Village Information

Aylesham Village, with a population of about 4000 at the recent Census, was built in the 1920’s to provide housing for the miners who came to work in the new Kent Coalfield, especially Snowdown Colliery.
The original Abercrombie Master Plan expected a population of 30,000 along side four hospitals and two schools, with all the amenities a community requires. Unfortunately, due to the recession in the late 1920’s, Patrick Abercrombie’s plan was never accomplished in it’s entirety.
The community, still very new and emerging, contributed to the War effort, with local Miners creating a Home Guard. Aylesham improved drastically after the War, with the post-War consensus of full employment, the Coalfields were nationalised and the need for Coal rather great, many jobs were created. In successive years, more homes were built to accommodate the increasing population, along with a state-of-the-art Industrial Estate, with the thinking at the time aiming at taking away such a heavy reliance of the Mining Industry.
Following the closure of the Kent Coalfield in the 1980’s, and the successive demise of the Secondary School, Aylesham lost it’s confidence and needed to be regenerated. 
A wide range of community initiatives, funded both locally and nationally, were (and still are being) introduced to provide leisure facilities, alternative employment opportunities and training schemes. Alongside this is the Aylesham Development Master Plan, which is currently under way to reinvigorate and expand the village by 1,200 new homes.