Ide Hill is a village within the

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 authorit ...

Sundridge with Ide Hill Sundridge and Ide Hill is a civil parish in the Sevenoaks (district), Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. It is located in the River Darenth, Darenth valley and lies between Sevenoaks and Westerham. The parish contains the villages of Sundridge, ...

, in the

Sevenoaks Sevenoaks is a town in Kent with a population of 29,506 situated south-east of London, England. Also classified as a civil parish, Sevenoaks is served by a commuter main line railway into London. Sevenoaks is from Charing Cross, the traditio ...

District of

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. It stands on one of the highest points of the

Greensand Ridge The Greensand Ridge, also known as the Wealden Greensand is an extensive, prominent, often wooded, mixed greensand/sandstone escarpment in south-east England. Forming part of the Weald, a former dense forest in Sussex, Surrey and Kent, it r ...

about three miles south-west of

. Its name first appears on record in 1250 as Edythehelle. It is an eponymic denoting 'Edith's hill', from the

Old English Old English (, ), or Anglo-Saxon, is the earliest recorded form of the English language, spoken in England and southern and eastern Scotland in the early Middle Ages. It was brought to Great Britain by Anglo-Saxon settlers in the mid-5th ...

hyll 'hill'. The village lies within the Kent Downs

Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty An Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB; , AHNE) is an area of countryside in England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, that has been designated for conservation due to its significant landscape value. Areas are designated in recognition of ...

. The church is relatively modern. The village had an

Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of t ...

chapel in 1806, built by

Beilby Porteus Beilby Porteus (or Porteous; 8 May 1731 – 13 May 1809), successively Bishop of Chester and of London, was a Church of England reformer and a leading abolitionist in England. He was the first Anglican in a position of authority to seriously ...

Bishop of London A bishop is an ordained clergy member who is entrusted with a position of authority and oversight in a religious institution. In Christianity, bishops are normally responsible for the governance of dioceses. The role or office of bishop is ca ...

, who lived in nearby Sundridge; St Mary's church was built in 1865 and "has the distinction of being the highest church in Kent" at above sea level, as well as boasting a beautiful lychgate, crafted by local builder Cecil 'Dusty' Boakes. There are several old buildings round the sloping

village green A village green is a common open area within a village or other settlement. Historically, a village green was common grassland with a pond for watering cattle and other stock, often at the edge of a rural settlement, used for gathering cattle t ...

, including the 18th-century Cock Inn and the Ide Hill Village School, built in 1856 it is the second home of the school which unusually for a church school predates the church building as the school was formed in 1809.
Ide Hill Football Club
who have teams in the Kent County League, the Sevenoaks & District League and the Crowborough & District Junior League, play their home games on the Ide Hill Recreation Ground (behind the Cock Inn). As per the church, the football pitch "has the distinction of being the highest in Kent". Two of Kent's places of interest are near Ide Hill:

Bough Beech Reservoir Bough Beech Reservoir is a nature reserve in Bough Beech, south-west of Sevenoaks in Kent. It was managed by the Kent Wildlife Trust until July 2020. It is in the Kent Downs Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. This nature reserve covers th ...

and Emmetts Garden. Bough Beech Reservoir was completed in 1969. A large area round it is leased to the Kent Trust for Nature Conservation as a nature reserve. Emmetts Garden is in the care 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 ...

. It was laid out in the late 19th century. There is a stone seat near the village church to commemorate

Octavia Hill Octavia Hill (3 December 1838 – 13 August 1912) was an English social reformer, whose main concern was the welfare of the inhabitants of cities, especially London, in the second half of the nineteenth century. Born into a family of radical ...

, one of the Trust's founders. In his 1933 memoir ''

Down and Out in Paris and London ''Down and Out in Paris and London'' is the first full-length work by the English author George Orwell, published in 1933. It is a memoir in two parts on the theme of poverty in the two cities. Its target audience was the middle- and upper-cl ...

George Orwell Eric Arthur Blair (25 June 1903 – 21 January 1950), better known by his pen name George Orwell, was an English novelist, essayist, journalist, and critic. His work is characterised by lucid prose, social criticism, opposition to totalit ...

reports that Ide Hill was notorious for being the worst “spike” (a casual ward or homeless shelter) in all of England. Although in a footnote he confesses to finding it 'not so bad'.

Goathurst Common

Goathurst Common is a hamlet within the

. It lies to the east of Ide Hill. Its road, Bessels Green Road, leads through Whitley Forest to the village of

Bessels Green Bessels Green is a village now incorporated into the built-up area of Sevenoaks in Kent, England. It is on the north-western outskirts of Sevenoaks, in the parish of Chevening. At the 2011 Census the village population was included in the civi ...

, near Sevenoaks to the south. There is no current chapel or church. The hamlet did have two but they have been converted into houses. It is a mainly residential area consisting of about sixty houses built since the early 1920s. Goathurst Common is separated from Ide Hill by Stubbs Wood. The woodlands around Goathurst Common were devastated during the Great Storm of 1987, when many trees were brought down by very high winds.

Nearest settlements

References

External links

Ide Hill VillageThe Parish Churches and Community InformationEmmetts GardenIde Hill SocietyIde Hill Conservation Area Appraisal
Sevenoaks District Council. {{authority control Villages in Kent