Memories of Shoreham And Otford

My fathers parents, Edward and Winifred Simmons, ran the general stores in the Parade at Otford in the 1950s and early 1960s. My mother, her sister and parents, Grace and Alfred Maddock, lived in Bubblestone Road. My parents started courting after going to a dance at Otford Village Hall and were married at St Bartholomews Church, Otford in 1953. Their early married life was spent in Bromley. As a child, I recall visits to my grandparents - my father driving the Anglia down the enchanting lane of Old Polhill that lead to the beautiful "golden valley" that still looked much as it would have done to Samuel Palmer when he was painting in the early 19th century. It always felt to me as if I was coming home. When I was about nine we visited Ye Olde George Inn at Shoreham on a warm, late summer evening. The full moon shining over the cornfields remains, 50 years later, the most beautiful landscape I have ever seen. Having traced my family tree, I have found that my connections go a long way back and that my ancestors worked the land around Shoreham and Otford during the 18th and 19th centuries. Some of my mother's family are buried at St Bartholomews churchyard. After visiting the graves last weekend we walked up Old Polhill, now closed to traffic, destroyed by the M25 and littered with debris. Man's careless desecration of the beauty of the land, to enable more people to go more places ever faster, is irreversible and a tragedy for the future generations who will never know what has been lost.