Surrounding the local area of Aylesford, sits the villages of Larkfield and Ditton in Kent. Within the Tonbridge and Malling District Council (TMDC), these villages are known for their picturesque beauty and countryside vistas. Although a village municipality; Larkfield has grown considerably in tandem with the development of the A20 road, and many new housing developments are constructed in the area. As these developments suggest, the housing stock is varied but focuses on 3 to 4 bed suburban detached housing, often red-bricked and wood-panelled! Ditton’s housing stock is more varied, with a range of grand country homes ranging upwards of £1 million!

It’s thought that a lot of Larkfield’s earliest history was destroyed through the processes of industrialisation and urbanisation; as it is thought there was once a Romano-British urnfield present in the area surrounding Larkfield although most of this evidence has been destroyed. This matches with other nearby areas, such as Aylesford and Frindsbury further north - which has significant Palaeolithic and Neolithic histories attached to them. It was however, also recorded in the 1086 Domesday Book for William the Conquerer - not as a village but as a Hundred, a similar Norman term for a district, and had 18 recorded places within the hundred! The origins of this name are obscured and lost to time and history. Ditton’s naming is more clear, as it translates to ‘ditch’. Ditton’s history is irrevocably tied to the history of the brook that cuts through the Ditton locale, which helped prompt countless agricultural and industrial enterprises in the area throughout the centuries!

Larkfield grew exponentially with the development of the A20 and M20 motorway during the 1970s. Therefore much of the urban development in the locale is dominated by 1970s suburban red-brick fronted housing!

Larkfield & Ditton, as mentioned previously, are not part of the Medway Council but the local Tonbridge and Malling District Council. The TMDC has been implementing their new local plan, as adopted from 2017. Although largely developed from the 1970s, much of Larkfield and Ditton has omitted from the development proposals, with only 9 homes allocated to be built directly in Larkfield. However, the plan has allocated over 470 new homes to be built within the Ditton locale, meaning that domestic and infrastructural development in the Larkfield and Ditton locale is imminent!