Aylesford Pit

Aylesford is a village and civil parish on the River Medway in Kent, England, 4 miles (6 km) northwest of Maidstone. Originally a small riverside settlement, the old village comprises around 60 houses, many of which were formerly shops. Two pubs, a village shop and other amenities are located on the high street. Aylesford's current population is around 5,000.The Parish of Aylesford covers more than seven square miles (18 km2), stretching north to Rochester Airport estate and south to Barming, and has a total population of over 10,000 (as of 2011), with the main settlements at Aylesford, Eccles, Blue Bell Hill and (part of) Walderslade.Aylesford Newsprint was a long-established major employer in the area and was the largest paper recycling factory in Europe, manufacturing newsprint for the newspaper industry. In 2015, Aylesford Paper Mill, as it was known by local residents, was closed down and stripped of all its assets.

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

Aylesford Priory, or "The Friars" was founded in 1242 when members of the Carmelite order arrived in England from Mount Carmel in the Holy Land. Richard de Grey, a crusader, sponsored them, and conveyed to the order a parcel of land located on his manor in Aylesford in Kent. The estate came back into the ownership of the Carmelite order in 1949. After refurbishment, which revealed 15th century remnants, the manor house was Grade I listed in 1959. After subsequent work on site, the 15th century gatehouse and the NE section of the wall were also Grade I listed on 25 February 1987. The priory now contains an array of contemporary artworks by notable artists. It is a pilgrimage destination of national significance.

Forstal is a settlement in Aylesford parish in Kent, England.

Preston Hall is a former manorial home and associated estate in Aylesford in the English county of Kent. It dates to the Norman period and was owned by the Culpepper family for over 400 years. Part of the estate became the Royal British Legion Village in the 1920s and the hall itself was used as a hospital after World War II. The estate was broken up over a period of time and most of the area it once covered is now used for housing. The hall itself was transformed into 36 flats in 2015. The Heart of Kent Hospice also occupies a site on the property. At the end of the 19th century the estate stretched from the current A20 to the River Medway just south of Aylesford. The hall is located towards the southern edge of the estate, having been rebuilt there in the mid 19th century. It is around 2.5 miles (4.0 km) north-west of Maidstone and 0.5 miles (0.80 km) south of Aylesford. The M20 motorway and the Maidstone to Strood railway line both cross the former estate between the hall and the river. Junction 5 of the M20 and Aylesford railway station are on the edges of the former estate.

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.

Aylesford railway station is on the Medway Valley Line in Kent, England, serving the village of Aylesford. It is 38 miles 74 chains (62.6 km) down the line from London Charing Cross via Strood and is situated between New Hythe and Maidstone Barracks. The station opened on 18 June 1856. The station and all trains that serve the station are operated by Southeastern.

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.

Aylesford School is a mixed-sex school comprising years 7 to 11, plus a Sixth Form for pupils in years 12 and 13. It was formerly known as Aylesford School - Sports College and locally known as Teapot Lane, is a co-educational secondary school in Kent, England. Situated in modern campus buildings in Teapot Lane, the school serves an area to the west of Maidstone.

The Allington Quarry Waste Management Facility is an integrated waste management centre in Allington, Kent. It is the site of the Allington Energy from Waste (EfW) Incinerator. The incinerator is owned by FCC Environment as Kent Enviropower. The facility, which has involved an investment of over £150 Million, is able to process 500,000 tonnes per annum of waste and has the ability to produce 40MW of power. The facility takes non-hazardous waste from households and businesses in Kent and the surrounding area for recycling and energy recovery. Materials separated by householders are sorted and sent for recycling, with the remainder being used to generate electricity to power the facility and for the local supply network. Built in a former ragstone quarry, the site includes one 80 metres (260 ft) high chimney, and covers an area of 84 acres (34 ha), of which 67 acres (27 ha) will eventually become parkland, and permanently employs around 100 people.Under a 25-year contract with Kent County Council, Over 325,000 tonnes of municipal waste, from Maidstone, Sevenoaks, Tunbridge Wells, Tonbridge and Malling, Dartford, Gravesham and Swale councils will be processed each year. The centre is a major waste facility and will contribute to Kent meeting its LATS obligations for the diversion of waste from landfill. The incinerator employs fluidized bed incineration technology and has been in commercial operation since December 2008.

The Battle of Aylesford or Epsford (Old English: Æȝelesford) was a battle between Britons and Anglo-Saxons recorded in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle and the Historia Brittonum. Both sources concur that it involved the Anglo-Saxon leaders Hengist and Horsa on one side and the family of Vortigern on the other, but neither says who won the battle. It was fought near Æglesthrep, presumed to be Aylesford, in Kent.

The Medway Megaliths, sometimes termed the Kentish Megaliths, are a group of Early Neolithic chambered long barrows and other megalithic monuments located in the lower valley of the River Medway in Kent, South-East England. Constructed from local sarsen stone and soil between the 4th and 3rd millennia BCE, they represent the only known prehistoric megalithic group in eastern England and the most south-easterly group in Britain. They remain one of several regionally contained chambered long barrow traditions in Britain, although have certain precise architectural characteristics which mark them out as distinct from other groups. The purpose of these long barrows remains elusive, although some were used as tombs for the remains of a select group of individuals. It is also widely believed that they were places where religious rituals were performed. Many archaeologists believe that they reflect the process of Neolithisation of Britain, as hunter-gatherer populations were replaced by pastoralists. Three chambered tombs have been identified to the west of the river: the Coldrum Stones, Addington Long Barrow, and Chestnuts Long Barrow. To the east of the river, another three chambered tombs have been identified: Kit's Coty House, Little Kit's Coty House, and Smythe's Megalith, although it has also been suggested that two nearby megaliths, the Coffin Stone and the White Horse Stone, are remnants of former chambered tombs. An Early Neolithic longhouse and causewayed enclosure have also been identified in the vicinity of the monuments. The Medway Megaliths have become heavily damaged and dilapidated since original construction, largely due to an intentional program of destruction in the late 13th century CE. They began to attract the interest of antiquarians in the late 16th century, who developed a number of erroneous theories about their origin, before later being scientifically investigated by archaeologists in the late 19th century. Local folklore has also grown up around the monuments, which came to be interpreted and used as sacred sites by contemporary Pagans in the latter 20th century.