KING GEORGE'S FIELD is the largest of the town's open spaces. Lined with natural beech hedges on the north and south sides, it suffers from a less attractive line of conifers on the eastern boundary. The War Memorial Pavilion, never of a very pleasing design in the first place, has suffered further from the measures which had to be taken against persistent vanda-lism. The water features surroun-ding the park are not well kept.
The Bloomfield and Currant Hill allotments provide attractive rural settings as well as a good balance of land use between recreation and horticulture; this is important because it makes sure of a buffer between farmland and built-up areas.
The Darenth car park brings effective design to a utilitarian space - with shrubs, rustic fencing, and block paving in which parking spaces have been delineated with coloured blocks instead of painted lines.
The restoration of the Long Pond (where in dry weather they soaked the wooden wheels of the drays from the Black Eagle brewery opposite, to swell and tighten them) is currently under way and will do much to beautify the western end of the town, while the Round Pond has long been popular as a place to feed the ducks and catch minnows.
Farley Lane, a fine example of a 'holloway' or sunken lane, was formed by the passage of livestock being driven to graze on Farley Common - a semi-wild open space of about five acres with some rare grasses and flowers. .......>
