Blue Bell Hill
Blue Bell Hill is a chalk hill between Maidstone and Rochester in the English county of Kent. It overlooks the River Medway and is part of the North Downs. Settlements on the hill include the Walderslade suburb of Chatham and the villages of Blue Bell Hill and Kit's Coty. During the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries much of the hill was quarried for chalk. The hill is a nature reserve which is managed by Kent Wildlife Trust. It is also part of the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and Wouldham to Detling Escarpment Sites of Special Scientific Interest and is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I. A picnic area serves as a rest point for walkers on the North Downs Way which runs along the top of the hill, whilst the prehistoric trackway of the Pilgrims' Way skirts its foot. A modern crematorium also surmounts the hill. The A229 dual carriageway follows the route of a former Roman road and climbs the hill, today linking the M2 and M20 motorways. High Spee ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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High Speed 1
High Speed 1 (HS1), legally the Channel Tunnel Rail Link (CTRL), is a high-speed railway linking London with the Channel Tunnel. It is part of a line carrying international passenger traffic between the United Kingdom and mainland Europe; it also carries domestic passenger traffic to and from stations in Kent and east London, and continental European loading gauge freight traffic. From the Channel Tunnel, the line crosses the River Medway, and tunnels under the River Thames, terminating at London St Pancras International station on the north side of central London. It cost £5.8 billion to build and opened on 14 November 2007. Trains run at speeds of up to on HS1. Intermediate stations are at in London, Ebbsfleet International in northern Kent and Ashford International in southern Kent. International passenger services are provided by Eurostar International, with journey times from London St Pancras International to Paris Gare du Nord in 2hours 15minutes, and Lond ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Wouldham To Detling Escarpment
Wouldham to Detling Escarpment is a biological and geological Site of Special Scientific Interest which stretches from Wouldham to Detling, north of Maidstone in Kent. Part of it is a Geological Conservation Review site, and it is part of the North Downs Woodlands Special Area of Conservation and the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. It is a Nature Conservation Review site, Grade I and it includes three Kent Wildlife Trust nature reserves and a Local Nature Reserve, This stretch of chalk escarpment has woodland, unimproved grassland and scrub. Plants include the nationally rare meadow clary and there are several scarce invertebrates. There are many Mesozoic The Mesozoic Era ( ), also called the Age of Reptiles, the Age of Conifers, and colloquially as the Age of the Dinosaurs is the second-to-last era of Earth's geological history, lasting from about , comprising the Triassic, Jurassic and Cretace ... fossil fishes in an excellent state of preservation. Referen ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A229
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it fro ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Lower Bell
The Lower Bell is a pub on the A229 Blue Bell Hill, between Chatham and Maidstone in Kent. It is located at the edge of the North Downs where the A229 meets the Pilgrims' Way. A pub has existed in the general area since around 1790, when the A229 was a turnpike road for coaches. The map maker and artist Paul Sandby Paul Sandby (1731 – 7 November 1809) was an English map-maker turned landscape painter in watercolours, who, along with his older brother Thomas, became one of the founding members of the Royal Academy in 1768. Life and work Sandby was ... painted ''A Distant View of Maidstone, from Lower Bell Inn, Boxley Hill'' in 1802, which depicts a view of the town from the pub. It is marked at its current location on a large-scale 1832 map of Kent. The current building was constructed in 1865. The purpose of the bell was for travellers to warn others further up the hill of their presence, as the road was too narrow for two teams of coach and horses to pass each oth ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Bluebell Hill Transmitting Station
The Bluebell Hill transmitting station is a broadcasting and telecommunications facility located at Blue Bell Hill between Maidstone and Rochester, Kent, Rochester in the England, English county of Kent. The station is situated on the crest of the North Downs and comprises five steel lattice towers, each 45 to 50 metres tall - their height being compromised by the location of nearby Rochester Airport. It broadcasts digital television, FM broadcasting, FM and Digital Audio Broadcasting, DAB radio to much of north, west, and central Kent, and an signal overspill, overspill service into southern Essex. It stopped broadcasting analogue television when the Digital terrestrial television in the United Kingdom#Digital switchover, digital switchover was completed on 27 June 2012. When in analogue service, the broadcast power of 30 kW for a main transmitter was unique in the United Kingdom, the strength being limited by potential interference with transmitters in France and the Low ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Neolithic Long House
The Neolithic long house was a long, narrow timber dwelling built by the first farmers in Europe beginning at least as early as the period 5000 to 6000 BC. They first appeared in central Europe in connection with the early Neolithic cultures such as the Linear Pottery culture or Cucuteni culture. This type of architecture represents the largest free-standing structure in the world in its era. Long houses are present across numerous regions and time periods in the archaeological record. The long house was a rectangular structure, 5.5 to 7.0 m wide, of variable length, around 20 m up to 45 m. Outer walls were wattle and daub, sometimes alternating with split logs, with pitched, thatched roofs, supported by rows of poles, three across.The numbers are from Gimbutas (1991) pages 39–41. However, they are approximately the same as the numbers given by other researchers and can therefore be taken as true measurements within a tolerance. The exterior walls would have been quite short be ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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M20 Motorway
