Landmarks should be enjoyed by all

Who would live in a home like this? Well, if plans get the green light, you’ll be able to go through the keyhole at Maidstone’s County Hall and the Archbishop’s Palace. Proposals unveiled last week envisage turning the former into flats and the latter into a boutique hotel with luxury bedrooms, run by the Balfour Winery.

While both are familiar spots for us reporters, being home to inquest hearings and council meetings over the years, to most members of the public the interiors of these grand, historic buildings will have been hidden away behind closed doors.

The imposing County

Hall is nearly 200 years old, while the first stones on the stunning riverside palace, once a stopping place for church bigwigs, were laid in the 14th century.

So any plans to open them to the masses is surely a great coup for the town centre, which is lacking in high-end accommodation.

It comes as Maidstone council unveiled a long-term strategy to tempt people back into the town centre with quality housing and leisure options, and to revive the high street with the related increase in footfall.

Meanwhile another scheme, for a hotel to be built at Detling as part of the 1,750-home Binbury Park garden village, looks set to be rejected, with officers saying it could drain investment from Maidstone. Keeping town centres as the beating hearts of our communities will not be an easy task - you just have to look at the proliferation of ‘To Let’ signs in the high street.

But as Phil Coyne, Maidstone council’s Local Plan director says, if you build it, they will come.

‘The interiors of these grand, buildings have been hidden away behind closed doors’