Town centre survey

Addresses

About the town centre survey

Finding the information you need

You gain access to the building details by clicking on one of the Addresses buttons and selecting an address from the street list. The names of current occupiers are also given.

If you know where the building is located in the town but do not know the street name click the Town map button. Click on a block and you will be taken to the relevant section of the addresses list.

Introduction to the photographic survey of Sevenoaks town centre

This survey was sponsored by the Sevenoaks Conservation Council and funded by its constituent bodies – the Sevenoaks District and Town Councils, the Chamber of Commerce and The Sevenoaks Society.  It updates and extends the survey originally carried out in the 1980s (see below).  For convenience this is referred to as the “previous survey”.

Both surveys deal with the modern commercial centre of the Town.  They do not cover the historic Upper High Street which has been extensively covered in other publications. 

The present survey extends coverage to The Shambles area in the heart of the Town and also extends further along both the High Street and the London Road.  The limits are broadly Pembroke Road to the north and the fountain to the south. 

The survey is based on the photographs taken by John G P Kay ABIPP., AMPA., ARPS. in 1997.  Notes on the architecture, history and ownership of each building have been prepared by members of the planning sub-committee of The Sevenoaks Society, drawing on the previous survey in the area it covered, the listed building descriptions and the book ‘Old Corners of Sevenoaks’ by Ron Terry.  These notes are not intended to be lengthy or technical but to highlight salient points to supplement the photographs and as a starting point for further research. 

Inevitably, a voluntary operation has taken longer than had been hoped, and it is significant that so many buildings have changed occupiers since the photographs were taken, the changes being primarily to the shopfronts and not to the buildings themselves.  As far as possible the ‘Description’ notes have been brought up to date and should generally be taken in preference to the photographs which, it is intended, will be progressively brought up to date to match.

Acknowledgements

In addition to the funding by the constituent bodies of the Sevenoaks Conservation Council, financial support has also been received from Sevenoaks Town Partnership, FPDSavills, Ibbett Mosely, Knocker & Foskett, Lane Fox, Millest & Partners and Warners.  The contributing members of the Society’s planning sub-committee were: Harry Boulter, Anthony Collins, Alan Coulson, Graham E Davie, Ramon Higgs, Frank Marshall, Cherry and Peter Moss, Christopher Rayner, Ronald Terry and Roy Walker.  The excellent typescript was prepared by Tracey Jackson of Millest & Partners.

The previous photographic survey of Sevenoaks town centre

Introduction:

The origin of the Town Centre Photographic Survey dates from the first Constitution of the Sevenoaks Conservation Council [SCC] of September 1977, the SCC being composed of representatives from the Sevenoaks District Council [SDC], the Sevenoaks Town Council [STC], the Chamber of Commerce [CC] [formally Trade] and the Sevenoaks Society [SS]. The relevant extracts from that Constitution are as follows:

Purpose:

a: at the request of the SDC and/or the STC, or with their approval, to carry out surveys of buildings and other townscape features of the centre of Sevenoaks, to assess their contribution to the essential character of the town, to make a judgement of the relative importance of such features and to report to the SDC

b: to propose ways in which the appearance of groups of buildings, individual buildings and other features could be enhanced

c: at the request of the SDC and/or STC or with their approval to prepare and [after consultation with the STC] submit to the SDC design guidelines [drawn in such a way as to promote and not inhibit good architecture] for the physical form of the new development in terms of scale, materials, eaves height, etc: such guidelines as may be approved by the SDC to become the standard against which development applications will be judged.

In the event of these proposals, requiring professional architectural input for the preparation of the necessary drawings and the analysis of each building façade and its context, to provide the appropriate guidance proved to be too ambitious for the limited number of architects with sufficient time to spare to undertake this work. The idea of using photographs instead of the detailed drawings was therefore devised and adopted as an appropriate alternative.

The first photographic survey was therefore undertaken, largely put together by the former SCC and SS Chairman, Ralph Miles, and completed between 1980 and 1986. One set of the finished survey was presented to each of the constituent members of the SCC.

As a result of interest being expressed by the SDC in the activities of the SCC in 1996 it was decided to review and bring up to date the Town Centre Photographic Survey that had been completed some ten years previously. During the next year professional photographs were commissioned and teams from the SS’s Planning Sub-Committee were established to review and update where necessary the original descriptions emphasised the important features and providing a brief history and comment on each building.

In undertaking this review, over the next three years, it was realised that the revised survey was more detailed and extensive than the earlier edition and, on completion, it was decided that it should be put on the SS’s website for general accessibility and this was achieved in May 2004. Subsequently in October 2005 the photographs from the original survey were added.

It should be noted that the history description is only a brief outline, believed to be reasonably accurate, and only envisaged as a starter to further research elsewhere.

We would like to thank Sevenoaks Town Council which has given a generous grant enabling the original photographs from 1986 to be added to the Town Centre Photographic Survey on the Sevenoaks Society website.