Spotlight on Sevenoaks
Above: Knole Park, Sevenoaks
Above: Deer grazing in Knole Park, Sevenoaks
Who lives in a house like this? That might be the question on many a visitor’s lips as they tour the streets of Sevenoaks, one of the most sought-after towns in the entire country.
Homes in Sevenoaks and the surrounding area are frequently rated as among the most expensive in the country in fact, one property in 50 in the town is now worth more than £1 million.
Earlier this year, Sevenoaks was also listed as being the second most unaffordable town in the UK, with 13 times the average salary need to buy a home there. The only comfort for Sennockians trying to get a foothold on the property ladder was that Gerrards Cross, in Buckinghamshire, beat the town into top spot, with buyers needing 16 times the average salary to make a purchase.
Sennockians are used to seeing their town listed in the top 10 of the most desirable places to live and are ready with a list of attractions as long as your arm to explain why so many people want to put down roots there.
Essential access
Good shops, excellent links to London, Gatwick airport and the motorways, and easy access to the beautiful Garden of England are among the reasons cited by buyers when they pick Sevenoaks.
Add that one of the country’s top public schools and one of the National Trust’s greatest show houses are both in the centre of town, along with the weekly market and Blighs Meadow the charming pedestrianised shopping area and you can see why people are attracted to this warm, friendly town.
Steeped in a rich history, the town has a lively and vibrant community, which enjoys a thriving shopping area along with a larger-than-average number of restaurants, bars and pubs to cater for its 18,500 or so residents.
That’s not to say the town hasn’t been without its dramas. Residents have been gripped over the past couple of years by the fluctuating fortunes of its popular theatre. Launched in 1983 as the Stag Theatre, it came as a shock to the public when the venue closed its doors in July 2006, leaving the town without a theatre or cinema for the first time in 23 years.
The Playhouse had been a focal point for dozens of local groups and organisations, providing them with a stage to display the home-grown talents of generations of actors, dancers, singers and performers. But Sevenoaks District Council had been forced to repossess the London Road building it owned, following the failure of the company that ran the complex at the time to raise the £250,000 it needed to stay open.
The Playhouse had been a focal point for dozens of local groups
All seemed lost until a couple of months later when a new management company, digital cinema specialists Kino Holdings, was appointed to run the Playhouse on an interim contract.
In September this year, the company, which opened the UK’s first state-of-the-art digital cinema to great success in the former Hawkhurst Village Hall, signed a 25-year lease to operate the London Road arts complex promising to change the theatre’s name back to The Stag.
At the same time arts fans made their feelings known when several regular theatre companies, including Kentish Opera, pulled their autumn productions out of the Stag after a series of disagreements with theatre¹s new bosses.
Mixed reactions
Reactions among theatregoers continue to be mixed but this seems to be a drama that could possibly be set to run and run - one regular town event that has been a huge success for many years, however, is the annual Sevenoaks Town Festival, which now claims to be the third biggest event of its kind in the south-east.
For two weeks in late June and early July, the town celebrates a feast of everything from art to books, comedy to drama, and, of course, all kinds of music. Flags displaying the festival’s distinctive green and yellow acorn logo fly from shops and offices, welcoming arts lovers from all over Kent and Sussex.
Diversity at all levels is celebrated. In 2005, for instance, as well as concerts by world-famous names, including cellist Julian Lloyd Webber, organist Dame Gillian Weir and former Squeeze frontman, Glenn Tilbrook, the festival also featured dance shows, talks, walks, poetry readings, life portrait classes, plays, bandstand concerts, lunchtime recitals and even an allotment day.
The festival began more than 35 years ago, when the town’s renowned Sevenoaks School upgraded its previously internal celebration named Paean, a series of musical events inaugurated in 1968 to celebrate the end of exams, to Paean ‘70 - A Festival of Music and the Arts for Sevenoaks. By 1973, the festival had jettisoned Paean, possibly because of pronunciation difficulties, and been re-named Sevenoaks Summer Festival, which has remained.
Celebration of art
Over the years it has become one of the most popular events in the town’s annual calendar, along with the Sevenoaks Literary Festival, initially part of the festival, but now a event standing on its own, held in September.
Well-known now for its celebration of the arts, Sevenoaks also sits in some of the most attractive countryside in Kent, acting as a centre for pretty villages such as Ide Hill, Otford, Shoreham and Chipstead.
The town has often been in the headlines, most memorably in recent years after the Great Storm of October 1987, during which six of the seven oaks were blown down and the town became known unofficially - as Oneoaks.
Twenty years on, the oaks stand proud again, if not so tall yet, on the northern side of the town’s Vine Cricket Ground.
Sevenoaks motto is Floreant Septum Quercus May the Seven Oaks Flourish and that may also be applied with pride to this most gracious of Kent towns.
Places to visit
Knole, run by the National Trust, has historic links with kings, queens and the nobility as well as literary connections with Vita Sackville-West and Virginia Woolf, making it one of the most intriguing houses in England
Knole also has the only remaining medieval deer park in Kent
Sevenoaks Wildfowl Reserve, run by the Kent Wildlife Trust, is set in 135 acres and includes five lakes, ponds reedbeds and flooded pools. More than 3,000 species of birds have been identified there
Bradbourne Lakes is a series of small parks with a series of pretty lakes and wild birds, including ducks, geese and swans
Lullingstone Castle, at nearby Eynsford, is a historic family mansion and church near to the Roman Villa at Lullingstone. There is also a park and visitor centre nearby
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