Kent, according to Charles Dickens in The Pickwick Papers, is nothing but
“apples, cherries, hops and women”. Indeed, Henry VIII was said to have
labelled the county the “garden of England” after eating a particularly
tasty batch of cherries grown there.
In the centuries since, the bucolic charms of swathes of the county have been
blunted by industry, motorways and swathes of new housing. However, much of
Kent, in particular the eastern part, remains deeply rural.
The problem – at least for those who want to commute to the capital – is the
time it takes to reach London. Canterbury, the picturesque county town, may
be only 60 miles by road, but it is 102 minutes from the capital by train –
enough to put off all but the hardiest daily commuters. Ashford, surrounded
by attractive villages and with its own Eurostar stop, is five miles closer,
but 83 minutes from London by rail. (Lille, by contrast, is less than an
hour away.)
All this is set to change, however, thanks to the new, 68-mile high-speed rail
link connecting St Pancras to the Channel tunnel – the first big rail link
to be built in Britain for more than a century. When the track goes into
operation in November, it will be used only for Eurostar services to the
Continent. In December 2009, however, domestic commuter services will start
flying through the countryside at speeds of up to 140mph.
An important part of improvements being made to London’s transport
infra-structure ahead of the 2012 Olympics, the new service – known as the
Javelin – will make much of Kent feasible commuter territory. Estate agents
and home-owners alike are salivating at the prospects for the property
market.
Journey times from London to Ashford will be more than halved to 37 minutes;
Folkestone will be 63, as opposed to 98, minutes away, while Ramsgate, at
present two hours from the capital, will be 84 minutes by train.
One of the most intriguing beneficiaries for homebuyers is Canterbury, with
its cathedral, ancient walls, townhouses and Chaucerian connections. Once
the new service is introduced, it will be 61 minutes from the capital.
“We have had a lot of investors buying and speculating that the line will be
improved,” says Neil Boswell, director of Caxtons Residential, an estate
agent in the city. “They are anticipating that it will drastically change
the market – not just in Canterbury, but in towns such as Whitstable and
Herne Bay.”
Yolande Barnes, head of research at Savills, is also convinced by the case for
Canterbury, which she predicts will become Kent’s answer to pricey
Winchester. “As a cathedral city only an hour from London, it will have the
potential to reach Winchester values,” she says. “It has attractive housing
stock and great schools – Kent still has a grammar system.”
At the moment, average prices in the city stand at £197,322 – about £100,000
less than in Winchester. If Barnes’s predictions are right, this means
Canterbury could see growth of 50% in the space of a few years. The effect
on Ashford could be more complex. Although the town will become an easy
commute to London from 2009, it will suffer, in the meantime, from the
scaling back of its international services: from November, the number of
Paris services will be slashed from seven to three, while Brussels-bound
trains will no longer stop there at all. With 31,000 new homes set to be
built in the immediate area over the next 25 years, it could soon suffer
from the overdevelopment so apparent in the north of the county.
More attractive towns with good housing stock that could see an influx of
London buyers include Deal and Sandwich, where prices average £214,768 and
£175,841 respectively. The real bargains, however, are to found in the
currently unloved seaside towns of Ramsgate, Margate and Folkestone.
At present, average prices in all three languish below £150,000, placing them
among the cheapest towns in the southeast. Part of this is because of their
reputation for unemployment and other social problems, even though the
housing stock is similar that in to any other seaside town in Sussex or Kent.
But things are looking up. Ramsgate has been spoken of as a new Brighton,
while Margate – which locals say has Kent’s best beach – could get a boost
from the opening, later this year, of the Turner Centre. (England’s most
famous painter was a regular visitor to the town.) Folkestone, with its
graceful if decaying Edwardian buildings, could also be poised to enjoy a
revival.
It is the nearby villages, however, especially those perched on the slopes of
the North Downs bisecting the county, that are more likely to become a
honeypot for City commuters.
