29 January 1971 Many Kentish villages have spawned an offshoot of ‘executive-type’ properties for townsmen, while farmworkers live down the road in the council houses
KENT: Only two broad fields separate the churchyard of Ash from the flat timber facades of one of the “neighbourhoods” of the newly-created village of Ash Green that is rising from the wet clays of the downland plateau. To the south lies a church, a seventeenth century house and a farm linked by a narrow lane with a line of cottages straggling along a roadside with a pub at the end of the road. To the north stands the assertive gathering of modern houses grouped round a two-storey shopping precinct, a miniature new town bearing the word “village” proudly at its centre. The rural scene survives in a neglected orchard, a scrubby valley destined for parkland treatment and a fine ash preserved in a roundabout. The lanes are losing the comfort of their confining banks, making way for new pavements and open views for the speeding commuter.
Related: Let’s move to New Ash Green, Kent: there’s no hiding from the neighbours here
Continue reading...source https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2021/jan/25/country-diary-1971-recently-created-new-ash-green-prompts-the-question-what-is-a-village
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