Our Countryside/Farmland
The open countryside of the Hoo Peninsula is not empty space waiting to be developed.
It is a productive, working landscape that has been shaped by agriculture for centuries.
Historic England's detailed study of the Hoo Peninsula describes farming as the backdrop to its later industrial and military development and traces its agricultural landscape through the medieval period and back into the centuries before the Norman Conquest. Historically, farming on the higher central ridge and grazing on the marshes formed parts of the same agricultural system.
That relationship can still be read in the landscape today.
Large arable fields occupy much of the higher ground, while grazing marshes stretch towards the Thames and Medway. Farmsteads, lanes, drainage ditches, hedgerows, orchards and fields together create the landscape in which the Hoo Peninsula's villages developed.
Some of Kent's best agricultural land
Parts of the Hoo Peninsula contain some of the highest-quality agricultural land in the country.
Agricultural studies commissioned by Medway Council identified a substantial area of Grade 1 and Grade 2 land, extending in a broad swathe from the western Hoo Peninsula through the area around Cooling and Hoo towards Allhallows. Grades 1, 2 and 3a are defined nationally as the best and most versatile agricultural land.
That land is a finite resource.
Once productive soil has been covered by roads, buildings and other permanent development, its agricultural potential is extremely difficult to recover.
And farmland is not valuable only because of the food it can produce.
Fields, field margins, hedgerows, ditches and grazing marsh are also part of the Hoo Peninsula's ecological network and provide habitat for many of the farmland birds and other species that are disappearing elsewhere.
Big skies and open landscapes
The countryside also gives the Hoo Peninsula its distinctive sense of place.
Medway Council's Green and Blue Infrastructure Framework describes the Hoo Peninsula as predominantly remote and tranquil, with extensive marshland, wide uninterrupted views, wild coastline and a strong sense of natural beauty - all the more notable because of its proximity to the Medway Towns and London.
The wooded ridges around Chattenden and Lodge Hill rise above the flatter farmland and marshes, while elsewhere huge skies and long views stretch across the Thames and Medway estuaries.
These landscapes are part of what makes the Hoo Peninsula unique.
They also provide space for people.
The Hoo Peninsula is crossed by a network of public rights of way, including sections of the Saxon Shore Way, while routes such as the Heron Trail allow people to explore its wildlife, heritage, villages and countryside on foot or by bicycle.
At Higham and Shorne, the open grazing marshes continue westwards towards Gravesend. Gravesham Borough Council's landscape evidence describes these marshes as having a strong sense of remoteness, extensive open views and a landscape of grazing pasture divided by historic drainage ditches.