Gorsewood Road - Hartley-Kent: The Website for Hartley

Gorsewood Road is one of Hartley's longer roads with a considerable variety of ages and styles of low density housing.  It descends down the side of the valley to the railway.  It started life as a farm track which ran from Middle Farm to Longfield Rectory.  This track is clearly marked on the 1869 Ordnance Survey map of Hartley.  The railway now divides the Hartley from the Longfield section of Gorsewood Road, when I was young there was a crossing at the bottom of the road, with a sign warning of a ten shilling fine for trespassing on the railway.  Now the warning sign mentions a £1,000 for trespass.  In 1968 concerns for the safety of the 60 schoolchildren who had to cross the railway daily led to calls for something to be done.  This finally led to the opening of the underpass in June 1974 at a cost of £41,000 (Gravesend Reporter 3.5.1968, 31.5.1968; Dartford Chronicle 28.6.1974).

The first house to be built was Johns (originally called Meru) in 1913.  See Johns Close below for more details of the interesting history of this house.

Meanwhile nearly all of the west side of the road and the east side from the railway to Gorsewood Farm was bought by a London car manufacturer, Adam Grimaldi & Co Limited. Instead of building a factory here, they sold the land in 1922 to Edith Dorothy Williams. She and her husband arranged for mains water to be laid on in 1923 (Dartford RDC Minutes 4.12.1923). But development proceeded very slowly and it appears not quick enough for Mr and Mrs Williams as their mortgage was foreclosed upon by the bank in 1934.

By 1939 there were 17 houses in Gorsewood Road.  A further 9 houses were added in the 1940s, but development quickened thereafter with 31 houses being added in the next decade, and a further 19 in the 1960s. During the latter part of the war years a number of building plots were sold in Hartley Wood, but planning permission was refused for all of them after the war.

The small piece of woodland that divides Gorsewood Road from Caxton Close is all that remains of the wood which gave the road its name.  That any of it survives is thanks to a local residents campaign in the 1970s which saved it from housing.  The remains of Gorsewood were transferred to the Parish Council in 1978.  More recently another local campaign succeeded in getting the path between Gorsewood Road and Caxton Close declared an official footpath.   

Over the years there has been some commercial uses of the road. Before the war there was farming at Gorsewood Farm and the Lantern was home to a bookseller. After the war there was a builders yard where Sunnyside is now, and Austrel Cottage included boarding kennels.

The road was made up and adopted by Kent County Council in 1971-2 at the expense of the frontagers. This involved some widening of the road between Church Road and Johns Close.

Historically most of the land was part of the Hartley Court estate, except from the East side from Church Road to The Beeches which belonged to Middle Farm.