Early last century, a man called Elliot Downs Till had some village stocks made and set up in Eynsford to replace the original ones that used to stand on the triangular green at Bower Lane's junction with the A225. He thought it would make a nice feature for the street scene.

Unfortunately, though, the new stocks awoke local memories of a man who had died in the old stocks in 1838 and there were some villagers who wanted them removed. Mr Till felt sure the opposition would subside once the local people got used to the new stocks, so he put a fence round them instead of removing them. It was not good enough. The fence was uprooted and the stocks burned where they stood.

Poor Mr Till. He died in 1917, at the age of 82, of a bee sting on his ear and Eynsford sufficiently forgave him for the stocks to put up a lychgate to his memory.

Eynsford really is a picture-postcard village, with it's many architectural styles, including several timbered houses and it's ford over which the river Darent swarms very prettily and in which local children slake their insatiable fascination with running water.

There is a bridge as well, a little gem of a medieval hump-back bridge with two low semi-circular arches separated by a bold cut-water on the upstream side, into which is built a medieval carved stone figure.

St Martin's Church, with it's wood-shingled spire, has a tower clock surrounded by a quotation from Browning, 'Grow old along with me, the best is yet to be.'

Nearby are the remains of Eynsford's old castle, one of the most complete Norman castles of it's kind in England. It is looked after by the Department of the Environment now and is open to the public, but for some years it was used as kennels for the hunting dogs owned by the Hart-Dyke family of nearby Lullingstone Castle.

Lullingstone isn't really a castle at all, and never was, despite the impressive towered gateway which was built in the last years of the 15th century. Between the gate and the house is a wide expanse of lawn on part of which stands the ancient parish church of St Botolph known appropriately enough as The Church on the Lawn. The church can be visited at any time, but the house cannot.

House and church were both restored by Sir Percyvall Hart in the 18th century in honour of Queen Anne, who often stayed there. A rather odd little story is told of his daughter, Anne. It relates how, on the night of the celebration of her betrothal to Sir Thomas Dyke of Horeham, Sussex, she slipped away to her bedroom where she made a rope of knotted sheets and climbed down into the arms of a young navel officer called Bluet, who was waiting for her in a boat in the moat.

Together they ran away and were married. The jilted Sir Thomas swore he would never marry anyone else and, indeed, he did not. When Bluet died nine years later his widow found the faithful Sir Thomas still waiting for her and they were married.

A later member of the family, Sir William Hart Dyke, and two of his friends framed the rules of lawn tennis at Lullingstone in 1875 and first played the game there, using a ladder supported on two barrels instead of a net.

The house remained in the same family for six-hundred years. It was empty when Sir Oliver Hart Dyke married Zoe, who became Lady Hart Dyke and who started the famous Lullingstone silk farm in part of the house. Silk from the farm was used for Queen Elizabeth's Coronation robes in 1937, as well as for dresses for the two princesses, Elizabeth and Margaret Rose.

Later, more Lullingstone silk was incorporated in Princess Elizabeth's wedding dress, and during WW2 it went to make parachutes.

Now the whole enterprise has moved to Compton House in Dorset and it was from there that the silk used for the wedding dress of Princess Diana was spun.

A guess would be that most of the visitors to Lullingstone Castle arrive there from the car park of Lullingstone Villa, the cherished excavation of a Roman villa which has been completely enclosed inside a rather nice building of timber and glass to which the Department of the Environment charges admission and then allows visitors to roam at will around the edge of the excavated site. There is a gallery, too, which affords a nice panoramic view of the whole, and cases exhibiting some of the finds unearthed there.