Chatham and Aylesford (UK Parliament constituency)

Burham is a village and civil parish in the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. According to the 2001 census it had a population of 1,251, decreasing to 1,195 at the 2011 Census. The village is near the Medway towns. The history of Burham can be traced to Roman times. AD43 saw the Battle of the Medway at the crossing point on the River Medway, where Burham is now, when the invading Roman legions, advancing west across Kent, were confronted by a massed army of the ancient British tribes. The Roman victory altered the course of history in Britain, and the remains of Roman buildings have been found in Burham and the neighbouring village of Eccles. There has been a Settlement in Burham since Saxon times, "ham" being the Saxon word for "settlement" — the "Bur" part of the name comes from "burgh", or borough, referring to the borough of Rochester. The name "Burham" means "the village near the borough". In the 11th century Burham belonged to Leofwine Godwinson, brother of King Harold. He was killed along with his brother at the Battle of Hastings in 1066. It is listed as having six sulings (about 240 acres) of land. There were two major farms, 15 "villeins" each farming 30 acres (120,000 m2) and 20 "borderers" each farming about 5 acres (20,000 m2). There was a church and a mill with woodland sufficient to support 20 hogs. The medieval church of St Mary is now redundant and stands on the riverbank. It is now cared for by the Churches Conservation Trust having been saved from dereliction by the Friends of Friendless Churches in the 1950s. About 1830 Burham became a "cement village" on the Medway, after the discovery of the manufacturing technique for Portland cement (so called because of its resemblance to Portland stone). By 1841 the village's population had grown to 380 and increased to a maximum of 1,725 in 1901. Today it is about 1,300.

Burham Down is a 110-hectare (270-acre) nature reserve between Maidstone and Chatham in Kent. It is managed by the Kent Wildlife Trust. It is part of the Wouldham to Detling Escarpment Site of Special Scientific Interest and Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I, the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty, and the North Downs Woodlands Special Area of Conservation.

Eccles is a village in the English county of Kent, part of the parish of Aylesford and in the valley of the River Medway.

Kit's Coty is a small village on the slopes of Blue Bell Hill between Maidstone and Rochester in the English county of Kent. The population of the village is included in the civil parish of Aylesford. It is named after the nearby Neolithic chamber tomb of Kit's Coty House and overlooks the valley of the River Medway. The A229 road runs next to the village.

Blue Bell Hill is a chalk hill between Maidstone and Rochester in the English county of Kent. It overlooks the River Medway and is part of the North Downs. Settlements on the hill include the Walderslade suburb of Chatham and the villages of Blue Bell Hill and Kit's Coty. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries much of the hill was quarried for chalk.The hill is a 5-hectare (12-acre) nature reserve which is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust. It is also part of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Wouldham to Detling Escarpment Sites of Special Scientific Interest and is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I.A picnic area serves as a rest point for walkers on the North Downs Way which runs along the top of the hill, whilst the prehistoric trackway of the Pilgrims' Way skirts its foot. A modern crematorium also surmounts the hill. The A229 dual carriageway follows the route of a former Roman road and climbs the hill, today linking the M2 and M20 motorways. High Speed 1 runs beneath the hill, via the North Downs Tunnel, and archaeological work in advance of it uncovered a Neolithic long house on its slopes. The Bluebell Hill transmitting station is on the hill, as is the Lower Bell pub. The Upper Bell pub was closed around March 2005 due to the reduced demand caused by the closure of a slip-lane onto the southbound A229, and then demolished in 2013.

Peter's Pit (or Peters Pit) is a 28.7-hectare (71-acre) biological Site of Special Scientific Interest north-east of Snodland in Kent. It is a Special Area of ConservationThis was formerly a chalk quarry and it has an undulating terrain. There are many ponds, some of which have populations of the great crested newt, a protected species under the Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981. The site has two reptiles, grass snakes and common European adders.A footpath from Old Church Road goes through the site.

The Coffin Stone, also known as the Coffin and the Table Stone, is a large sarsen stone at the foot of Blue Bell Hill near Aylesford in the south-eastern English county of Kent. Now lying horizontally, the stone probably once stood upright nearby. Various archaeologists have argued that the stone was part of a now-destroyed chambered long barrow constructed in the fourth millennium BCE, during Britain's Early Neolithic period. If a chambered long barrow did indeed previously exist on the site, it would have been built by pastoralist communities shortly after the introduction of agriculture to Britain from continental Europe. Long-barrow building was an architectural tradition widespread across Neolithic Europe. It consisted of various localized regional variants; one of these was in the vicinity of the River Medway, examples of which are now known as the Medway Megaliths. The Coffin Stone lies on the eastern side of the river, not far from the chambered long barrows of Little Kit's Coty House, Kit's Coty House, and the (now destroyed) Smythe's Megalith. Three other examples, the Coldrum Long Barrow, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow, remain on the western side of the river. The Coffin Stone is a rectangular slab lying flat that measures 4.42 metres (14 ft 6 in) in length, 2.59 metres (8 ft 6 in) in breadth, and about 0.61 metres (2 ft) in width. Two smaller stones lie nearby and another large slab is now located atop it. In the 1830s it was reported that local farmers found human bones near the stone. An archaeological excavation of the site led by Paul Garwood took place in 2008–09; it found that the megalith was placed in its present location only in the 15th or 16th centuries. The archaeologists found no evidence of a chambered long barrow at the location, and suggested that the Coffin Stone might once have stood upright in the vicinity.

