Will they win the most beautiful village in Kent award

Ottoford's pond is a listed building
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Published in the Weekend Argus Travel supplement on 11/12June 2005, by Karen Watkins

Exploring London is exciting, but after a few days I was exhausted and claustrophobic, craving greenery and fresh air. After a 36-minute train ride, I found myself in the picturesque village of Otford, West Kent. At the weekend the village transforms as day-trippers and hikers, with bib-maps and books, invade this quiet 6^th century Saxon settlement village.

The strange curiosity of the pond being a listed building

Five minutes walk along the High Street I came to a strange curiosity - a pond and sheltered by two tall willow trees which is a ‘listed building’. Earlier last century, as it bubbled out of the ground from a nearby spring, it was the main source of water for the village. Now, designated as a conservation area, the Parish Council gives the pond’s ducks a food allowance.

The short High Street is lined with many historical buildings, antique shops, restaurants as well as four pubs. The Bull contains a feature of particular interest - a tall wooden settle known as Becket’s Chair. It has acquired a reputation as a “wishing seat”. Probably equal to the number of pubs are the churches. The most magnificent one is St Bartholomew’s, across from the Pond. The massive tower dates from 1066 and the time of the Norman Conquest.

Behind the church is what little remains of Otford Palace - a tower linked by cottages to one side of the old gatehouse, its stairway turret adapted as a dovecote. The Palace rivalled that of Hampton Court and was the residence of the Archbishop of Canterbury. Henry VIII was entertained here with his queen and five thousand followers. He desired the palace so much, that he exchanged it for one of his. This done, he only lived in it for a short while before moving on.

In the Heritage Centre, I examined a scale model of the village before wandering across the road. In the sport’s ground is another curiosity - Otford’s scale model of the solar system at the moment of the Millennium. This model brought international fame to the village and an entry in the Guinness Book of Records. It is the only one showing the Solar system as a whole and at a particular moment in time. The brainchild of David Thomas and Barry Keenan, it gives a good impression of the size and emptiness of the sky, how small we are and helps to put our lives in perspective.

The sun is represented as a dome with each planet or pillar positioned to give the viewer a size comparison of each planet to the sun. Mercury, Venus, Earth, Moon, Mars, and Jupiter are shown as white beacons, but for safety reasons the Mars pillar, found between two football pitches, is at ground level. Saturn stands at the entrance to the surgery at the far end of the village. Other pillars can be seen in the Griffith Observatory in Los Angeles, Sydney Observatory in Australia and the Stanley Museum on the Falkland Islands.

The quaint village straddles the Darent River, flowing through the cleft in the North Downs on its way to the Thames estuary. The river held a strategic position at the southern entry to the pass through the North Downs, so it wasn’t surprising to hear that, on two occasions, battles were fought here.

For walkers, the Darent Valley Path follows the river running from Dartford to Sevenoaks, passing through Otford. Wooded chalk hills rise from the broad fertile valley hiding many other paths and byways. The most well known is the North Downs Way, a 250 km trail taking 11 days to complete. It follows a succession of chalk ridges running between Farnham and Dover. For a trail that cuts across the southeast commuter belt and only a hedgerow away from the motorway, it is remarkably rural and peaceful. There is evidence that the North Downs was first used as a pathway at least 250,000 years ago, during the early Stone Age era. By the pre-Roman Iron Age the track had become a major trade route, but the greatest association is as a route of pilgrimage to the shrine of Thomas à Becket at Canterbury, consequently known as The Pilgrims’ Way.

Much of the North Downs Way runs parallel to the Pilgrim’s Way, with many yew trees along the way. According to fable, each one marks the grave of a pilgrim. Following a section of the path, climbing over stiles and passing through a golf course, I was excited to see a fox running through some trees.

It is not surprising that many writers and artists have been inspired by the surrounding landscape, including Darwin, Dickens, Turner, Wordsworth and Jane Austin.