Kent Life - Family Fun You'll Remember

The 28-acre site that now constitutes Kent Life has evolved through the years from the historic Sandling Farm, an area that formed part of the wider Allington Castle estate in the mid 16th century - stretching some 461 acres - and was owned by Thomas Wyatt. The Allington Castle estate, later known as the Cobtree estate, was the property of the Tyrwhitt-Drake family. It passed to the only son Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake who inherited it after his father passed away in the early 1900s. An eccentric man, Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake established a small zoo on the grounds and it is believed that he had a fascination for the Zebra, painting black and white stripes on a donkey so he could admire it from his manor!

A charitable trust was set up for the Cobtree Estate in 1952. After Sir Garrard Tyrwhitt-Drake died childless in 1964, his estate was bequeathed to the people of Maidstone. By 1983 a joint project between Kent county council and Maidstone Borough council had created 'The Museum of Kent Life' (as it was formerly known) on the site of the old Sandling farm, and it was officially opened to the public on 6th July 1985.

The attraction was set up as a working heritage farm on which to tell the story of everything once Kentish. The preservation of the region's heritage began with the renovation of the Oast house, farmyard, gardens and Sandling House. The Vale Farm Barn was the first of the attraction's buildings from around the county to be saved from destruction and opened in 1990 having been rebuilt on site. The reconstruction of Petts Farmhouse, Ulcombe Village Hall, Lenham Cottages, Cuxton chapel and the Agricultural Store came next. These historic buildings depict a wealth of history and changes through the centuries which not only has resonance throughout Kent, but also has significance for the wider community.

Having been open to the public as a visitor attraction since 1985, Kent Life is very much part of the community that surrounds it. In more recent years the ambitious developments that have taken place have been as a result of outside investment which has breathed new life into this much-loved attraction and we can look forward to a very bright future.

Originally built by KCC and then later extended in the early 21st century, with a grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. The agricultural store houses many of Kent Life's agricultural and domestic artefacts, including a threshing machine, gypsy caravan and more. The Friends of the Museum of Kent Life are working relentlessly  to one day opening our full collection to the public.

Vale Barn is an 18th century thatched barn which once exhibited a host of threshing machines, ploughs and other agricultural equipment. The barn has recently been renovated to a coffee bar and indoor soft play area for families of all ages to enjoy. 

Vale Farm Barn

The Barn was built in Vale Farm near Calcott, north of Canterbury.  It was rescued from vandalism and neglect in 1984 and re-built at Kent Life in 1989. Traditionally the Barn would have been used to thresh corn by hand during the autumn and winter until the first threshing machines was introduced in 1732, powered by water. Today, combine harvesters, first developed in the 1920's, carry out all this work for a farmer.

Indoor Soft Play Area

Kent Life remains sympathetic to the heritage this magnificent barn and therefore the play area structure is free-standing and has only been bolted to the floor, ensuring no damage to the walls or eaves.  The Play area was introduced in 2009 and is a three-storey structure consisting of a coffee bar, toddler area, scramble nets, viewing tunnel, slides and more.

The Chapel was originally built in 1897 in Cuxton, Kent and began its life as a mission hall, later becoming a congregational chapel. It's 'Mother' church was the Vines in Rochester. The Chapel was a focal point of community life in Cuxton and played host to several groups, as well as an active Sunday School. In 1972 the Chapel became part of the United Reformed Church.

In 2000, Kent Life was approached with a view to re-homing the building, as the congregation wanted a new chapel. A lottery grant of £89,000 was secured and the project took less than six months to complete. During demolition, builders found several hidden objects under the doorway, including a child's boot.  These can be seen on display,  along with other objects, in the quiet room at the back of the Chapel.

The 19th century Granary was a building used to house grain after it was threshed and winnowed. The grain required safe storage and was therefore raised on staddle stone to protect it from rats and mice, and to allow air to circulate to keep it in good condition.

The Granary at Kent Life was moved from Boxley Grange Farm at the top of Boxley Hill.  It is a fine example of a 19th century granary and was probably first constructed in the early 1800s. It was dismantled in March 1993 and reconstructed over eight weeks during April and May of 1993. Today the Granary houses an exhibition reflecting man's uneasy relationship with vermin over the centuries.

The Hopper's Huts at Kent Life represent a unique bringing together of two different cultures: the culture of the city and the culture of the country. Many people would descend on the Kent countryside to pick hops by hand, which was considered a holiday from the squalor of Victorian London.

