My next alphabetical destination is Keston, a rural suburban outlier not to be confused with Kenley which was never in Kent. We're in the London borough of Bromley where things tip over from avenues to country lanes, further out than Hayes but not as far as Biggin Hill. Keston has an exceptionally ancient history, also one of London's handful of windmills, also biodiversity that Darwin appreciated, also the former homes of two of our most consequential Prime Ministers. It's also impressively unfocused so expect a lengthy wander.
The key thing about Keston is that it's where the River Ravensbourne begins. The waters emerge from a natural spring at the top of the common, this at the point where the overlying gravels meet the impermeable clay underneath. It's called Caesar's Well, based on the easily disprovable legend that Julius Caesar's men paused here in 55BC after being led to a source of water by a raven. Did not happen. This was however the source of water for a much older Iron Age fort and was also used by Georgian gentry for secluded bathing purposes. These days the spring bubbles up inside a ring of bricks and is funnelled towards three large ponds dug 200 years ago, a glorious haven for ducks, lilies and yellow iris. The footpath past the top lake is briefly all mud, even after several dry months, which is why London Loop section 3 sensibly offers an alternative route.
Keston Common is just glorious, 100 undulating acres of mixed habitats and much of it registered common land. Most visitors cluster round the ponds for car-parking reasons, also this is where multiple fisherfolk will return once the close season ends next month. Elsewhere are patches of acid heathland (where I spotted conservators at work), shady cone-strewn pebbly banks and also one of London's six lowland bogs. Keston Bog was often visited by local naturalist Charles Darwin whose study of the native sundews inspired his seminal work Insectivorous Plants. One particularly up-and-down section includes a lengthy Iron Age bank and ditch abutting what more recently was a gravel pit, this with banks of wooden stairs installed. Hats off to the Friends of Keston Common who've installed several themed information boards around the site and also reproduced them on their website so you can see how excellent they are.
Across Westerham Road a single public footpath enters the estate of local stately home Holwood House. This was once the pride and joy of PM William Pitt who had John Soane in to tweak the interior and Humphry Repton to do the grounds. Alas all was to no avail because the next owner knocked the lot down and built a fifteen-bay Grecian-style villa in white brick and Portland stone, which still stands. But it's only visible if you walk a long way up the path, the body of the estate otherwise shielded by barbed wire, thick woodland and the occasional keypadded gate. The circular building you can almost see through the trees is a loop of 78 luxury apartments called The Crescent, built on the industrial footprint of a former lab erected by Seismograph Services for England, another former owner. Even less visible are the remaining ramparts of the Iron Age Fort on the northwest flank, and if you'd just paid£20m for the place you wouldn't want anyone looking in either.
Six minutes up the path is Keston's most historic spot, a forked stump known as the Wilberforce Oak. It was here after a country walk in 1787 that William Wilberforce, MP for Hull, sat down with PM William Pitt and made a world-changing decision.
Both men were still in their late 20s at the time and the slave trade wouldn't be ended until they were mid-40s, but that's still quite some breakthrough to commemorate. A beautiful stone bench was added at the site in 1862, including that quote from Wilberforce's diary set inside a lozenge. Alas for the bicentenary in 1987 the seat was relocatedjust behind the perimeter fence so mere mortals can no longer sit on it, nor thankfully carve their initials. But a weathered stump remains on the public side, partway down a grass bank bright with foxgloves, even if I don't think that's from the actual Wilberforce Oak either, long cleared away.
To the north of all this is the Keston Lodge Estate, 143 acres of former Holwood land sold off to a property developer in 1923. Here Frederick Rogers built 200 luxury homes down seven wide leafy avenues and renamed it ‘Keston Park’, also gifting residents two private woodlands for their recreation. A few ultra-modern boltholes have since been added amid the rustic mega-lodges, and every entrance is now secured by grand electronic gates and signs warning of CCTV and ANPR. I was hoping to snoop because a single public footpath traverses the length of Holwood Park Avenue but alas this is closed for six months "due to utility works and construction development". I thus cannot show you a surreptitious shot of Dormers where Margaret Thatcher raised her children, having spotted it for sale in a 1957 edition of Country Life.
The parish church is some way from the heart of things, way down south by the turnoff to Downe. It's small, flinty and Norman, supposedly with Saxon structures within, more recently appended by a long L-shaped set of rooms masquerading as a cloister. The gnarled yew out front looks pretty ancient too, its girth now comfortably over 4 metres. But something even older survives in the fields beyond, down in the valley, where the remains of a Roman villa and mausoleum are located. Both are off-limits, even by sight, but one of the three tombs is a substantial circular structure measuring 9m across with six radiating buttresses, according to those who've been fortunate enough to get a tour.
Follow Westerham Road and you may catch a glimpse of KestonWindmill, one of six in London, thus not (as many sources quote) "the oldest post mill in Kent". It's jet black and was built in 1716, making it an unlikely survivor, and still has two pairs of millstones and four atypically thin sails. Alas it's only open on occasional days but hasn't been for years, also it's located in the private grounds of a cottage behind high trees so annoyingly well screened. My attempts at taking a decent photo were thwarted by foliage and also by the owners doing some gardening by the roadside, so you'll have to make do with the version on the village sign instead.
I should point out that Keston also has some properly normal bits, normal that is for a village rather than for mainstream Greater London. Its heart is arguably the village green at the southern tip of Hayes Common, this where the aforementioned sign is, also the original drinking fountain from Bromley Market. There are two pubs, The Fox and The Greyhound, both currently behind scaffolding so somewhat unphotogenic. Residents also have the option of two independent cafes, with Heathfields smaller but more chi-chi than Triple Two on the green. The handful of shops offer the chance to get your hair cut, your car fixed or your parcel posted, and if that's not good enough the 146 and 246 buses connect to Bromley town centre three times an hour.
If my Keston ramblings have tempted you to visit then London Loop section 3 passes the Wilberforce Oak, the ponds on the common and the pubs on the green, which are basically the highlights. Alternatively if you come in a fortnight's time you can enjoy KestFest, the village's annual shindig on the green, with food stalls, a dog show, 'fun stalls' and ice cream from Shirley's van. Also live music from DJ Dave and a band called Roof Raisers, all from 1pm on Saturday 6th June... and if you time that walk right you can enjoy the lot.