“The most popular villages nearby are the so-called ‘bournes’ – Bekes-bourne,
Littlebourne, Bishopsbourne – which are all chocolate-box types,” says Simon
Backhouse, director of agents Strutt & Parker in Canterbury.
“Littlebourne has rather more heart to it, with a shop and two pubs. The
others are residential hamlets.”
Probably the most sought-after of them all, he says, is Chilham, which nestles
in an idyllic setting in the Downs; the North Downs Way long-distance
footpath runs through it.
If it is completely unspoilt you are after, then head further south along the
North Downs scarp slope as it heads towards the coast at Dover. “There are
some very attractive villages down there, such as Barfrestone and Elm-sted,”
Backhouse says. “I’ve been working round here for 20 years, and I still find
myself driving down narrow lanes around there and stopping and thinking,
‘Wow.’ ” Of course, rural bolt holes in the Downs come with a hefty price
tag. A four-bedroom village house will cost about £500,000, while the asking
price for a detached property will be between £600,000 and £750,000. Larger
detached country houses command up to £1m, although this is still 25% or so
cheaper than in the west of Kent, Backhouse says.
This price difference and the unspoilt scenery were the main factors that drew
Samantha Page, 40, and her fiancé, Matthew Brown, 32, to the area. Both work
in marketing for City firms and had been considering a move to the
countryside for some time.
The couple have sold their respective homes – a three-bedroom semi in Barnes,
which fetched £600,000, and a three-bed new-build in Ashford, sold for
£200,000 – and used the proceeds to buy a five-bedroom, 17th-century
farmhouse in the heart of the North Downs, near Chilham, for £750,000.
“We could get a lot more for our money compared to London,” Page says.
“Matthew had made the move to Kent six years ago, and we decided that we
would like to buy a farmhouse.”
Both already have children, and the quality of schooling and childcare in the
area – not to mention the degree of space – was also crucial. Page has
signed up her five-year-old son for an independent school.
“I was familiar with the area, and the setting is fantastic,” she adds.
“Ideally, I would like to live in Devon, but that’s impractical. East Kent
is quite unspoilt and still picturesque.
“The high-speed line is an added bonus, as we will be commuting from Ashford.
But, to be honest, I think it will have a greater effect on the towns the
other side of Canterbury, towards Sandwich, which are quite inaccessible at
the moment.”
There is more to Kent than the Downs and its villages, though. The
industrialised and suburbanised north – the Medway towns and the London
fringe around Gravesend – although not exactly the stuff of house-buyers’
dreams, offers first-time buyers a greener alternative to some of the less
attractive parts of southeast London.
About 25,000 new houses and flats are due to be built over the next few years
in Kent Thameside, the portion of the Thames Gateway redevelopment area
along the south bank of the river, east of the M25. It is the first wave of
the 120,000 new homes due to increase the county’s housing stock by 20% over
the next two decades. (Half of that figure will be part of the expansion of
existing towns such as Ashford, Dartford, Gravesend and Medway; the
remainder will be distributed fairly evenly around the county.)
Land Securities, Britain’s largest property company, is developing a new town
the size of Tunbridge Wells around Ebbsfleet station, near Dartford, where
the Javelin and Eurostar trains will both stop. The company is planning to
build 3,384 flats and houses, aimed at every section of society, alongside
community, leisure and retail facilities. There will also be 190 acres of
open space, with the station and nearby Blue-water shopping centre at its
heart.
From 2009, Ebbsfleet will be a mere 17 minutes from St Pancras – a shorter
commute than from many areas within zone two of the Tube. And you will
probably have a garden big enough to grow a cherry or two.
Southern charms
A Grade II-listed, three-bed townhouse in the centre of Canterbury is on the
market for £290,000. Amos & Dawton, 01227 454111, www.amosdawton.co.uk
Five-bed Fisher Street Farm, in Badlesmere, has a pool and a converted one-bed
barn; £1.25m, through Cluttons, 01227 457441, www.cluttons.com
