A century ago the dictionary definition of a village described: “a community where the majority of inhabitants worked on the land, a meeting point of roads with a parish church, several inns and a village pond”. Today, of course, the first no longer applies and our village pond disappeared some seventy years ago.

The pond, shown in the illustration at the turn of the century, was at the lowest point of Church Hill - now the Canterbury Road. Pond Cottage was just above the pond seen on the right. (Possibly the first pond, Mill Pond, was part of the South End Farm nearby). Church Hill or Church Street, leading from the Square to Mill Row, was just a bridle path for centuries until the present solid road surface was built.  The pond was marked on the 1688 manuscript map of Birchington. In  1622 parishioners were allowed to make a Highway Rate and unemployed men were employed in carrying large stones from the fields filling in the holes. In the early nineteenth century. Men from the local Workhouse were paid 2/- a day, with women and children paid l/- a load for picking up stones from the fields and the beach.

Being in a hollow, the pond occasionally flooded over the road at times of heavy rainfall, and in February 1929 it was reported that “thick ice on the Birchington Pond gave unaccustomed skating for the children”.

During hot summers the pond would dry out and in August, 1921 there was mud in it over four feet deep when “for the first time in 28 years the K.C.C. was having the Birchington Pond cleared out”.

Plans to widen the road between the pond and Park Lane first appeared in 1926 when a London coach driver was fined for speeding along the narrow part of the road at the Pond. The building of the Thanet Way a few years later meant that traffic to London no longer had to go through Canterbury. This meant that holiday coach traffic from London to Margate increased to such an extent that the Canterbury Road had to be widened to its present width.

The condition of the pond featured continually in the early years of the 20th century. Often Parish meetings referred to the filthy and unsanitary condition of the pond and the County Council was asked to “drain the pond as this appeared to be the only solution”. The pond finally ceased to exist in the road widening scheme of 1933.

Postscript: Jennie Burgess tells me that at one time there were 9 small ponds in Birchington including one in Station Road!