Greenstreet Project - under investigation!
It wasn't so very long ago that "Greenstreet" was the dominant and most populous local community between the towns of Faversham and Sittingbourne.
This historic community grew on the main east/west road between London with Dover - Watling Street in Roman times, London Road or the A2 today.
North/south connections joined Conyer - Teynham Street - Barrow Green - Greenstreet - Lynsted - Doddington. Rumoured to be a popular smuggling route.
Consequently, Greenstreet was the home of many important local trades and commercial services that supported all the surrounding communities. There were three coaching inns - The Dover Castle, The George and The (old) Swan, together with a beer-seller, Teynham Arms and the smaller Fox Inn.
The Span of this Project
This project spans the history, occupations, families and economics that evolved and decayed in turn to create (and mask) what we have today.
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The character changed These served agricultural familes and families reliant on brick making, cement manufacture and the railway.
Looking further back, there is ample evidence of Roman and pre-Roman influences scattered along our stretch of Watling Street as it passes between Sittingbourne and Faversham. Not least the stretches of arrow-straight road! In time, ours has been a military road, a toll-road plied by commerce and travellers (and those who preyed on them), a declining and poorly maintained track with the advent of trains.
As individual freedom of travel grew, London Road - Greenstreet continued to provide a diminished commercial focus for surrounding communities. Crafts were displaced by mass shopping and products designed to be disposable or beyond repair. Employment no longer had to be local. Communities becoming less concentrated around long-standing family homes. The building of the M2 gave some measure of relief from the age of the motorised traffic in recent years that had choked ancient communities and stripped it of its character.
Urbanising street-furniture has come to dominate and obscure the historic character of community of buildings. THere are so many "messages" that simply confuse the identity of our homes.
But, it is not only Greenstreet that has had its identity transformed (or diminished).
In our earliest maps, we can see rather minor populations to the north of Greenstreet - Barrow Green and Teynham Street - and scattered farmsteads. Teynham Street and Newgardens were more notable for their large landowners rather than their populations. Those developments evolved in a evolutionary way that responded to local needs. Much of this develpment retained their historic pattern of development, one building deep, retaining the relationship with the valuable and productive agricultural soil.
Greenstreet's expansion took place on the back of industrial-scale brickmaking, nearby world-class brick and cement works (Conyer), and the arrival of the railway (25th January 1858). Parish Council minute books show how slowly metalling and pavements arrived in Greenstreet.
The sale of Newgardens in more recent times allowed further in-filling of the space between railway and the arterial road during the 19th and 20th century. The "new" Teynham became one of the largest "industrial villages" in Kent. This led Post Office administrators at the beginning of the 19th century, to decide on erasing the name of "Greenstreet" for its post-office (on the Teynham side of the A2). This task was completed after World War 1. We see echos of the once thriving commercial community in its buildings and in the names of some of its businesses. But many of the small shops are now converted to residential use or fallen into disuse. Most of the brickearth surrounding Teynham and Lynsted has also long gone and the number of local brick-makers declined. If you scrape away the visual clutter of modern-day traffic management, random signage and power/telephone lines, this ancient community is still attractive and retains an identity quite separate from those of the old Lynsted to the south and the Teynham Street community to the north.
Documents and images
- There are a large number of postcards that shed light on the thriving commercial history, and its decline.
- Ex-Mayor of Faversham, Peter Salmon, photographic record of Greenstreet during a walk in 1971.
- Naming "Greenstreet":-
- Research into the local Greenstreet Family (thanks to Paul Greenstreet and Bernard Cork) raises questions about the naming of Greenstreet. Which came first, the family name or the community name?
- Elizabeth Selby's invaluable book on "Teynham Manor and Hundred" explores the differences between naming of the road and naming of the community that sits astride the road. She also comments on some of the buildings.