The Huts

The 10 hoppers huts, including tin and brick huts, show a typical standard of accommodation over the centuries and demonstrate the rapid changes in attitudes and living conditions. The brick huts are from a 'model farm' near Tonbridge and their interiors contain many items from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and serve as a poignant reminder of how the hop pickers turned these animal stalls into temporary holiday homes. The tin huts were often let out to the same family for the hop season over the years. Many families brought better bedding and cooking equipment which could be left in their hut until the following season. Up to 10 people would live in the cramped conditions, sleeping on straw and makeshift beds, often laced with fleas, bugs and lice, and with only primitive washing facilities and sanitation.

Cook house & Toilet

Information coming soon

In 1999, the Grade II listed Old & Water Street Cottage, now known as Lenham Cottages, lay virtually in the path of the new Channel Tunnel Rail Link. Union Railways (South) Ltd offered the Cottages and the necessary funding for re-location to Kent Life. Dismantling commenced in June 1999  and the reconstruction began in January 2000, which took fourteen months to complete. The Cottages were open at Kent Life to the public in July 2001.

WWII Cottage

The WWII Cottage displays the typical home of a wartime house wife. Furniture and fittings were in short supply and rationed, so the average wartime house was decorated in a 1930's style. Our WWII home shows sticky tape on the windows to reduce shatter, a basic kitchen equipped with a sink, cooker, mangle and bath tub showing the water-ration line, greenhouse and front rooms, and bedrooms displaying artefacts from an era past.

Anderson Shelter

A shelter was a sectional steel shelter erected in back gardens to hold four to six people in the event of an air raid. A typical air raid shelter would consist of an electrical lamp, hot water bottles, makeshift beds, food and drink and a small case containing gas masks, insurance policies, books, games and comics.

Wildlife Discovery Room

The Wildlife Discovery room can be visited as part of the Wildlife Discovery Trail or on its own. The room focuses on bringing nature to life and will feature live web cams, feely boxes and interactive CD-Roms, as well as quizzes and games to inspire naturalists young and old.

Construction

One side of the cottage displays and depicts the interpretation of the history of this building. The cottage was built with brick ground floor elevations and timber-framed  first floor elevations. It has an oak frame, rag stone footings, daubed panel between the timber framing, daub being a mix of clay lime and chopped straw to create a panel wall. It also has mullion (vertically barred and shuttered but unglazed) windows and a thatched roof.

Some time ago many of the original set items and props from the ever popular 'Darling Buds Of May' series, and most notably Ma' Larkins Kitchen, were donated to Kent Life.

Ma' Larkins Kitchen has been refurbished by the F.R.I.E.N.D.S. of Kent Life and has been reopened to the public this year to mark the 20th anniversary since the TV series was aired.

Many authentic and original items from the series will be on display in the replica kitchen located in the working farmyard, including the wooden table, welsh dresser, kitchen cabinets, cutlery, crockery and more.

Courtesy of ITV

Our Oast House is the last working coal-fired Oast in Britain, as well as being one of the only ones made of rag stone - a traditional Kentish building material.

The Oast House is the start of your journey around Kent Life and is home to our Admission Area and Gift Shop, as well as the following:

Kiln and Cooling Room Floor

The kiln is fired up once a year at our annual Hop Picking Festival, where the hops are harvested by hand and dried in our coal-fired kiln and laid on the cooling room floor using traditional and time-honoured techniques.  

General Store

Most of the fittings and contents were donated by a shop in Hawkhurst. Pipier's Store opened for business on 5 May 1897; it started as a family grocers and drapers store but later sold hardware and haberdashery. The store closed in 1986 and was resurrected at Kent Life in 2000.

Cobblers Shop

The shop originally began as a converted garage in Southborough, near Tunbridge Wells, and sadly closed after 50 years of trading in 1998. A replica of Mr Moons Cobbler Shop was reconstructed at Kent Life in 1999 and shows the traditional tools of a cobbler, laid out exactly as they were when the shop was in operation. 

Historic School Room

This school room was purpose built in 2010 to replicate a traditional school room in Victorian times. This area is primarily used for workshops for local school children and contains traditional desk benches with ink wells, blackboards, teacher's podium and honour roll.

Cooperage

The Coopers display honours this long lost trade in Kent's craftsmanship. Coopers made casks and barrels that were used for centuries in many Kentish industries. Most Kentich brewers employed their own coopers and many worked in the naval dockyards like that at Chatham. There were many different types of coopers: the 'wet' coopers made casks for liquids, the 'dry' coopers made casks for products such as flour and tobacco, the 'tight dry' coopers made casks for fine substances such as gunpowder and the 'white' coopers who produced butter churns, pails and every day utensils. 

