Planning and Development
Early Planning History
Before the Second World War there was a loose form of planning control, where building plans were approved by the district council, under local bye-laws. Dartford Rural District Council had bye-laws for the more urban parts of the district before the first world war, but they were not extended to this area until 1921. This didn't really prevent people building where they wanted, but it did place controls on building standards. The council were made aware of the limitations of bye-laws 1924 when they were powerless to prevent The Stores, Church Road, being built much closer to the road than they would have liked and potentially prejudicing future road widening.
Longfield-Hartley New Town 1944
Hartley has developed slowly and piecemeal since the war, but it might not have been like that. For Hartley, Longfield and Meopham were designated as one of the proposed post-war new towns.
In 1942 the Standing Conference on London Regional Planning was commissioned to come up with proposals for the region outside the old county of London. The team led by Professor Patrick Abercrombie reported in 1944. Their aim was to encourage 1 million people to move from the crowded areas of inner London to new towns near London, and to discourage migration to the region by putting an embargo on new industries in the south-east. Professor Crombie said "courage is needed to seize the moment when it arrives and to make a resolute start". Professor Abercrombie said "courage is needed to seize the moment when it arrives and to make a resolute start".
Sir (Leslie) Patrick Abercrombie (1879 - 1957) was by far the greatest architect and town planner of his day. As well as London, he produced post war plans for Plymouth, Hull, Edinburgh and West Midlands amongst others. He was a modernist and clearly loved the job of proposing brand new sites, but he greatly valued the past too, in particular he was at pains to protect the beauty of the Darenth Valley. He was one of the founders of the Council for the Protection of Rural England and campaigned for the Green Belt around London before the war.
"The choosing of sites for new communities is always an exhilarating side of the planner's work; it is impossible to escape from the sequel that opportunity is to be offered for the creation of a town which will embody the latest ideas of civic design"
Patrick Abercrombie, Greater London Plan 1944.
The report proposed 10 new towns around London. They had intended that any eight of them should be built, but in the end only Stevenage, Harlow and Hemel Hempstead got off the drawing board. They did reject one site at that little place called Milton Keynes! North-west Kent proved difficult to find sites for, but the Meopham area came to the fore from about July 1943.
"Adams has in mind 20,000 satellite town in Meopham area, but no site found by him as yet" (7.7.1943)
PRO HLG 85/11
The other sites in Kent which they rejected were:
- West of Longfield and at Farningham Road - good agricultural land and couldn't support large enough population. Farningham Road area "bleak and not residentially attractive".
- Knockholt - too small, hilly, good orchards, too near London
- Chevening - technically possible but would spoil view from the N Downs
- Paddock Wood - too far from London, a 60,000 industrial satellite would be a mistake here.
This town of 40,000 would have included a big swathe of Hartley east of the Ash Road/Church Road junction and Castle Hill, stretching south of the railway to Hook Green just short of Meopham Green in the east. North of the railway would have been an industrial area comprising the southern half of New Barn and Longfield Hill (jam and fruit, mineral waters, plastics, agricultural implements were suggested). Just over 2 miles in diameter, the town was over 2,600 acres in extent. What remained of Hartley would be the new green belt. The town would have also been partly a dormitory suburb of Gravesend.
Plan showing the proposed new towns, roads and airports (click on image to enlarge)
The town would have been divided into 4 neighbourhoods of about 500 acres, where the overall density would be about 20 people per acre, a little higher than the approximate 15 per acre today. They were greatly influenced by the garden cities of Letchworth and Welwyn, and so wanted spacious towns of small terraces of houses with generous gardens. No more than 25% of housing would be flats. They did acknowledge the undulating topography would call for some ingenuity in planning! In each 500 acres, two-thirds would be devoted to housing for 10,000 people. Of the rest 100 acres was to be open space and the rest roads, parking, shops, schools, churches and other community buildings. A town this size would qualify for 4 secondary modern schools. There would be provision for 8 churches (based on 10% of the population attending weekly) and 6 swimming pools, as well as numerous sports pitches, some to be shared with schools.
To give some idea of how the new towns would look like they gave three examples. The nearest in style to Hartley would have been Ongar in Essex, although this was scheduled to be larger (60,000 population). The town would be divided into 6 neighbourhoods of 10,000 each with their own shops, civic centre and schools. In the centre of the town would be the main shopping centre and grammar schools. The neighbourhoods would be divided by parkland and each neighbourhood itself was to be divided into smaller units by smaller green wedges. Housing would be a mixture of houses and flats at an average of 30 per acre for the built up area, and no higher than 50 per acre anywhere. Like Hartley the industry was to be in the north-east to carry any smoke or smell away from the town. One of the planners' principal aims was to "create real communities in which people can be proud to live".