Buckmore Park Kart Circuit is an MSA approved outdoor kart racing circuit located just off junction 3 of the M2 in Chatham, Kent, England. Until his death on 10 March 2017, it was owned by John Surtees, the only person to have won world Grand Prix championships in both Formula One car racing and Grand Prix motorcycle racing. Situated in a woodland setting between the M2 and M20 motorways directly above High Speed 1, its proximity to London makes it Britain's busiest circuit. With seven different fleets of kart the circuit offers karting experiences for all ages and experience levels. Buckmore Park is a circuit where many current and past Formula One drivers learned their trade, including Johnny Herbert and Formula 1 champions Jenson Button and Lewis Hamilton, who was originally discovered by Ron Dennis in the 1996 Champions of the Future Event held at Buckmore Park.Although Buckmore Park is primarily a race circuit, it also has on-site conference and catering facilities.

St Mary's Church is a redundant Anglican church in the village of Burham, Kent, England. It is recorded in the National Heritage List for England as a designated Grade I listed building, and is under the care of the Churches Conservation Trust. The church stands to the west of the village, on the Pilgrims' Way, overlooking the River Medway.

Blue Bell Hill is a village in the Aylesford parish of the borough of Tonbridge and Malling in Kent, England. It is located halfway between Chatham and Maidstone and lies on top of Blue Bell Hill. The community significantly expanded with the developments of the Walderslade area in the post war years, creating several housing estates around the village.

At Eccles in Kent the remains of a huge Roman Villa with palatial dimensions were excavated between 1962 and 1976. In the second century AD, the villa was almost 112 m long. Over 135 different rooms have been identified throughout the various periods of construction and reconstruction. The villa was abandoned in the Fourth century and much of it was removed in the Thirteenth century for the construction of Aylesford Priory. The villa lies on the east side of the Medway Valley. Roman remains were already known from the Nineteenth century on. During the course of excavation, a number of human burials of Roman date were found deposited beneath the villa floors. Further finds included fragments of Roman pottery and coins. A large post-Roman cemetery was discovered adjacent to the south-east wing of the villa. There were also some remains of a pre-Roman, Iron Age settlement. The earliest Roman villa dates from about 65 A.D. and consisted of a long row of at least 12 rooms, a porticus and probably a second story. Five of these rooms might once have contained floors with mosaics. In front of the house was a long ornamental pool. The building was of high status, as stone buildings were otherwise not so common at this early age in Roman Britain. A huge bath house was built next to it. In several rooms fragments of mosaics were found, most of them in a bad state of preservation. One of them most likely shows two gladiators.The baths were damaged by fire and around A.D. 120 a new bath house and extensions to the dwelling were built, and continued in use until A.D. 180; a third and more extensive bath suite was then erected, and the house once more remodelled by the addition of a rear corridor and new tessellations, as well as a new wing with a channelled hypocaust. A final reconstruction took place after A.D. 290, when the rear corridor was converted into a suite of rooms with hypocaust. Many rooms had tessellated floors, remains of well paintings were found.It has been suggested that the villa was first established by Adminius.The excavation record of the villa reported that much of the building stone was likely robbed in the Medieval period for construction elsewhere, for instance the 12th century St Mary's Church at Burham incorporates Roman tiles into its fabric. The results of the excavations were published in several short reports. A final excavation report is so far not yet published.

The North Downs Tunnel, also known as the Blue Bell Hill Tunnel, is a railway tunnel that carries High Speed 1 through the North Downs, at Blue Bell Hill near Maidstone in Kent, south-east England. The tunnel is 3.2 kilometres (2 mi) long, with an internal diameter of 12 metres (40 ft) and a cross-sectional area (CSA) of 150 square metres, and descends to a depth of 100 m (325 ft) below the chalk hills. Thus, at the time of its completion, the North Downs Tunnel was both the largest (in terms of CSA) and deepest twin-track railway tunnels to have ever been constructed in the UK. Trains using High Speed 1 can reach 300 kilometres per hour (186 mph) whilst in the tunnel.