M25 Dunton Green


Post to the north Polhill
Post to the west Star Hill

Anisbirches Wood

Ivy House Lane
Little Dunton. This was a farm with an important well.  It appears to be gone.


Lime Pit Lane
This short road seems to have once been called the Pilgrims Way and led to Polhill Road and then carried onto the Pilgrims Way now west of the M25.
North Downs Business Park. Trading estate built up during the 1980s.th site includes building supplies, cement, exhibition fitters and very posh car servicing.
Dunton Green Lime Works. The works dated from at least the 18th the site is on the crest of the North Downs scarp face working the Middle Chalk. Lime kilns were of the 'shaft' or 'bottle' type producing quicklime. There was an associated quarry


London Road
Rose and Crown.  The pub name symbolises the union of York and Lancaster. This was a coaching stop on what was then the main London to Hastings Road. It dates from at least the 1830s in this form but was the Chequers in the 17th and stood on what was probably the original village green.
Post Box – wall mounted on the east side
Milestone. 21st milestone from London Bridge and third from Sevenoaks
Donnington Manor Hotel. This is a mock Tudor building built just after the Second World War by Bill Newman who used genuine   materials from all over the country.
Emma Hotel. This house is now the hotel restaurant at Donnington Manor. It is a timber framed house from the 15th with an entry wing from the late 16th. It was later converted to cottages; and then in 1936 remodelled and extended as one building and many additions made. The whole building has been changed a great deal but is still substantially an old structure. There are large additions at the back.
Marble elephants stand in front of the hotel.
Mount Pleasant. Late 18th house, at the end of the terrace and hidden from the road. It appears at one time to have been a smithy
Balancing Pond – to soak up excess moisture from the motorway
Reservoir. Built by Sevenoaks Rural District Council


Morants Court Road
This is the final section of London Road from the roundabout at Morants Court. Before the M25 was built this was the main A21. The road name refers to a farm in the square to the south.
Morants Court Cross. The roundabout at the junction of the old A21 with local roads.  It stands above the M25 but there is no junction with it. We're now at the bottom of Polhill. After a junction for Otford, This was also where the old  Sevenoaks By-pass used to start – now its route is the M25.
In the mid 1980s, the A21 was upgraded from D2 to D3M to become the M25 and the A2028 became the A224 when that road was extended south of Badgers Mount. The junction for Otford, which was formerly a GSJ, is one of the leftovers from those days.


M25
The M25 running southwards has also been the current A21 from junction 4 to the north. In this stretch the roads begin to divide as they approach junction 5, to the south.  The old A21 runs parallel to it as the Polhill Road.

Pilgrims Way West
Pilgrims Way Link Bridge. This goes across the M25 to link the Polhill Road with Pilgrims Way West.
Anglo Saxon cemetery. This was found near current link bridge during the building of the M25. During previous road building in this area Saxon remains had been found. In 1967  an excavation of some of the site was done and continued in 1984 in response to the expansion of the M25. It is on the lower slopes of Polhill on a false crest of a steep hillside, with a view across the valley and to the north and south-west.  From the centre of Otford, the cemetery is visible and thus the ancestors could see and be seen.
Dane Bottom. Supposed site of a battle between Edmund Ironside and the Danish King in 1016. It is thought the battlefield was actually nearer the river Darent

Polhill Road
This is the old turnpike road to Sevenoaks and lattery the A21. Now downgraded to the A224. Until the 1960s this carried on into Dunton Green becoming London Road.  A road, shown on maps as ‘New Cut’ then took it onto its present route to continue into Sundridge Road – this became then the Sevenoaks Bypass, and, now, very much rebuilt and altered, the M25.


Star Hill Road
Road going from the A21/M25 to Knockholt. This would have once been the main road superseded because of its steep slope. Double decker buses however still use it.

Sundridge Road
This is now the B2211 numbered in the late 1930s. It continues to Westerham


Sources
British Listed Buildings. Web site
Domesday Reloaded. Web site
Dunton Green Brick and Tile Works. Web site
Kent Archaeology. Web site
North Downs Business Park. Web site
Rose and Crown. Web site
SABRE. Web site
Pub History. Web site
Whitaker. The Water Supply of Kent

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