Petts Farmhouse was originally located just four miles away from Kent Life, just south of Burham Village. Last occupied in 1981 and after two years of careful repair and reconstruction to the now derelict building, Petts Farmhouse was restored to its Victorian splendour at Kent Life in September 1997.

The house layout is known as a double fronted lobby entrance and consists of many rooms including an authentic Dairy Maids Scullery, front room and bedrooms filled with memories from bygone years and a display of tradition Victorian attire.

Secret finds...

A clay pipe, a bone handled knife, a shoe and a wooden doll were found in the walls and floors of the farmhouse during dismantling. The doll appeared suddenly on the floor. Limbless, with shorn hair and a scarf circling her neck, her mutilated body is believed to have been hidden in the plaster near the front door. The shoe is over 150 years old and was found hidden under the floorboards. A superstition dating back to Victorian times says that hiding a shoe protects the house from evil spirits. To maintain protection, the shoe has been replaced, along with a modern time capsule.

A historical survey dates Sandling Farmhouse to the 16th century. In past years, the farmhouse and surrounding land were leased to resident farmer of 53 years, George Brundle until his retirement in 1978.

The farmhouse is now interpreted as a 1950's house and in the attic an exhibition details the history of the house, its various owners, including the life of George Brundle and a snapshot of life in Britain in the 1950s.

George Brundle

The tenancy of Sandling Farm was given to George Brundle, a young man of 22 from Dulwich, south-east London. During his lease the farm was primarily a dairy farm having some 50 Friesian and Jersey cows, as well as a flock of up to 200 Romney Marsh sheep, poultry and a small number of pigs during WWII. The farm grew wheat, barley and oats as well as a selection of Kentish fruit - apples, pears, plums, cherries and damsons. The connections between Kent Life and the last tenant farmer came to an end in 2001 when George Brundle died a few months short of his 99th birthday.

The Shepherd's Hut at Kent Life was rescued from Acton Farm in Charing and restored and furnished by the Friends of the Museum in 1994. Traditionally, shepherds would live out on the marshes in these simply constructed huts. During lambing season, where they would provide the ewes with warmth in  sheltered lambing folds, constructed from straw, wattle hurdles and thatched roofs.

The huts would typically contain no more than a bed with a simple straw mattress, a small table or upturned box, a stool or chair, a medicine box, and a stove to provide heat to cook on and to warm milk for the new born lambs.

This iconic piece of British culture - the 1947 George V, Silver Jubilee Red Telephone Box was restored  to its true beauty in 2008 thanks to a kind donation from the Maidstone Lions Club. The Telephone box boasts original features such as a 1947 telephone directory and buttons A and B.

Originally only 19,000 were produced and distributed nationwide to small towns and villages to bring telephonic communication to ordinary folk. Ours now stands in pride of place on the Kent Life Village Green.

The Village Hall was originally built in 1911 in the village of Ulcombe. It gradually fell into disuse after a new hall was built in 1978. Kent Life was offered the old hall in 1997. After serving the community for most of the twentieth century the hall with help from the Heritage Lottery Fund grant Kent Life rescued the village hall and the building was officially opened in June 2000. 

At the turn of the twentieth century, corrugated iron village halls were a common sight in Kent, offering a cheaper alternative to a brick built and tiled structure, when funds were in short supply. These iron halls are now rare, as most villages have replaced these over time with more modern robust brick structures.

Function Space

The Village Hall can accommodate celebration and corporate events for up to 120 people and is licensed for civil marriages. The Village Hall also contains a bar and toilet facilities. 

The Wagon Store was purpose-built in 1993, originally to house the transport collection and the Blacksmith's Forge. More recent additions to this building have been the function space and also our Paint-a-Pot Studio.

Blacksmiths Forge

Blacksmithing was a vital craft of village life, along with the wheelwright, saddler and carpenter. The blacksmith would have made tools for these craftsmen as well as providing ironwork for carts and wagons and making horseshoes. In Kent, ironworks were first established in the Weald, using charcoal for fuel. Our working forge is brought to life throughout the year on most of our event days when you can see the Blacksmith at work.  

Wagon and Cart Collection

Our changing exhibit may include a number of the following:  market wagon, large farm wagon, a merryweather fire engine, baker's cart, wheelbarrow, hand cart, tip cart, governess cart, an alley bodge and a bicycle. Wagons were the principle means of transport on the farm. In Kent there were two types of wagon; the large Wealden, usually painted blue and red, and the smaller Heathfield or Ashford Wagon, with a livery of cream and ochre. Both types had brakes and a waistbed to allow the front wheels to turn.

