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Chipstead, Kent

AC with 0 elementsKent geography stubsSevenoaks DistrictVillages in Kent
Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Chipstead
Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Chipstead

Chipstead is a small village within the parish of Chevening in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It lies just west of the town of Sevenoaks and just off the A21 and A25 roads. It is also within a short distance of the M25 motorway, though not visible from it. Although small in size, it has various attractions and features, including traditional southern English village architecture and a large lake. The village has two public houses: the "George and Dragon", a 16th-century coaching inn on the High Street, and the "Bricklayers Arms" on Chevening Road opposite the lake. Chipstead Lake (also known as Longford Lake) is man-made, the result of gravel extraction during the 20th century. It has an area of 30 hectares (74 acres) and is used for: angling by Homesdale Angling Society sailing by Chipstead Sailing ClubThe Chapel of the Good Shepherd is an Anglican chapel of ease to Chevening parish church. A 19th-century Grade II-listed former chapel (now a house) in the village centre was used by the Bible Christian Church.Chipstead was served by Chevening Halt railway station on the Westerham Valley Branch Line running between Westerham and Dunton Green; it opened in 1881 and closed in 1961. The closest railway station is now Sevenoaks. Chipstead village is now served by the 401 Sevenoaks-Westerham bus and the 452 Sevenoaks Station Circular commuter bus. Chipstead is a comfortable, quiet community. There is a thriving residents' association, which has voiced opinions over issues such as traffic control in the area.

Excerpt from the Wikipedia article Chipstead, Kent (License: CC BY-SA 3.0, Authors, Images).

Chipstead, Kent
Chevening Road,

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Wikipedia: Chipstead, KentContinue reading on Wikipedia

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Latitude Longitude
N 51.28525 ° E 0.14905 °
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Address

Bricklayers Arms

Chevening Road 39-41
TN13 2RZ , Chipstead
England, United Kingdom
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Website
the-bricklayers-arms.co.uk

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Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Chipstead
Chapel of the Good Shepherd, Chipstead
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Chevening Halt railway station
Chevening Halt railway station

Chevening Halt is a now-closed intermediate railway station on the Westerham branch line in Kent. The line was built as single track with provision for double track. The station was built by South Eastern and Chatham Railway (SECR) and opened on either 16 or 19 April 1906. It was unmanned and consisted of a platform sufficient to accommodate 2 coaches and small waiting shelter with access via a staircase to the adjacent road bridge. Operations were taken over by the Southern Railway with the 1923 railway grouping and thereafter by the Southern Region of British Railways which closed the line on 30 October 1961 ostensibly due to low patronage. The line was the subject of a revival/preservation attempt which was scuppered by plans for the M25 which called for the use of much of the route of the line.The former station site is today a rough piece of overgrown scrubland bordering Junction 5 of the M25; this motorway is infamous as having been responsible for the dashing of any hopes of preserving the Westerham Branch. In 1964, Kent County Council had demanded from the Westerham Valley Railway Association, an association seeking to retain the railway for heritage operations, the sum of £26,215 (approximately £337,000 today) for a bridge to carry the railway line over the M25; failure to pay this sum would lead to the immediate in-filling of the Chevening cutting (in which the Halt lay), which is exactly what happened when funds could not be raised. According to one account, the halt platform was buried and remains there to this day.

Sevenoaks railway accident
Sevenoaks railway accident

The Sevenoaks railway accident occurred on 24 August 1927 between Dunton Green railway station and Sevenoaks railway station. The Southern Railway's afternoon express from Cannon Street to Deal left London at 5 pm, hauled by River Class tank engine No 800 River Cray. Several passengers later recounted that from time to time the train seemed to roll excessively on fast curves. As it passed through Pollhill Tunnel at 60 mph the rocking became violent and the train derailed past Dunton Green railway station, where the line is in a cutting which is spanned by a bridge carrying Shoreham Lane. The cab of the locomotive struck the bridge and the engine was turned on its side across the cutting. The leading coaches piled up against it, killing 13 and injuring many more. Railway engineer Brigadier-General Archibald Jack was a survivor of the crash. John Wallace Pringle, Chief Inspecting Officer of Her Majesty's Railway Inspectorate conducted the inquiry in person. Following the accident, the Southern Railway withdrew all the remaining 'River' class tank engines, which caused a public sensation at the time. Other drivers testified about the instability of the class and it emerged that one locomotive had previously derailed at speed, though it had re-railed itself. The engines' high centre of gravity, their hard springing, and the tendency for the water in the side tanks to surge, all caused the engines to roll dangerously at speed, so much so that in this accident the nearside wheels had lifted. Trials carried out after the accident showed that the design behaved well when running at 85 mph on the Great Northern main line out of King's Cross, indicating that an indifferent permanent way was partly responsible for the instability of the locomotives. However, before the results of the trials had been published, all River class engines had been rebuilt, becoming the first 20 of the SR U class 2-6-0 tender engine design.