Medway • Birling to Cuxton; Wouldham to Aylesford

http://www.kentdowns.org.uk/uploads/documents/Medway1.pdf

Key Characteristics

• Wooded upper scarps.
• Wide views across the river, river corridor settlements and south towards the greensand ridge.
• Trimmed remnant hedges surround large arable fields on the scarp foot.
• Riverside marshes.
• Brick and flint buildings.
• Rolling, intensively cultivated fields.
• Swathes of dense mixed woodland.
• Mosaic of unimproved grassland and scrub.
• Views over adjacent chalk pits and quarries.
• Industrial history of Medway.

Overall Landscape Character Objectives

• To improve the quality of the rural landscape by conserving the scarp woodlands and by establishing a new structure of hedgerows and shaws on the slopes to balance the industrial landscape and the valley bottom.
• To control further encroachment of development into the AONB and urbanisation.