Into the valley

For our second visit to the Kentish Stour we take a minor detour to the ecologically important valley bogs of Hothfield Common for a spot of rewilding.

- Peter Vujakovic

BEYOND the village of Little Chart the river flows east before dog-legging sharply to the south west. Parallel to this stretch, for about half a mile, runs a small tributary of the Stour that drains the ecologically important valley bogs of Hothfield Common.

These bogs form where water draining through the sandy Folkestone Beds meets the impermeable silty clays and fuller’s earth of the Sandgate beds and emerge as springs.

The acid bog environment that results is extremely scarce in Kent, and Hothfield is probably our best example. To visit the Common is to experience an apparently timeless wilderness of bog, health, grassland and woods in what is otherwise a relatively intensively managed agricultural landscape.

The Common, however, has had a mixed history and just over half a century ago would have looked very different. The area was requisitioned during the Second World War for an army base and prisoner of war camp.

Set up on the eastern edge of the Common, on higher ground overlooking the bogs, the rows of Nissen huts are visible on aerial photographs taken in 1940, but have now disappeared from view under a woodland canopy. After the war, the buildings were given over to the homeless, although conditions were extremely tough.