750 Years of Heritage

The History of Kemnal Road

From ancient woodland footpath to one of Chislehurst's most distinguished private roads.

Kemnal Road follows the route of an ancient footpath that crossed an area called Woodheath for centuries, used for collecting timber and charcoal from the old-growth woodland that once blanketed this part of Kent. Before the first house was built here, the path was described as “one of the prettiest walks in the neighbourhood.”

Canon Murray, the 19th-century rector of St Nicholas Church, would walk this route each day to reach the Maidstone Road, where a coach carried him into London — this was before the railway arrived at Chislehurst in 1865 and changed everything.

Today the road winds for approximately one mile between the village centre to the south and the A20 (Sidcup Road) to the north. It remains a private, unadopted road, maintained by its residents through the Kemnal Residents' Association — just as it has been for over 150 years.

Etymology

The Name “Kemnal”

The name derives from Kemnal Manor, first documented in deeds around 1250 as the residence of Alexander of Chomehole. Over the following centuries, scribes and mapmakers rendered the name in an evolving succession of spellings: Chomehole, Cunehale, Kimehole, Kimenhale, Kymenhole, Kemenhole, and Keminghole, before the name contracted into the form we know today. The last house to bear the name Kemnal was built in the 1870s and stood until it was destroyed by fire in 1964.

Timeline

Key Dates

c. 974
Earliest documented records of Chislehurst, in a Saxon charter. The name derives from cisel (gravel) and hyrst (wooded hill).
c. 1250
Kemnal Manor first appears in the historical record — a deed naming Alexander of Chomehole as its occupant. The estate had likely been inhabited for centuries before.
c. 1260
Alexander surrenders his lease to the Canons of St Nicholas and St Bernard of Monte Jovis — a Swiss Alpine monastery whose English branch was the Priory of Hornchurch in Essex.
1301
Hornchurch Priory confirmed as owners of the Kemnal estate.
1391
William of Wykeham, Bishop of Winchester, purchases the estate for 2,000 marks. He endows it to his new foundation, New College, Oxford, which would hold the property for an extraordinary 480 years.
1798–1806
Sir Archibald MacDonald, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer and former Attorney General, resides at Kemnal Manor.
1865
Chislehurst railway station opens on the South Eastern Railway, connecting the village to London and transforming it from a rural retreat into a desirable commuter settlement.
1871
Samuel Asser purchases the freehold of the Kemnal estate from New College, Oxford for £23,000 — ending almost five centuries of Oxford ownership.
December 1873
The road is born. Asser acquires a 40-foot right of way from Viscount Sydney of Frognal, enabling the construction of a new northern section connecting to the Maidstone Road (now the A20). The old footpath becomes Kemnal Road.
1874
Asser sells 57 acres to banker Henry Tiarks for the construction of Foxbury. Earl Sydney sells individual plots on both sides of the road for further development.
1877
Foxbury completed — a grand mansion designed by David Brandon, former Vice President of RIBA, costing £22,000. Woodheath (later Hoblands) also built this year.
1884
The road reaches its Victorian peak: 13 large houses accommodating 210 residents, including 84 domestic servants. A contemporary described it as “a distinguished private road with large fine houses, whose beautiful grounds owe much of their charm to the retention of their woodland character.”
1888
The Metropolitan Commons Act protects Chislehurst Commons, securing 180 acres of woodland and heathland for future generations.
1909 & 1913
Two devastating fires at Woodheath. The second, in June 1913, destroyed the upper storeys completely. The house lay in ruins for over a decade before being rebuilt as Hoblands.
1911
Chislehurst's first swimming pool built at Woodheath — marble-lined, heated, with swings and a water slide. Designed by Maurice Webb, son of Sir Aston Webb (architect of the Victoria and Albert Museum).
1925–1926
Arthur Pelham Ford commissions architect Fred Harrild to build a Georgian-style house on the ruins of Woodheath, naming it Hoblands — a reference to the medieval name “Hobland” found on old maps of this corner of Kent.
1938
Foxbury becomes the Church Missionary Society training centre. The grand house enters a new chapter as an institution rather than a private home.
1940s
WWII brings bombing to Kemnal Road. At least two houses sustain significant damage. Foxbury is requisitioned — occupied by the ATS and British Army, later serving as the London Scottish Regiment headquarters.
1945–1975
The great transformation. Economic change means “the value of the land exceeded the value of the houses built on the land.” Seven of the original thirteen mansions are demolished, replaced by apartment blocks and smaller housing developments. The road's population shifts from a handful of wealthy families to a diverse residential community.
1964
Kemnal Manor, the ancient heart of the estate, is destroyed by fire. The grounds later become a burial site, and a Cold War bunker built nearby is eventually converted into the luxury “Glass House” residence.
1976
Woolwich Building Society purchases Foxbury for £145,000 — a fraction of its original construction cost a century earlier.
2009
Michael Jackson leases Foxbury for £15,000 per month, intended as his London base during his planned O2 concert residency. He dies before taking up residence.
2020
Tony Allen and Andrew Thomas publish The Story of Kemnal Road, Chislehurst, a comprehensive history of the road drawing on decades of research, census records, family photographs, and personal memoirs.

