Kent Life

Kent Life stands beside the Medway at Sandling, next to Allington Locks. It began as a farm on the Cobtree Manor Estate, bequeathed to Maidstone Borough Council in 1966. In 1984 the derelict farm was chosen for a rural life museum, which opened on 6 July 1985. By 2013 the museum had closed and the site reopened as a heritage farm park. Historic farm buildings remain accessible, and visitors can take tractor rides, join arts and crafts, feed animals and attend seasonal events. The farm park brings farming to life with two hop gardens growing Fuggles and Goldings hops. Apple and plum orchards, a herb garden, soft fruit plots and livestock enclosures show how the land has been used. Several historic buildings have been moved here from across Kent. A Grade II listed timber chapel from 1897 and two cottages saved from the Channel Tunnel rail link now stand on the site. A sixteenth-century farmhouse links the estate to Sir Thomas Wyatt. Visitors walk past a five-bay eighteenth-century barn with oak frame and thatched roof. A blacksmith’s forge has been recreated, and a nineteenth-century granary from Boxley Grange now serves as a store. The restored oast once dried hops and now houses a reconstruction of a village store from Hawkhurst. Shepherds’ huts, a tack room, tearooms in an original farmhouse and a village hall from Ulcombe complete the scene. The Medway flows nearby, and the farm’s orchards and hop gardens frame the buildings.