Aylesham used to be a place where everyone knew everyone and people could leave their front doors unlocked, say residents who have lived there for decades.

But now - after seeing 1,000 new-builds filled with fresh faces over the past 10 years - some say it has become a "village of strangers", as Sam Lennon reports...

Across Kent, dozens of huge new housing developments are planned on land near traditional villages.

Inevitably these schemes face objections from residents who fear what the impact will be on local services, roads and their community.

But are they right to worry?

The experience of those living in a former mining village in the east of the county may provide the answer.

Aylesham, located between Canterbury and Dover, has been completely transformed over the past 10 years.

Since 2014, hundreds of new homes have been added to the village - and almost 1,000 are already occupied. This number will eventually hit 1,292.

The project was called the Aylesham Garden Village, but what do residents of the original settlement - the so-called old guard - make of the changes?

Sean Parry, 60, was a coal miner from 1978 to 1989 at the former Snowdown Colliery, which Aylesham was first built for. Two of his sons now live on the new estate.

He told KentOnline: “The older people are friendly to the people in the new-builds, but the developments have taken a lot of green space in places where I don’t think they should have.”

Others reflect on how much has changed within the former mining community - which has had no secondary school for three decades, no Sunday bus service and now not even a pub in the main village.

Philip Sutcliffe, a miner from 1963 until 1987, said: “When the mine was going there were three clubs and a pub, now they are mostly gone.

“The village has changed. We knew everybody at one time but now you see a lot of people you don’t know because they have obviously come from different places to live in the new houses.

“Some of them at first don’t know there was a coal mine here, but they are surprised how friendly we are to them.”

Mr Sutcliffe fears local families are being priced out of purchasing the new-builds. One four-bed on the estate is currently up for sale for £400,000.

“People are coming here from London and other places because houses here are cheaper - but they are still too expensive for all of our children and grandchildren to buy,” he added.

Among the “Down from Londoners” (DFLs) who have settled in Aylesham is Richard Cheeseman.

The 60-year-old moved to the estate two months ago after 10 years elsewhere in Kent, in places such as Canterbury and Faversham.

“I prefer it here than anywhere else in Kent I have been to,” he said.

“There is not a lot to do but people are polite and friendly and nobody seems to be aggressive.

“I came from Bethnal Green, which was a bit rough and ready and you had to be streetwise. But it is really quiet and peaceful here.”

Roman Simenaas, 41, has been in Aylesham Garden Village for four years.

“I lived in Folkestone Road in the Maxton area of Dover before this and it was noisy,” he said.

“Here it is more quiet, it’s easy to relax and my children can walk in the fields nearby.

“Properties here are also cheaper than in Dover.”

Mr Simenaas, a maintenance engineer at Bakkavor Salads Tilmanstone in nearby Eythorne, has got to know his immediate neighbours at Sunshine Corner Avenue.

He has addressed the lack of secondary schooling for his children here by sending them to St Edmund’s in Dover.

“We are within walking distance of Aylesham railway station and you can catch buses and trains to Dover and Canterbury,” he said.

Lithuanian Mr Simenaas has lived in the UK since 2009, and reflects on the increasingly cosmopolitan feel of Aylesham.

“On this estate we have neighbours from Hong Kong, Poland and Greece,” he added.

“My wife has got to know the older, original members of the community as she is a local carer.”

The construction of the new estate has seen Aylesham’s population boom from 4,905 in 2011 to 6,400 in 2021, according to census data.

But with more homes comes less green space.

Eric Norton, 82, who mined at Snowdown from 1955 to 1985, said: “I used to live in Burgess Road where there was a big playing field and woodland nearby when we were growing up.

“There used to be all the animals you could think of, like skylarks, lugworms and bees.

“We used to play in the woods and now they’ve taken it all away and they’re building all these houses, and I’m against that.

“And yet they closed the village secondary school years ago so children now have to go to Dover, Sandwich or Canterbury. I think that’s disgraceful.”

Many others also lament the loss of the close community Aylesham was when Snowdown Colliery was operational, and even in the initial years after it shut down in 1987.

Sharon Powney, 58, who moved out of the village in 2002, now lives in Dover town and has no desire to return.

She told KentOnline when she was in Aylesham front doors were left unlocked for neighbours to pop in and out.

“I didn’t need to know what a front door key was,” she said.

“In the summer holidays there would be entertainment for the children, even trips to Margate for them. But it ended up as a village of strangers. There is no sense of community any more.”

Carol Pugh, 79, has lived in Aylesham all her life. Her father and husband were both miners.

She said: “You used to know everybody in the village, now you don’t know anyone, so you don’t say hello to people in the street any more.

“The nearest pub now is the Ratling, which is a mile away.

“They built all these houses but where are the kids supposed to play?”

In addition to the estate, which has been built to the north of the village, the Dover District Local Plan earmarks an extra 640 homes to the south.

The construction of the new homes is just the latest chapter in Aylesham’s story.

The village was established in 1926, with about 1,000 houses built by the 1960s.

The influx then was from within the British Isles, but it became a most un-Kent-like Kent village.

The arriving miners, mainly from Wales and the north of England, imported their own earthy cultures such as rugby, male voice choirs and brass bands, standing their new communities apart from the rest of rural Kent.

Mr Norton’s own father moved from Yorkshire in 1934 to work in Snowdown; Mr Sutcliffe’s came down from the county in 1945.

For decades afterwards the sound of a Yorkshire, Welsh or Geordie accent in the village was no surprise. The community had its own slang such as “snap” for food and “jitty” for alley.

The close bond between villagers particularly showed itself during the bitter year-long national miner’s strike in the 1980s, which began 40 years ago next March.

Mr Sutcliffe, then branch chairman of the National Union of Mineworkers, said: “No Snowdown miners in Aylesham went back to work during the strike.

“The only one who did was someone who had already transferred to Tilmanstone Colliery by then.”

The village suffered a massive body blow when Snowdown closed in October 1987, and the sting in the tail was the shutdown of Aylesham Secondary School in August 1991. That has never been replaced.

Local authorities had early on realised it was a mistake for the village’s employment to depend entirely on coal.

So the parish council in the 1960s successfully campaigned to build an industrial estate at Cooting Road, and in the early 1990s another was developed off Ackholt Road.

While these helped soften the blow of economic depression, more was needed to regenerate the village, which contributed to the idea of the Aylesham Garden Village.

The new development gives a nod to the village’s birth and mining heritage.

The layout was inspired by the design of renowned town planner Sir Patrick Abercrombie for the initial village.

Some of the new streets are in semi-circle form, as in the original village centre, to reflect half of a colliery wheel.

New street names include Hobnail Path, Canary Grove and Davy Street.

Work on the final stage of Aylesham Garden Village is beginning this spring with the last 290 houses to be built.

Financial contributions from developers Barratt Homes and Persimmon Homes have funded improvements to the village and a number of community facilities, including play and sports provision.

A new bus service was launched in February, although that does not run on a Sunday.

Under a Section 106 (developer contribution) agreement, exactly £277,790 is earmarked for secondary school provision within five miles of the Garden Village.

There is also £224,370 for extra places at Aylesham’s St Joseph’s Primary School.

Separately the Dover District Local Plan, published last autumn, earmarks 640 homes for land south of Spinney Lane and west of the railway line where the Aylesham and Snowdown stations are.

This land is next to the existing village boundary and is seen as a logical expansion site by the council.

The near-100-acre former Snowdown Colliery site is earmarked for businesses such as leisure, limited retail and tourism, rather than housing developments.