Nice villages/small towns in Kent near M25/M20?

evuliuxb

We are selling our flat in London and looking to move to Kent. We would like a quiet, village/small town location, good for families, near M25/M20 as both of us commute to work to London. Does anyone know if any of the following areas are nice:

New Ash Green
Bean
Longfield
Farningham

a bit further out

Larkfield
Leybourne

Max budget is around 250k for a 3 bed house closer to London, 220k further out, so cant really afford Sevenoaks/Tunbridge Wells etc. Many thanks!

Strapped

My personal preference would be Edenbridge/Lingfield on that budget. Dormansland if you can stretch a bit. I'm sorry, I don't know the areas you list.

betsie

Hi I live in Wilmington, in between, joydens wood, hextable and dartford. It has a boys and girls grammer school an academy and a good primary school. It does have a village feel. Joydens wood is also nice and has a very good primary, it is quite and has a very nice wood if you like walking or biking. These are both 5 mins from A2 and 10 mins from M20.
Farningham is very nice and has some nice pubs, also look at eynsford which is very pretty.
I wouldn't live in New Ash Green or Bean (a bit far out but no pretty countryside or village feel).

nate_dog

evuliuxb wrote: »

We are selling our flat in London and looking to move to Kent. We would like a quiet, village/small town location, good for families, near M25/M20 as both of us commute to work to London. Does anyone know if any of the following areas are nice:

New Ash Green
Bean
Longfield
Farningham

a bit further out

Larkfield
Leybourne

Max budget is around 250k for a 3 bed house closer to London, 220k further out, so cant really afford Sevenoaks/Tunbridge Wells etc. Many thanks!

Of those i would choose Longfield, very nice little place to live. It has a direct service to Victoria which i think takes about 35-40 mins and is about 10 mins from Ebbsfleet which goes to St Pancras in 17 mins (although quite expensive). If you are communting by train then Longfield or Farningham are the best out of the 6 you mentioned. Bluewater is about 10 mins away as well by car and the M25 is v. easily accessed from either. I wouldn't choose to live in larkfield or leybourne but thas just me

mayfair1985

Having spent the first 19 years of my life in New Ash Green, I watched it turn from a lovely, quaint community village into a complete hell hole that I wouldn't ever go back too. I have friends that still live there and in the 8 years that I have been gone they have only noticed a further decline in the area, resulting in them leaving one by one. I would completely avoid the area. I know all areas have good and bad... but the bad seems to far outweigh the good. Aforementioned friends have had their car broken into 6 times in the last year. Due to the layout of the village, it is unlikely that you will have a garage, or parking on your doorstep as most cars need to be left in secluded, small, tree lined car parks with no CCTV or the like, making it a haven for car crime. Of the 3 pubs in the village, 2 are not to be frequented unless you enjoy spending your evenings amongst drug users. The shops are run down and full of kids hanging about (nothing else for them to do).

Having said that, Hartley, just down the road is nice. As is Longfield. New Barn is worth a look. A bit further out is Meopham which is beautiful.

Good luck, let us know where you end up going!

evuliuxb

mayfair1985 wrote: »

Having spent the first 19 years of my life in New Ash Green, I watched it turn from a lovely, quaint community village into a complete hell hole that I wouldn't ever go back too.
Good luck, let us know where you end up going!

Oh noooo, got us really confused now:think: We viewed a couple of houses in New Ash Green this weekend and really liked the village and one of the houses. My husband's friend lives there with his family and he is really happy there (they are really lovely family) and would really recommend it. While we were there (two different days), the village seemed really quiet, pleasant, looked after and people polite and friendly:think:The only thing which we didn't like was the additional fees you need to pay for the association etc. and that there are rules about how the houses look etc. but I guess we could live with it. But now we are really concerned after your comment as we wouldn't want to have kids in a village which everyone tries to leave because of crime etc.:(

longtimelurkersam

you could go further afield down the A20 towards Folkestone and look at surrounding villages. Stowting, Postling, Brabourne etc etc. All within good access to M20 albeit an extra 20-30mins if you are driving, BUT if you can use the train and St Pancras/Euston works the HS1 link is v.fast.

evuliuxb

longtimelurkersam wrote: »

you could go further afield down the A20 towards Folkestone and look at surrounding villages. Stowting, Postling, Brabourne etc etc. All within good access to M20 albeit an extra 20-30mins if you are driving, BUT if you can use the train and St Pancras/Euston works the HS1 link is v.fast.

we do not want go any further than Larkfield, avoiding Medway area, in fact, this is the area we are sticking to (add http in the front of the link) /goo.gl/maps/zSK6N as my husband needs to drive to east London for work and I'm travelling by train to London. So we need to be close enough to motorway and close enough to station (2miles from the station max).

Jamman960

New Ash Green has a lot going for it in terms of having a friendly feel and holding various events such as Village Day, Fireworks nights, Music in the Field/Hall etc but as above there is very little for kids to do in general and having the car's out of sight all the time leads to a lot of crime.

We've just moved from Bexleyheath to Gravesend, while its not a village and not particularly a small town its still much quieter in comparison to anything closer to london and the house prices are pretty good - for just over 200k we've brought a house that is done up to a high standard and needs very little if any work doing, the same house back in Bexleyheath could easily cost another 50-80k

We're less than 5 minutes away from the A2 and our trip to work only takes another 10minutes as its mostly motorways(much better than the usual daily queue to queue driving!)

Also, we looked at a couple of houses in Bean and found that unless you're on the main drag through the village its not actually that nice. It all seems a little too compact with very few shops etc in the middle.

evuliuxb

Well I guess almost everywhere will be quieter and nicer than East London:)

BigAunty

I liked South Darenth/Sutton-at-hone - it has (or had, haven't been there for 10 years) a decent chippy and a couple of nice pubs (Jolly Miller, Fighting C0cks), a lovely river walk and it's on the trainline into London from Farningham Road (was a slow line then, don't know if it's been affected by the infrastructure changes that have taken place on some lines).

Very quiet and peaceful.

I recall that one of the houses used to sell plants from their garden by leaving them out in their front garden with a trust box for the money and another used to be lit up at Xmas.