The Golden Age

Victorian Kemnal Road

By 1884, the road's thirteen large houses accommodated 21 adults and 39 children, supported by 84 domestic servants. An additional 14 households in lodges, cottages, and stables housed roughly 20 male servants with their families and 37 children — approximately 210 people in total along this single road.

Census records from 1891 reveal that these servants came from 24 English counties, reflecting the great rural-to-urban migration of the Victorian era. A butler could expect wages of around £65 per year; a cook roughly £60; housemaids and kitchen maids approximately £20. Foxbury alone employed 20 servants, at a total annual cost of some £560.

At its height, the road employed over 100 domestic servants at any given time. By the 1930s, as the age of domestic service waned, even Foxbury — the grandest house — had reduced its complement from 20 to just 6.

A Legacy of Preservation

The Amenity Strip

One of Kemnal Road's most enduring legacies of civic-mindedness is the Amenity Strip — a narrow band of land running along the western side of the road, purchased by Sir Walter Murton of Meadowcroft specifically to preserve the road's verdant character.

Murton, Solicitor to the Board of Trade and a tireless advocate for the protection of Chislehurst Commons, understood that the strip's retention in its natural state would prevent future development from encroaching on the road's woodland aspect. The strip still exists today, managed by appointed trustees. Among those who have served as trustees were Leonard Gilbert of Hoblands and Charles Williams of Nizels.

Transformation

The Post-War Years

The two world wars fundamentally altered the social fabric of Kemnal Road. The age of grand houses staffed by dozens of servants was over. Several properties had sustained bomb damage, and the economics of maintaining vast Victorian estates had become unsustainable. As one commentator observed, “the value of the land exceeded the value of the houses built on the land.”

Between 1945 and 1975, seven of the original thirteen great houses were demolished. In their place rose apartment blocks, cul-de-sacs, and developments of smaller houses: Marlowe Close on the Meadowcroft grounds, Dickens Drive and Pickwick Way on Kemnal Wood's land, Mapledene on the Holly Bowers site. The road's character changed, but its woodland setting endured.

Today, four original mansions survive: Foxbury, Foxearth, Selwood, and Nizels. Several original estate buildings also remain — North Lodge, Mulbarton Cottage, Westerland Lodge, and The Coach House — quiet witnesses to the road's grander past.

Explore Further

15 Houses

The Historic Houses

From Foxbury's ragstone grandeur to Kemnal Warren's infamous menagerie. Discover the stories of every house built on the road.

Notable Residents

The People of Kemnal Road

Bankers, judges, diplomats, war heroes, a Spitfire pilot, a television actress, and the man who fitted the boilers on HMS Dreadnought.

Acknowledgements

Sources

The historical content on this website draws principally on the following works, to whose authors we are greatly indebted:

  • The Story of Kemnal Road, Chislehurst by Tony Allen and Andrew Thomas (2020, 5th edition). Available via The Chislehurst Society and Waterstones.
  • The History of Chislehurst by E.A. Webb, G.W. Miller, and J. Beckwith (1899; republished 1999).
  • Edwardian Chislehurst by Arthur Battle (1988).
  • Imperial Chislehurst by T.A. Bushell (1974).
  • Patchwork of the History of Chislehurst by Dorothy McCall (1963).
  • The companion website kemnal-road.uk, maintained by Tony Allen and Andrew Thomas, with census research by Marion Allen.