Joyden's Wood to the south east of the village is classified as an
Ancient Woodland Site. The Woodland Trust took over the wood from
the Forestry Commission with the help of an appeal for donations from
the local people and the boroughs of Bexley and Dartford as the wood
covers both of the boroughs.
On the map of Kent dated 1769 the wood was named Jordan's Wood and
formed part of the Mount Mascal Estate owned by Sir Robert Ladbroke.
By the time of the first Ordnance Survey maps in 1805 the spelling
had changed to Joyden's Wood.
To qualify as an Ancient Woodland Site it has to have been a woodland
from at least 1600 AD. The earliest evidence of occupation of the woods
are the sites of two roundhouses, probably dating back to the Iron Age
about 100 BC. Roundhouses were where the people lived who cleared the
woodland to grow crops. The woods were valuable asset as they produced
the timber for building their houses and wood to fuel their fires for heat
and cooking.
Iron Age Roundhouse with 4 post granaries.
At the times of the Romans the population increased and large towns grew
up like London. Huge areas of land were required for crops to provide food
for the towns dwellers. Which meant that the woodland would have been
cleared to grow the food needed.
When the Saxons took over in the Fifth Century AD, after the Romans left,
the local Saxons built a defensive earthwork. There was a series of defensive
ditches built around London, all of the ditches having their bank on the
London side to keep out the threat from that direction. The earthworks in
Joyden's Wood being a bank and ditch construction which was known as
Faestons Dic. This gave them a form of protection from the
Romano/Saxons from London as the departing Romans left rich
pickings with the properties and very many valuables that the people
of Kent thought was rightfully theirs. The town dwellers also eyed what
they thought that they should inherit the spoils from their kinfolk.
There are thoughts that these ditches could also have marked the frontier
between the last Roman power base in London. There is mention of the dike
in the 9th century AD in the Saxon charter of 814AD. This is where it
gets its name from, Faestons Dic (pronounced Festen Ditch) which means
"The Strong Rampart".
Faeston dic with fence & bank defence.
After the Norman conquest in 1066 the ordinary people continued to farm
the land as they had always done. As the population grew more land was
required for the cultivation of crops. Areas in the woods show that earth
banks called "lychets" were built to be used as farmland and were ploughed.
The bedrock of the woods is chalk and very alkaline.
The underlining chalk was mined and used as an aid to spread on the fields to
improve the quality of the acid soil. This was obtained by digging a very
narrow shaft down into the chalk, the bottom of these shafts were excavated to
form radial chambers. It has been estimated that in the area there is in excess
of 100 of these deneholes, over the years some have collapsed and have required
capping.
There is some signs of the Second World War in the woods to be found with bomb craters
caused by bombers not finding their target and just dropping their bombs
indiscriminately. Two Allied fighters crashed into the Wood, but both pilots
were saved.
Joyden's Wood is now a favourite feature of the surrounding area extensively
used by the local people exercising their dogs, the riding of horses in dedicated areas,
cycling, or just walking and just enjoying the beauty of the diverse variety of trees,
wildflowers, fungi, and the large number of various species of the bird and
wildlife population.
