Sutton-at-Hone and Hawley is a

civil parish In England, a civil parish is a type of administrative parish used for local government. It is a territorial designation which is the lowest tier of local government below districts and counties, or their combined form, the unitary authority ...

within the

Borough of Dartford The Borough of Dartford is a local government district in the north-west of the county of Kent, England. Its council is based in the town of Dartford. It is part of the contiguous London urban area. It borders the borough of Gravesham to the ea ...

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 England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

. It lies to the south of the urban part of the Borough, and consists of the two settlements named, both to the west of the

River Darent 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 ...

, one of the parish boundaries. The

M25 motorway The M25 or London Orbital Motorway is a major road encircling most of Greater London. The motorway is one of the most important roads in the UK and one of the busiest. Margaret Thatcher opened the final section in 1986, making the M25 the lon ...

divides them. It has a population of 4,133, increasing to 4,230 at the 2011 Census.

History of the parish

In former times, when Kent was administered through areas known as

lathes A lathe () is a machine tool that rotates a workpiece about an axis of rotation to perform various operations such as cutting, sanding, knurling, drilling, deformation, facing, and turning, with tools that are applied to the workpiece to cr ...

, Sutton-at-Hone was a half-lathe. It covered an area well in excess of

Dartford Dartford is the principal town in the Borough of Dartford, Kent, England. It is located south-east of Central London and is situated adjacent to the London Borough of Bexley to its west. To its north, across the Thames estuary, is Thurrock in ...

Borough as it is today. The half-lathe embraced a number of towns and villages including Dartford (Darentford) and Hawley. 1894 saw the formation of the Parish Council of Sutton-at-Hone under the Local Government Act of that year. At that time the Council's area included Sutton-at-Hone, Hawley, Swanley Junction, Swanley Village, Hextable and

Crockenhill Crockenhill is a village in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It is located 1 mile south of Swanley and 4.5 miles north east of Orpington, adjacent to the Kent border with Greater London. Etymology Crockenhill is from Old English ''hyll'' ...

. In 1955 many parish boundaries were changed dramatically and the Parish was reduced to just Sutton-at-Hone and Hawley. In the late 1970s the parish was renamed Sutton-at-Hone and Hawley Parish Council to reflect its specific administration area se

St John's Jerusalem

Within the parish is the one-time Commandery of the

Knights Hospitaller The Order of Knights of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem ( la, Ordo Fratrum Hospitalis Sancti Ioannis Hierosolymitani), commonly known as the Knights Hospitaller (), was a medieval and early modern Catholic Church, Catholic Military ord ...

s of the Order of St John of Jerusalem. Now in the hands of the

National Trust The National Trust, formally the National Trust for Places of Historic Interest or Natural Beauty, is a charity and membership organisation for heritage conservation in England, Wales and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, there is a separate and ...

, the garden and 13th century chapel are open to the public.

Farningham Road railway station Farningham Road railway station is on the Chatham Main Line in England, serving the villages of Farningham, Sutton-at-Hone, Horton Kirby and South Darenth, Kent. It is down the line from and is situated between and . The station and all trai ...

is also located within the parish.

Notes and references

External links

Parish Council website
{{coord , 51, 25, N, 0, 14, E, region:GB, display=title Borough of Dartford Civil parishes in Kent