Kentish Gazette Canterbury & District
City estate was going to be a new village
The London Road estate in Canterbury wasn’t always named thus. When it was first conceived, in the late 1940s, this planned housing development was dubbed New Harbledown.
Indeed, it was to be a new village on the outskirts of Canterbury, complete with village shop, a pub and a primary school. However, just before work began, in the early 1950s, the city boundaries were changed and the estate brought within the city jurisdiction.
The first houses, in Knight Avenue, were finished in 1952 and the estate was linked to both Mill Lane and the main London Road, by means of a simple junction. The Rheims Way, with its controversial two-stage junction, was still 10 years away.
The picture on the left shows the little Co-op dedicated to the estate, shortly after it opened in 1953. It was at No. 3 Merchant’s Way and was first run by Cyril Tapsell. It incorporated a post office. The estate also had its own pub, the Gentil Knyght (complete with Chaucerian spelling), but this was opened a little later on, in July 1958.
The second photo, from May 1955, shows the modernist style Frank Hooker Secondary School, taking shape. This would become the jewel in the crown of the expanding London Road Estate, which would account for much of the school’s catchment area. Frank Hooker was a formal Canterbury mayor, who lived in London Road and had farmed much of the area. He donated the land to make this development possible. Today his generous legacy is largely forgotten, as the school is now known as the Canterbury Academy.