Four bedrooms, a part-walled garden and woodland a minute from the door — between Borough Green and West Malling. We are getting it ready now, and we would like to hear from you before we do.
Longwall House is a detached Victorian house of about 3,200 sq ft, set in a part-wooded plot off Seven Mile Lane. It has been a family home for years. Now most of it is becoming somewhere other people can stay.
I still live here, in a self-contained wing at one end. The rest of the house — four bedrooms, the sitting room, the kitchen and the garden — becomes yours for as long as you are here.
We are not open yet, and we are not taking bookings or payments. This page exists so that people who might actually want to stay can tell us so, and tell us what would make it worth the trip.
One house, but the people who need it are not the same people, and the weeks are not the same weeks.
Four bedrooms, a proper kitchen, a big lawn to run about on and woodland walks that start at the end of the drive. Close enough to London to be easy; far enough to feel like somewhere else.
What's in the house
If you run a crew working across Kent, four hotel rooms is a poor way to live. Here you get the whole house, a kitchen, somewhere to dry your kit and space to park. Weekly rates, invoices, no fuss.
Work stays in detail
A ground-floor room we intend to fit out properly — profiling bed, ceiling hoist, level-access wet room — so that a family with a severely disabled member can go away together, in a house, not a facility.
Read about the suiteI spent my working life around children and adults with complex needs, and I watched the same thing happen again and again: the family who cannot go anywhere, because nowhere has a hoist, or a level shower, or a doorway wide enough, or a room where a carer can actually sleep.
"Accessible" on most listing sites means a downstairs loo and a grab rail. It does not mean a room you could genuinely bring a profiling bed into.
Longwall House has a large ground-floor room, next to the cloakroom, with the space and the drainage runs to do this properly. It will be a real bedroom — not a clinical one — and when nobody needs it, it closes up and the house carries on as a four-bedroom house.
We are building this from the room outwards, and we would rather be told now that we have got it wrong than after we have spent the money. — The owner, Longwall House
| The building | Detached, believed to be around 145 years old, with a later single-storey wing |
|---|---|
| Total floor area | About 3,239 sq ft (300 sq m) across the whole house |
| Guest bedrooms | Four — a fifth ground-floor room becomes the Inclusive Suite |
| Setting | Part-wooded plot, reached by a gravel bridle track |
| Nearest towns | Borough Green and West Malling, roughly equidistant, both with mainline stations |
| Owner on site | Yes — I live in a separate, self-contained wing with its own entrance |
| Status | Preparing to open. No bookings, no deposits, no payments being taken |
The library wing, the garage and the room above them are my own home and are not part of the guest accommodation. You will see them in one or two photographs below because they are part of the building, but they are not yours to use. Everything else described on this page is.
These are on the list but not installed. Some of them are expensive, and we would rather spend the money on the ones you actually care about. There is a question about exactly this on the form below.
A charge point on the drive.
Panels and house battery, to take the running costs and the carbon down.
Hoist, profiling bed, wet room. The big one.
Upgraded heating and glazing through the guest side.
These were taken before we started work, and the furniture is ours rather than yours. We would rather show you the real thing than a computer drawing of it.
The house sits off Seven Mile Lane, about a mile and a half from the A20, roughly equidistant between Borough Green and West Malling. Both have mainline stations into London.
From the lane you turn onto a gravel bridle track, and the house is the third property along. That track is the reason the garden is as quiet as it is.
Seven Mile Lane is a fast, busy road, and the turning onto our track is easy to miss and needs care in both directions. Once you are on the track you are away from it entirely. We would rather you knew that now than found out on the day. If fast roads make you anxious, this may not be the house for you, and that is a perfectly reasonable thing to decide.
We give the full address once a stay is confirmed, as most places do.
No booking, no deposit, no obligation. We are working out whether this is worth doing, and in what order. If enough people say yes, we build it.
No. Nothing on this site takes a booking, a deposit or a payment, and there is no availability calendar because there is no availability. Join the list and you will hear from us before anyone else when that changes.
Off Seven Mile Lane, in the countryside between Borough Green and West Malling in Kent, about a mile and a half from the A20. We give the exact address once a stay is confirmed. It is around 9 or 10 miles from Sevenoaks and about 7 from Maidstone.
Yes, and a big one — a detached Victorian house of about 3,239 sq ft in total. You would have four bedrooms, the sitting room, the kitchen and breakfast room, the bathrooms and the garden. The library wing, the garage and the room above them are my own home and are kept separate, with their own entrance.
Seven Mile Lane carries a fair amount of traffic and it moves quickly. The turning onto our track is set back and easy to miss, and pulling out needs patience. The track itself is gravel and unlit. Once you are on it the road is out of sight and largely out of earshot. Plenty of people will find that a fair trade for the setting; some will not, and we would rather they knew before booking than after.
Private, off-road, on gravel, with room for several cars or vans. Nothing is parked on the lane. An EV charge point is on the list of things we are considering — there is a question about it on the form, and the answers will decide it.
That is very much the plan. Four bedrooms, a real kitchen, room to park vans and easy access to the A20 and the motorways makes a good deal more sense than four hotel rooms. Weekly rates and proper invoices. There is a page about it.
Honestly, that depends on this page. It is the most expensive thing on the list and the thing I most want to do. If the families and the professionals who need it tell us it would get used, it moves to the front of the queue. The detail is here, including what we think should go in it — and we would genuinely like to be corrected.
Undecided, and it is on the form. With woodland at the end of the track it would be a strange place not to allow dogs, but it has consequences for the families who need the accessible room, so we want to think it through properly rather than guess.
It is one person, not a company — the owner, doing this to her own home, having spent a career working with people with complex needs. That is why the accessible room is the centre of the plan rather than an afterthought.
It costs you nothing and it tells us more than any amount of guessing.