Bowman's Lodge is a house in Dartford,

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

, England and the location of Bowmans, an area in the north west of

Dartford Heath Dartford Heath Common is an area of open heathland situated to the south-west of Dartford, Kent, England, covering around of open space. Dartford Heath is classified as lowland heath and is one of only two substantial heathland blocks remaining ...

. The historian

John Dunkin John Dunkin (1782–1846) was an English topographer. Life He was the son of John Dunkin of Bicester, Oxfordshire, by his wife, Elizabeth, widow of John Telford, and daughter of Thomas and Johanna Timms, was born at Bicester on 16 May 1782. ...

wrote in 1844 that: A poem presented to E.M. Potts at Bowman's Lodge, in around 1834, ran as follows: In 1779-80 a shop, the Suttling house, stood near Bowman's Lodge, kept by Mr. Powell of the Granby, Dartford, for the purpose of supplying troops with stationery and small stores while they were camped on the heath preparing for a foreign invasion. Bowman's Lodge was the venue for four

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by str ...

matches played between 1795 and 1809 which were given retrospective

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is one of three or more days' scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officia ...

status. Two matches were held between an England side and a Hampshire team in 1795. A Kent side played England in 1805 and the final top-class match at the ground came in 1809 between England and a Surrey team. The exact location of the ground on the heath is unknown, though the land opposite the lodge is presently laid out with football pitches and is a possible site of the cricket matches. For about 60 years, the lodge was home to William Cracroft Fooks QC (1812–99), Barrister at Law, JP for the county of Kent. He was instrumental in the rejection of a proposal to build a ship canal from the Thames to

Dartford Creek The Darent is a Kentish tributary of the River Thames and takes the waters of the River Cray as a tributary in the tidal portion of the Darent near Crayford, as illustrated by the adjacent photograph, snapped at high tide. 'Darenth' is frequen ...

. He also organised the formation of a volunteer rifle corps in the Dartford area to prepare for a possible invasion of Britain by

Napoleon III Napoleon III (Charles Louis Napoléon Bonaparte; 20 April 18089 January 1873) was the first President of France (as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte) from 1848 to 1852 and the last monarch of France as Emperor of the French from 1852 to 1870. A nephew ...

. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries gravel was excavated in the area and numerous

Palaeolithic The Paleolithic or Palaeolithic (), also called the Old Stone Age (from Greek: παλαιός ''palaios'', "old" and λίθος '' lithos'', "stone"), is a period in human prehistory that is distinguished by the original development of stone to ...

flint implements were discovered in Bowman's Lodge Pit, which was located between the house and Chastilian Road. In the 20th century the pit was filled in and returned to

heath A heath () is a shrubland habitat found mainly on free-draining infertile, acidic soils and characterised by open, low-growing woody vegetation. Moorland is generally related to high-ground heaths with—especially in Great Britain—a cooler a ...

land. The lodge is thought to have had connections with Lord Tredegar until well into the 1900s. It was torn down in about 1987 and replaced with two modern dwellings. Swan Lane, the road running past the property, remained a dirt track until the 1980s when it was upgraded and became part of the main signposted route to Crayford from the Dartford Heath junction of the A2.

References

{{English cricket venues to 1825 1795 establishments in England Cricket grounds in Kent Dartford Defunct cricket grounds in England Defunct sports venues in Kent English cricket venues in the 18th century History of Kent Sports venues completed in 1795 Houses in Kent