Chestfield has a long history
If we start with the present, there is a continuing line of evidence that over the last 90 years Chestfield has acted as a whole, as well as in a fragmented or a subordinated way. This includes the building of shops in the 1920s opposite the Village Green and the establishment of a wide range of groups in the 1930s: Chestfield Women’s Institute, Cricket and Rugby Clubs. Following this there was a temporary local school, which was run during World War II in the 1940s at Chestfield Farm House. After the war came a variety of community projects, including self-help groups who paved and maintained many hundreds of metres of roads that had not been adopted by the Highway Authority. These practical problems (among others) led to the creation of the Chestfield Society as a political lobbying and recreation group in 1966, and as a result of its work the founding of Chestfield Parish Council in 1988. From then on, the record of Chestfield as both a unit and a focus for events that drew on a more widespread population is heavily documented. Both sports clubs (Cricket, Golf, Rugby, Table Tennis) and other groups ranging from Rotary to the Scouts are called 'Chestfield' organisations, but all serve wider areas.
For a historian, it is engaging to view Chestfield as both a collection of smaller places and a part of larger ones, as this is a constant in its history from long before the 20th century. We will see how such a view helps in understanding what has driven its past as well as explaining its present. There is a strong argument that we do do not deserve to be called a village when considering the other villages that have churches, inns, an old manor house (more on this later), a village shop, or a village green once used for Maypole dancing. Chestfield was created during the late 1920s in open countryside as a property development project by a businessman called George Reeves. Just walking around the place we can see evidence he wanted to create a mock Tudor estate, but also a centre for Londoners who were looking for holiday homes. Reeves planned for London commuters, golfing enthusiasts, garden city idealists and tried to establish a Polo Club and an aerodrome. He seemed to have had a fresh idea almost every year, which may be why when he died in 1941 he left a small chaos of unregistered land plots with no owners, unadopted roads, and quirky legal restraints - for instance Leas and Fairways residents are denied the right to fly their own aircraft from Chestfield (almost certainly because Reeves believed every successful village would have its own little aerodrome and he was hoping to control the local market).
It is true that before the 1920s there was no continuous group of buildings that could be called Chestfield. But that was not the beginning of its history any more than the creation of Canterbury City Council and Kent County Council in 1974 was the beginning of Canterbury history. It was a time that changed Chestfield for good, but it was preceded by much, much more. The farms that already existed at this time had much in common. In the 19th century they were one of the earliest rural areas that had a railway halt, on the Crab and Winkle line (by what is now South Street). For centuries before, life was influenced by the poor natural drainage that encouraged co-operation in a number of ways. There was a converging pair of Droves -broad routes that were used for driving cattle down to Canterbury- that met near Molehill Rd and used a relatively dry line of land heading south to the city. A little to the north a low ridge was used for east-west travel, and was called the Ridge Way. There had to be a great deal of collaboration for building and maintaining drainage ditches. Going back to the medieval period, the place got its name when William de Cestvyl shared with William de Cluse the cost, or Knight's Service as it was called then, for the 400 acres stretching down from Chestfield to Clowes Wood. Knight service had been a requirement to provide armed service in war or insurrection, but by the 13th and 14th century was commonly commuted to annual payments of money. This in turn would have meant the management or even creation of a set of farms that collectively contributed tythes (taxes), paid in kind to the Cestvyl and Cluse families, so it not surprising that the Cestvyls, who became anglicized into the Chestfield family before leaving the area, built Tythe Barns in the centre of what is now Chestfield. The farms were already united, and the name established.
As poor drainage made travel a larger problem than elsewhere, the responsibility for keeping roads open all through the year (not just in cattle driving times) was important. 'Radfalling', or the felling and clearing of trees along the route to Canterbury and beyond, demanded more working people. The road out of Chestfield heading towards Canterbury is still named 'Radfall Road'. The work of maintaining it connected to the creation of stocks of wood for fuel, so in this way too Chestfield had a larger role than other farms.