Function Space

The wagon store function space can comfortably seat 100 guests. With large windows, wooden floors and dried hops decorating the wooden beams, this space makes an ideal location for a wedding, celebration or corporate function.

Paint-a-Pot Studio

The newest addition to the Wagon Store is our Paint-a-Pot Studio which was introduced last year. The studio is designed as an indoor space for children and adults alike to be creative and paint a wide selection of figurines, money boxes and more.

The Cobnut is a form of the wild hazel nut - but has been developed to be longer and larger. The Platt is a series of coppiced trees, grown for their fruit - the Cobnut.

Kent Life has five types of nuts of various shapes and sizes. They are pruned in early spring when the catkins are in flower and harvested in September - before the squirrels eat them! The wood can be used in the garden for canes. The trees will produce nuts for a very long time as the stools (base) will continue to grow every year.

The farmhouse garden harks back to the days when most farmers' cottages had a patch of land to grow crops. Traditionally farmhouse gardens would have a pig sty at the bottom as ours does. Kent Life uses a traditional four-way plot rotation to minimise pests and diseases. The soil is enriched with manure from our livestock and produces a wide range of fresh, seasonal fruit and vegetables such as strawberries, potatoes, rhubarb and pumpkins.

The herb garden at Kent Life consists of four sections, each containing native herbs as well as herbs that have been introduced to Kent and grown during particular historical periods. They can be used in food and drinks to give them flavour, and they are also used in perfumes and pot-pourri. The different historical periods are as follows:

• Medieval includes herbs grown before 1400 AD.
• Renaissance includes herbs grown between 1400 and 1650.
• The Physic Garden has herbs that were introduced to the UK from all over the world during the establishment of physic or botanic gardens during the second half of the seventeenth century.
• The Cottage Garden includes herbs widely grown since 1800, when cottage gardens, containing mixtures of both useful and ornamental plants, became very popular.

Each section in turn has four beds showing the different uses that can be made of particular plants. There are the aromatic plants used for strewing, pot-pourri, cosmetics and perfumes; culinary plants used for flavouring food; dye plants used to colour wool and later, cotton fabrics (the dye is found in the stems, leaves, roots or seeds of the plants); and medicinal plants used for medicines, lotions and production of domestic insecticides and pest repellents.

Our hop garden is planted with Fuggle and Goldings Hops, both traditional Kentish varieties from the late 19th Century. The Hop plant is a member of the cannabis family and is a climbing perennial. The shoots are trained up strings in the same direction by various methods; they have very prickly stems and leaves.

The ‘cone’ (or flowering section) is the part used in brewing, to give the distinct aroma and taste. There are lots of types of hop, giving different flavours to the beer. Kent Life harvests the Hop Garden by hand in an annual Hop Picking Festival in September.

The Kitchen Garden is located to the side of Sandling Farmhouse and grows a small variety of seasonal vegetables including carrots, cabbage, onions and more.

The apple and cherry orchards were planted early in the life of Kent Life to celebrate the 'Garden of England'. Fruit was traditionally grown for the London markets in Kent. The orchards contain 62 types of apples ranging in age from the 'Costard' (1292) to 'Early Victoria' (1900) and include cookers, eaters and those which can be used either way. The apples are pruned when they are dormant during the winter. The harvesting starts in August and continues until October. 

Our small orchard was developed when the M20 motorway was extended and part of the original main orchard was lost. Many varieties of historic apples and cherry are grown in this orchard and it is also used for our donkey rides during the summer months. 

Open your eyes and mind to the wildlife around you, by following the Wildlife Discovery Trail. By carefully managing our mix of grassland and tree cover, we are learning to live in harmony with wild creatures, their habitat and life cycles.

Listen to the green woodpeckers and the cuckoos calling from the treetop. Look out for yellow hammers, bunting, finches and tree sparrows.

Discover the mini-beasts which play such an important part in the balances of nature. The trail will lead you to its highest point where you can rest and watch the cattle grazing in the lower meadows, beside the beautiful River Medway.

The trail goes down steps and into part of the old sand quarry which existed here in the early 20th century.  The trees here are mainly native to the British Isles and show their uses in various industries; they include ash, spindle, chestnut, hazel, oak and birch.  The trail is a carpet of bluebells in May with other wild flowers throughout the seasons.  Rabbits and foxes can be found as well as the bright Green Woodpecker – normally heard rather than seen.

The trail takes approximately 30minutes and is accessible for wheelchairs and buggies.Simply follow the arrow and look, listen and smell the wonderful world of nature.