Bearsted

Bearsted is a Maidstone suburb dressed in its best village-green outfit, and it's hoping nobody looks past the hedge. The green has two pubs. The church tower has stone beasts that half the books on Kent insist are bears, which is the kind of confidence the whole place runs on. South of the Ashford Road, the 1960s half gets on with the living while the old half poses for the photographs. Everyone here will tell you they live in a village, and the park and ride round the back is too polite to argue.