Grove Green Cottage, Boxley

I've been recording a series of shots of historic building in Bearsted. While this house is in the adjacent parish of Boxley it is in our locality and worthy of a mention not least because of its secluded nature. We've walked or cycled past this spot several times but not stopped to look or had the incentive to research this small enclave.

This cottage is part of a small hamlet of three or four houses, probably based around a farm, including the farmhouse an oast house and another building called Stone House.

According to the British Listed Buildings website Grove Green Cottage is a 2 story C15 or C16 house, rendered, with plain tile hipped roof with a plinth at the right end. There is a ridge chimney stack off-centre to left and projecting stack at right end (which I can't see). Irregular fenestration windows) of 3 casements, one towards left end, one off-centre to right, and one towards right end. The building has a C20 ground floor bay window off-centre to right, of brick with hipped plain tile roof and a C20 brick porch with plain tile roof off-centre to left.

This shot, beautiful and tranquil as it is belies the surroundings. This small hamlet is squeezed in between a large Tesco stores and the huge 1980s Grove Green housing estate.

The Grove Green estate was built on eastern part of the old Vinters Country Estate owned for a very long time by the Whatman family, makers of fine paper. The eastern part of the Estate was recorded as being a market garden and I'm assuming this cottage and the others in the hamlet are part of this farm. The western part of Vinters Estate was developed in the 1970s as another housing estate, almost filling the gap between Maidstone and Bearsted. This western half was recorded as being hop gardens and wheat fields.

Between the two housing estates is New Cut Road and an open area of school playing fields which used to be the Estate's parkland.

Some of the western part of the Estate was saved from developers in the 1980s by the creation of Vinters Park Nature Reserve which encloses some of the ground occupied by Vinters Park House which was demolished in the late 1950's following being destroyed by fire.