1. 2. 3.
Plans and elevations for proposed new town at Ongar (click on image to enlarge).
But what about infrastructure? Well the planners did consider this too. Thousands of houses would generate a lot of traffic, so the answer was to build a motorway from Swanley to Canterbury that would have skirted the south of Hartley just before the Ash Road/Church Road junction in New Ash Green (incidently they were first to propose the M25). The noise might not have been so much of a problem when you consider they also wanted a freight airport at Lullingstone!
A town this size would need almost 1.5 million gallons of water per day. They reckoned the Hartley pumping station, which had gone on line in 1944, might cope but another pumping station at Fawkham might become necessary (the Hartley station could pump 2¼ million gallons per day but about half went to Gravesend). On sewerage they dropped the initial plan to pump treated sewage into the chalk, preferring instead to suggest sewers to the Northfleet disposal works. They were quite worried about contamination of water supplies, saying only concrete and asphalt roads should be allowed.
Almost as soon as Professor Abercrombie had made his recommendation, than the various government departments were squabbling about the best site. The Ministry of Town Planning wanted to move the site a mile to the east so it would mainly be in Meopham with a satellite town of 10,000 planned for Longfield and Hartley. There are plans in the National Archives of how this would have looked. It is remarkable how little opposition these plans appear to have generated (there is one objection on file from the Meopham Ratepayers Committee, but none from Hartley). Perhaps there was a consensus to "win the peace".
The Ministry of Town Planning were vigorously opposed by the Ministry of Agriculture, who argued that the existing development at Hartley had harmed the agriculture of the area, and therefore there was less to lose than at Meopham. A big conference of 7 government departments was held on 20 March 1946 to try to decide between Hartley-Longfield, Meopham and a third site at Crowhurst near Croydon. This showed them to be hopelessly split. - the Departments of Town Planning, Trade, Labour, and Health backed Meopham; while Agriculture and Fuel and Power were the ministries to support Hartley-Longfield (Crowhurst got the vote of the Ministry of Transport). Wherever they went it is likely that they would have compulsorily purchased and demolished most of the existing housing.
Although the town was not built, the idea of development in Hartley didn't go away. In 1952 there were plans for an overspill town for 25,000 in Hartley-Longfield on 1,000 acres of land, a 1955 memo from the Ministry of Agriculture said that their Minister had "relunctantly" agreed to this tentative proposal, but it had fallen through because of local authority opposition. It certainly accelerated the development of Hartley, as developers bought large swathes of land in the parish in the 1950s. And who knows - did all these plans influence the decision a decade later to grant permission to New Ash Green?
After the war, Hartley was very much in the forefront of the planner's minds. The 1.10.1949 edition of the Gravesend Reporter records a protest meeting against Longfield and Hartley becoming an overspill town for 5,000 from Dartford. Later in 1954 the Dartford Rural District Council Bulletin (no 20 - in New Ash Green file in Dartford Library) informed locals that the London County Council wanted to build a town for 20,000 - 30,000 in the Hartley-Longfield area covering 1,000 acres, not including the extra land needed for industry.
Town and Country Planning Act 1947
Although since replaced by the 1990 act, the 1947 Act is the foundation of modern planning law. The wartime government had anticipated this by the Town and Country Planning (Interim Development) Act 1943 which made all land subject to planning control. This was to cause trouble later on, for some people claimed they had been told they wouldn't need planning permission when they bought plots in Gorsewood Road.
Under the act, Kent County Council was to be the main planning authority, but they immediately delegated decisions on planning applications to the Districts. They were responsible for preparing a planning scheme for the county. As part of that they published a survey called "Planning Basis for Kent" in 1948 which was a survey of Kent and set out some of their ideas for the later county plan. The Longfield area gets some mentions:
- They opposed the Hartley-Longfield-Meopham new town proposals. They thought
- the population decanted from London could better be accommodated in existing towns, in particular Ashford.
- Loss of good agricultural land
- Difficult to develop
- It is too near Dartford and Gravesend to be anything more than a dormitory town for them.
