Thames Tributary Darent - Lullingstone Castle Farm

Thames Tributary Darent
The Darent continues northwards

Post to the north Lullingstone
Post to the south Shoreham

Castle Road
Path through a line of poplars an orchard and a hop-garden
Shoreham Castle Farm house. Tudor farm site. It is an irregularly shaped timber-framed farmhouse which includes some flint walling in the south wall. This is if exceptional thickness and it narrows and curves round, from south to east. It site was the manor of Lullingstone-castle until 1715.
Two large fragments of flint walling
Bridge carries a right turn in the road across the main watercourse, from which a small stream also turns right
Huts - Just right of the bridge are two small, green-painted, corrugated iron sheds, the only surviving hop-pickers huts along the Darent. Until 1960, two hundred East Enders came every year for four weeks to pick hops and they lived in huts like these. They filled wicker baskets with hops, which then went to the oast after which they were stuffed into hop pockets – huge 6 ft sacks.
Shoreham Castle. There was a keep here in Norman times using the Darent for a moat, which has left no trace. By the 16th it was in ruins, some of which are still visible in the fabric of Castle Farm. Originally thus medieval fortified manorial complex was on land granted to Bishop Odo of Bayeux at the Conquest. In 1307 it passed to Hugo de Poyntz, under the Archbishop of Canterbury.
Windmill by the bridge is ornamental. Said to be water powered,
Lullingstone Park Visitors Centre
The Rookery

Summer House Knoll
Summer house here in 1769

Iron Age farmstead site

Sources
  
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