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Long Barn and White House Farm – 12th September 2024 at 10:00

Location: Meet at the entrance to Long Barn, Sevenoaks Weald, Kent TN14 6NH at 10am, moving to White House Farm and Arboretum, Ivy Hatch, Kent TN15 0NL for 2pm.

Cost: £50.00, Members £45.00 (includes coffee at Long Barn. Lunch is not included, but there are various local pubs near White House Farm.)

This event is fully booked, but you may register on the waiting list in case places become available.There are currently 2 people on the waiting list for this event.

We visit two contrasting private gardens in west Kent. Our morning destination is Long Barn, the mediaeval hall house with terraced gardens created by Vita Sackville-West and Harold Nicholson from 1915-1932, before they moved to Sissinghurst. Similar Arts and Crafts influences helped to shape Long Barn, where the formal terraces on six levels are flanked by informal areas including an orchard and a vegetable garden. Expect clipped yews, lawns, flights of steps, and exuberant planting constrained by stone retaining walls and brick-edged beds. The visit will start with coffee, cake, and a short talk on the history of the garden by the owner, Rebecca Limonius.

In the afternoon we are delighted to have a further visit to the garden and arboretum at White House Farm. Maurice Foster, holder of the Victoria Medal for Horticulture and a plantsman of international renown, has developed over 40 years a superb collection of woody plants which provide year-round colour. Many of the trees and shrubs on the 15-acre site have been grown from seed collected in the wild, with hydrangeas a particular feature. A fair degree of mobility is needed to get the most from the visit, as the terrain is hilly.

KGT Contact: Caroline Bowdler 07934 499505

Of Markets and Munitions: Trade and Industry in Faversham – 20th October 2024 at 11:00

Location: Join a circular walk of about 2½ miles (about 2 hours) starting at the railway station to explore some of the lesser known locations in the town that are nevertheless of great importance in the history of Faversham.

Cost: £20.00, Members £18.00

Book online. There is currently 1 place available for this event.

Of Markets and Munitions: Landscapes of Trade and Industry in Faversham

This guided walk by KGT Trustee and ITG Blue Badge guide for South-East England, Karen Emery, has been developed in part to showcase two of the landscapes that have been researched recently by KGT members for Swale Borough Council.
An early medieval hostelry and 12th century abbey attest to the venerable history of Faversham and its wide market street, wharves and creek are evidence of the importance of Faversham as a limb of the Cinque Ports in the Middle Ages. The town’s potential for trade and commerce was good, though it was the gunpowder industry that put Faversham on the map, reaching its peak during the Napoleonic Wars. Chart Gunpowder Mills was part of Home Works and almost the oldest in the country, the landscape adapted to fit the requirements of the industry. Inevitably a hazardous enterprise, the 1916 Great Explosion at Uplees was the worst in the history of the British explosives industry and its victims are remembered at a memorial in another of our landscapes, the Faversham Cemetery.

KGT contact: Karen Emery 07716 291038