- Main Road in Longfield was getting 1,000 vehicles a day, they proposed making it 60 feet wide.
- The 1947 Act introduced listing of historical buildings. Locally they proposed listing Ash, Hartley, Fawkham and Longfield churches, as well as Ash Manor and Longfield Rectory (they may have meant Longfield Court as Longfield Old Rectory is Victorian).
- Abercrombie had proposed a motorway from Catford to Swanley to Cuxton which would go through Hartley. KCC proposed moving it further north so it would go through the north part of Meopham.
Hartley-Longfield and Meopham Town Map 1958
When the 1958 Hartley-Longfield and Meopham Town Map was adopted, Springcroft and Green Way had just been built, but much of central Hartley was still undeveloped. The approach then was more to say where and when development would be allowed, rather than where it wouldn't be. There was no green belt land locally then (the Green Belt only extended to the west of the Fawkham Valley Road), but "white" land, unallocated for development, where planning applications for new houses were normally refused. This white area was roughly the same as today's green belt, but there have been encroachments upon it at the estates at Bramblefield, Downs Valley and Chantry Avenue. In addition the back gardens of some of the houses on the south side of Manor Drive which were white land, have now been incorporated into the development area. It was in 1957 that the proposed green belt was first mentioned in a refusal for development at Hartley Manor (56/356), but the area was still only proposed Green Belt when New Ash Green was given planning permission in 1963.
Within the development area the council wanted to see phased development, in two stages:
For the first 5 years they only wanted infill development at Gresham Avenue, Larksfield, Carmelite Way, Cherry Trees, Stack Lane and Manor Drive.
In the 6-20 year period land at the Wellfield Estate and the Round Ash Way area was earmarked for development.
It is clear from planning refusals at this time that the council preferred shopping parades to the individual shops in Hartley, and this is reflected in the zoning. The only areas zoned for shops were the existing parade at the Ash Road/Church Road junction (which was to be extended to the site on the other side of the junction, which had already been earmarked for shops the past 50 years), and the future one at Cherry Trees. Notable by its absence was the Little Shop in Church Road and Fairby Stores (the latter is now zoned for shopping). One other site of interest is Billings Hill Shaw, which was to be the site of a new Primary School.
The North West Kent Town Map 1972
A copy of this is available to view in Hartley Library. This was prepared just after the Green Belt was extended to Hartley in 1971. This map prepared the ground for the developments of the late 1970s as the former white land at Billings Hill Shaw and the future Chantry Avenue were not included in the Green Belt. In this map the far end of Fairby Lane and the new Primary School were all included in the village envelope (central development area), however the 1994 Sevenoaks District plan moved the green belt boundary to include them. The plan also allowed for the station carpark on the Hartley side of the railway.
The North West Kent Town Map 1978
At a public enquiry into the North West Kent Town Plan in 1977, there were three applications to take land in Hartley out of the Green Belt
A triangle of land with a frontage of 100 yards to Ash Road near New Ash Green (now occupied by the Middle School and Northfield). Bovis (New Ash Green) Limited said they had planning permission to build there in 1964, and that their master plan (which showed no housing here) should not be regarded as definitive. In reply Kent County Council said the 1964 planning permission was exhausted so far as the housing provision goes. The enquiry also received support for the county council from Hartley Parish Council, who said it "was an essential division between Hartley and New Ash Green and should be preserved as green belt for all time".
The inspector agreed with the council. This is a matter for normal development control powers.
The 1½ acres of Stocks Farm, Church Road. The applicant had argued there had been considerable development along Church Road, and the council had approved new housing particularly at Billings Hill Shaw that was a departure from the previous development plan. He only wanted low density housing which would be unobtrusive. The council replied that they needed "rigorous.. planning control" to maintain the character of Church Road, and a previous application to build there had been refused on appeal. They wanted to prevent the coalescence of Hartley and New Ash Green, and had in any case already released land for development at Downs Valley, Chantry Avenue and Billings Hill Shaw. There is a clear break between the latter and Stocks Farm.
The inspector agreed with the council. This is a matter for normal development control powers.
Hartley Grange and proposed public open space at Billings Hill Shaw. George Wimpey & Co Ltd wanted reassurance that no part of the land they wanted to build Billings Hill Shaw on would be allocated as green belt. They are prepared to sell 4 acres to the Parish Council for this purpose.
The inspector said there was no difference between the council's and developer's positions and therefore no amendment was required.