CHIDDINGSTONE CAUSEWAY
Chiddingstone Causeway often confuses visitors since it is a village built around a railway station called Penshurst, which is a village three miles away. It is also now a much bigger village that Chiddingstone itself and sited on the main road between Tonbridge and Edenbridge. This confounds taxi drivers - even if they are equiped with the latest car based satellite navigation systems.
There is much debate over the location of the 'Causeway' that gives it its name. Some contend that references to the causeway predate the building of the railway line, in the hope that this will clothe their home in the respectability of a premodern age. Since I live in Chiddingstone Village and not 'The Causeway' , let me confess my bias now and offer my personal explaination:
'Chiddingstone Causeway' is a shortened form of 'Chidingstone over the Causeway' meaning the Hamlet in Chiddingstone parish that is on the other side of the road that crosses the watermeadows near Vexour Bridge that was banked up and straightened in the 1840s by the Irish labourours that were building the railway.
There .... I have said it .... now let a thousand flowers bloom and a thousand ways of thought contend.
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