Introduction
Author: Esther Hamilton
The hamlet of Chilmington Green, which can be seen from the wooded highpoint of Coleman’s Kitchen Wood, hides a unique piece of rural heritage, gateposts fashioned from original Second World War gas canisters!
Famous locally, these landmarks were visited and photographed in 2025 by Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group members Margaret and Angus Willson while performing fieldwalking survey for the project, who also wrote a history of how they came to be a part of the landscape.
Further below, Hilary Goodyear and Sarah Selling, also Chilmington Archaeology & History Research Group members, discovered further evidence of the material legacy of the Second World War for our project (and why one should take care magnet fishing).
Chilmington Green Gateposts
Field-walking, photography and text
by Angus and Margaret Willson.
Local knowledge provided by Ian Wolverson.
An easy walk around the hamlet of Chilmington Green reveals a distinctive rural feature with an interesting story of re-purposing.
Towards the end of the second world war various forces, such as the USAF, had made facilities in and around Chilmington Green.
The short-lived airfield offers a fascinating insight to the preparations for allied landings and liberation of France.
Six years after the end of the war, Mr Dan Pullen started farming the surrounding area, cleared the fields of scrap metal and needed to re-establish stock-proof boundaries. It also required gates suitable for moving a dairy herd around.
He removed a discarded pile of large, metal gas canisters. These would have been used on or near the airfield for oxy-acetylene welding. The canisters were painted green, which mostly survives, and then mounted in concrete.
The most visible gateposts are set on the footpath between Coleman’s Kitchen Wood and the hamlet where it crosses the north end of Bartlett Lane. The modern gate is making good use of the farm gatepost. The other canister is deep in the hedgerow.
Further down the hill of Bartlett Lane, and opposite Chilmington Green Farm, there is a metal cylinder right by the old farm buildings.
Dis-used farm Buildings
With a reminder of the former dairy-farming, there are two metal cylinders at the end of the dis-used slurry or silage pit wall.
Greensand Way
Further still down Bartlett Lane there is a signpost to the Greensand Way national footpath which crosses between large fields right across to the road called Long Length. Another pair of cylinders provides a gateway to these fields.
About 100 metres further along this footpath, with a ditch alongside, there are two cylinders which have not kept their upright position. One is by the ditch and the other is in hedgerow, but they do show the concrete footings.
Chilmington Green Lane
Following these in sequence it is necessary to turn around and walk to Chilmington Green Lane. There is a single cylinder on the footpath next to Little Netters.
Further along the lane there are two more cylinders and a gate. In due course, this may become the entrance to the planned cricket ground.
Finally, another fifty metres along there is a pair of cylinders and a gate covered in barbed-wire and buried in hedgerow. With the hedge in full leaf these would be very hard to find.
Memorial
Let’s hope these distinctive gateposts can remain part of the special landscape of Chilmington Green.
As the housing development takes shape the re-purposed gas cylinders are a nod to the historic environment of the second world war airfield, a good example of post-war “make do and mend”, and the more recent dairy farming in the area.
It has been suggested the two cylinders dislodged from their original footings could be relocated to a future memorial site. This would, perhaps, re-establish a link with their original purpose. Alternatively, they could be used to feature the proposed road entrance which will cross the current field as the future Discovery Park (or Queen Elizabeth II Platinum Jubilee Park).
Singleton Lake’s Unexploded Ordinance
Authors: Hilary Goodyear and Sarah Selling
In June 2017, magnet fishers at Singleton Lake could add to the around 60 cases of unexploded ordinances found per year across the UK, after they pulled up an unexploded bomb. The father and son duo’s Sunday activity lead to the Army’s bomb disposal team being called out to perform a controlled denotation of what was identified as an anti-tank warhead.
Sources:
https://www.kentonline.co.uk/ashford/news/fisherman-finds-unexploded-war-shell-126827