The M20 is a motorway in Kent, England. It follows on from the A20 at Swanley, meeting the M25, and continuing on to Folkestone, providing a link to the Channel Tunnel and the ports at Dover. It is long. Although not signposted in England, this road is part of the European route E15. It is also used as a holding area for goods traffic when traffic across the English Channel is disrupted, such as Operation Stack and Operation Brock. Route The road starts at its junction with the M25 motorway and A20 road just east of Swanley, then continues south east across the River Darent, north of Farningham through the North Downs, past West Kingsdown and Wrotham to meet the M26. It then strikes east, running north of Addington. When it reaches junction 4 it passes south of New Hythe and runs parallel to the Medway Valley railway line before crossing it close to junction 5. This next section is the Maidstone bypass. High Speed 1 then runs parallel to the motorway as it continues to ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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M2 Motorway (Great Britain)
The M2 is a motorway in Kent, England. It is long and acts as a bypass of the section of the A2 road to run past the Medway Towns, Sittingbourne, Faversham, and to provide an alternative route to the Port of Dover, supplementing the M20. It feeds into the A2, forming a 62 mile long trunk road from London to (almost) Dover. Route The M2 starts west of Strood, Kent at Three Crutches, diverging southeastwards from the A2 road that heads ESE from Central London, one of five roads of dual carriageway width or greater reaching into the southern half of Greater London. From Junction 1 it has four lanes each way that slope into the Medway Valley south of Rochester. On the west bank of the River Medway is Junction 2 intersecting the A228 between Strood and West Malling, a junction where the master exit roundabout passes under the HS1 track and which retains, by footbridge and tunnel, the North Downs Way (a public footpath). By this point the road is mounted on the Medway Viaduct, ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Dual Carriageway
A dual carriageway ( BE) or divided highway ( AE) is a class of highway with carriageways for traffic travelling in opposite directions separated by a central reservation (BrE) or median (AmE). Roads with two or more carriageways which are designed to higher standards with controlled access are generally classed as motorways, freeways, etc., rather than dual carriageways. A road without a central reservation is a single carriageway regardless of the number of lanes. Dual carriageways have improved road traffic safety over single carriageways and typically have higher speed limits as a result. In some places, express lanes and local/collector lanes are used within a local-express-lane system to provide more capacity and to smooth traffic flows for longer-distance travel. History A very early (perhaps the first) example of a dual carriageway was the ''Via Portuensis'', built in the first century by the Roman emperor Claudius between Rome and its port Ostia at the mouth of t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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A229 Road
A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''a'' (pronounced ), plural ''aes''. It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the double-storey a and single-storey ɑ. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type. In English grammar, " a", and its variant " an", are indefinite articles. History The earliest certain ancestor of "A" is aleph (also written 'aleph), the first letter of the Phoenician alphabet, which consisted entirely of consonants (for that reason, it is also called an abjad to distinguish it f ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Crematorium
A crematorium or crematory is a venue for the cremation of the dead. Modern crematoria contain at least one cremator (also known as a crematory, retort or cremation chamber), a purpose-built furnace. In some countries a crematorium can also be a venue for open-air cremation. In many countries, crematoria contain facilities for funeral ceremonies, such as a chapel. Some crematoria also incorporate a columbarium, a place for interring cremation ashes. Ceremonial facilities While a crematorium can be any place containing a cremator, modern crematoria are designed to serve a number of purposes. As well as being a place for the practical but dignified disposal of dead bodies, they must also serve the emotional and spiritual needs of the mourners. The design of a crematorium is often heavily influenced by the funeral customs of its country. For example, crematoria in the United Kingdom are designed with a separation between the funeral and cremation facilities, as it is not cu ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Pilgrims' Way
The Pilgrims' Way (also Pilgrim's Way or Pilgrims Way) is the historical route supposedly taken by pilgrims from Winchester, Hampshire, Winchester in Hampshire, England, to the shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury in Kent. This name, of comparatively recent coinage, is applied to a pre-existing ancient trackway dated by archaeological finds to 600–450 BC, but probably in existence since the Stone Age. The prehistoric route followed the "natural causeway" east to west on the southern slopes of the North Downs. The course was dictated by the natural geography: it took advantage of the contours, avoided the sticky clay of the land below but also the thinner, overlying "clay with flints" of the summits.Wright, Christopher John (1971). ''A Guide to the Pilgrims' Way.'' Constable and Co, London. In places a coexisting ridgeway (track), ridgeway and terrace way can be identified; the route followed would have varied with the season, but it would not drop below the upper ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |