Other important cultural associations within the Darent Valley include:

  • Octavia Hill; founder of the National Trust, who spent her later years at Crockham Hill near Westerham
  • Jeffery Harrison; the pioneering conservationist who masterminded the first example of the creation of a wetland nature reserve from a gravel extraction site at Sevenoaks Wildlife Reserve;
  • Sir Winston Churchill; former prime minister, artist and writer who resided at Chartwell near Westerham from 1920 until his death;
  • Peter Warlock; British composer and music critic who lived in Eynsford in the 1920s and was notorious for his scandalous lifestyle;
  • Arthur Mee; writer and educator who lived in Eynsford in the early twentieth century and wrote ‘The Children’s Encyclopaedia’ and other works on subjects of history and the countryside;
  • Peter Blake; from Dartford and one of the best known British pop artists and responsible for the sleeve design of the Beatles album Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band;
  • William Blake; an inspiration to Samuel Palmer, he visited him in 1825 and has been suggested that ‘Jerusalem’ was written in Shoreham, and that “…our clouded hills” referred to those of the Darent Valley.

Co-financed by the European Union and the European Regional Development Fund