Mary Cray


Crockenhill Road
Kevington House. Big, square, red-brick house, five bays by six. Three storeys. Wide bow the full height of the front. Generous white window surrounds. Built c. 1767 by Sir R. Taylor.  Built for Herman Behrens Dutch merchant.  Used for Canadian troops in the Second World War then used as a Kent County Council primary school until the 1980s.
Stables. Redbrick and flint
Oak View was Shawcroft School for maladjusted children, relaxed. In kitchen garden of old manor house 1830 stables built in 1767. Kevington eighteenth century manor house Baldwin says he saw a wall full of snakes, a good example of the sharp informality of the early 1970s, by Sir Roger Walters, G. L. C. Architect's Department. Red brick. Much play with monopitch roofs. Has become a privately run school.
Ice wells
1 Kevington Cottage
2 Oak Cottage
Yew Tree Cottage
Childs Cottage was Blueberry Farm also once the Kevington Arms, wooden building with mathematical tiles outside.
Little Kevington Farm, old barn went in 1987

Kevington
‘Kevington’ 1610, ‘Kevington’ 1690, ‘Kevingtowne’ c.1762, probably -farmstead or estate associated with a man called ‘Cyfa', from an Old English personal name with Old English medial ‘ing’ and ‘tun’. The name appears twice, as both Kevington and Kevingtown, on the Ordnance Survey map of 1876, and the farm here is still called Kevington Farm.  Might mean ‘small place on a hill’.  Manor of Kevington owned by the Manning and Onslows until mid 18th when sold to Herman Behrens. Behrens family owned it until Second World War.

Walden Road
Walden Manor. called Orpington House, where the Buff Orpington was developed by William Cook in the 1890s.

The Warren:
Acid grassland and woodland. Run by London Wildlife Trust.. The reserve is on a small plateau and contains a mix of glades and shady woodland. It suffers from motorcyclists who have damaged a patch of open grassland – but which offers magnificent views of the railway cutting and woods. Late 19C maps show the area as completely wooded so the reserve may have been part of the Kevington Woods. It has two interconnected large ponds, one with crested newts, which once formed a single boating lake but is now a large expanse of open water with banks covered in rushes and yellow flag irises. The marshy area between the ponds once would have let willow and flote grass choke.  The ponds together with the large stands of rhododendron, shows clearly the desire to this ornament ancient woodland. The reserve is mostly covered with broadleaved native trees but towards the edge there are colonising silver birch and bracken. Towards the south it is damper and there is another less stable dank hollow hidden at the very edge of the reserve.
Medicinal spring in Kevington Wood in the charge of a hermit.

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