Surprising as it may seem this is not an attempt on the Guinness Book of Records for the largest number of Oast Houses in one field. This is just one of the features at The Whitbread Hop Farm which has become a major attraction in this area with its famous Whitbread Shire horses.

Paddock Wood has little history, [now I shall have someone complaing about that comment!], in that not so long ago it was just a very small village deep in the Kent countryside. However, with the coming of the railways the area grew in importance, originally as the centre of a series of local branch lines and as a result, the place where many Londoners migrated to in the hop picking season. Now it as much as anything a dormitory town but still an important place in hop growing circles as it houses the headquarters of English Hops, previously known as the Hop Marketing Board. Much of the town is Victorian including the Parish Church of St. Andrew reflecting the time when the railways were beginning to change the face of England.

It was at Paddock Wood that Carker met his terrible death in "Dombey and Son".

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