All this takes us back to the Anglo-Saxon period (elsewhere in this website we will pursue the early history as far as we can) and further still - as since the 1999 excavations in Churchwood Drive, we know there was a pre-Roman settlement, possible between 2500 and 3000 years ago. The people occupying the area at this time built ditches for drainage, so likely sowed crops as they certainly lived a settled enough life to dig pits for rubbish, including the broken pottery than enabled archaeologists to date the settlement accurately. More investigations on the same site showed continued occupation until around 800 AD. There is no reason to believe that this occupation ceased, although as our major local historian Tony Blake has pointed out - we only have glimpses of what seems to have become Church owned land both before and after the Norman Conquest.
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For a historian, it is engaging to view Chestfield as both a collection of smaller places and a part of larger ones, as this is a constant in its history from long before the 20th century. We will see how such a view helps in understanding what has driven its past as well as explaining its present. There is a strong argument that we do do not deserve to be called a village when considering the other villages that have churches, inns, an old manor house (more on this later), a village shop, or a village green once used for Maypole dancing. Chestfield was created during the late 1920s in open countryside as a property development project by a businessman called George Reeves. Just walking around the place we can see evidence he wanted to create a mock Tudor estate, but also a centre for Londoners who were looking for holiday homes. Reeves planned for London commuters, golfing enthusiasts, garden city idealists and tried to establish a Polo Club and an aerodrome. He seemed to have had a fresh idea almost every year, which may be why when he died in 1941 he left a small chaos of unregistered land plots with no owners, unadopted roads, and quirky legal restraints - for instance Leas and Fairways residents are denied the right to fly their own aircraft from Chestfield (almost certainly because Reeves believed every successful village would have its own little aerodrome and he was hoping to control the local market).
It is true that before the 1920s there was no continuous group of buildings that could be called Chestfield. But that was not the beginning of its history any more than the creation of Canterbury City Council and Kent County Council in 1974 was the beginning of Canterbury history. It was a time that changed Chestfield for good, but it was preceded by much, much more. The farms that already existed at this time had much in common. In the 19th century they were one of the earliest rural areas that had a railway halt, on the Crab and Winkle line (by what is now South Street). For centuries before, life was influenced by the poor natural drainage that encouraged co-operation in a number of ways. There was a converging pair of Droves -broad routes that were used for driving cattle down to Canterbury- that met near Molehill Rd and used a relatively dry line of land heading south to the city. A little to the north a low ridge was used for east-west travel, and was called the Ridge Way. There had to be a great deal of collaboration for building and maintaining drainage ditches. Going back to the medieval period, the place got its name when William de Cestvyl shared with William de Cluse the cost, or Knight's Service as it was called then, for the 400 acres stretching down from Chestfield to Clowes Wood. Knight service had been a requirement to provide armed service in war or insurrection, but by the 13th and 14th century was commonly commuted to annual payments of money. This in turn would have meant the management or even creation of a set of farms that collectively contributed tythes (taxes), paid in kind to the Cestvyl and Cluse families, so it not surprising that the Cestvyls, who became anglicized into the Chestfield family before leaving the area, built Tythe Barns in the centre of what is now Chestfield. The farms were already united, and the name established.
As poor drainage made travel a larger problem than elsewhere, the responsibility for keeping roads open all through the year (not just in cattle driving times) was important. 'Radfalling', or the felling and clearing of trees along the route to Canterbury and beyond, demanded more working people. The road out of Chestfield heading towards Canterbury is still named 'Radfall Road'. The work of maintaining it connected to the creation of stocks of wood for fuel, so in this way too Chestfield had a larger role than other farms.
All this takes us back to the Anglo-Saxon period (elsewhere in this website we will pursue the early history as far as we can) and further still - as since the 1999 excavations in Churchwood Drive, we know there was a pre-Roman settlement, possible between 2500 and 3000 years ago. The people occupying the area at this time built ditches for drainage, so likely sowed crops as they certainly lived a settled enough life to dig pits for rubbish, including the broken pottery than enabled archaeologists to date the settlement accurately. More investigations on the same site showed continued occupation until around 800 AD. There is no reason to believe that this occupation ceased, although as our major local historian Tony Blake has pointed out - we only have glimpses of what seems to have become Church owned land both before and after the Norman Conquest.
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