Bean is a Kent Village with a population of under 2000. It is in south east England, 20 miles from London on the road to Dover, in an area known as Thames Gateway. Bean is 3 miles east of Dartford, on the Roman Road called Watling Street (A296), just past Bluewater. Head south on B255, over the A2 at Bean Bridge; you're here!

Parts of Bean are on high ground (300ft above sea level). In Elizabethan times, it was the location of one of the chain of beacons lit to warn of the approach of the Spanish Armada (circa 1580); see Beacons Map.

Southfleet Road and High Street used to be called Beaccon Lane and Lower Beaccon Lane respectively; (original spelling taken from a 16th Century Estate Map)

The Bean beacon was situated at the peak of the hill, where the Country Park is now. Local names, such as Beacon House, Beacon Drive and the Beacon Wood Country Park, reflect this history.

Some 240 years later, in 1821, the Admiralty decided to close the old telegraph station at Swanscombe and use it as accommodation for the commanding officer of the new 'shutter' telegraph station at what was later to become known as Telegraph Hill, Bean; see "The Old Telegraph" on Map. This location is just east of Southfleet Road almost opposite the entrance to the Country Park. It was this building and a chain of others which was designed to warn of Napoleon's invasion. A small point of interest maybe that the Admiralty stole the design of the 'shutter' system from the French.

For most of it's history Bean was an agricultural area, being part of the greater parish of Stone. During the reign of Edward lll the land was valued at 3 pence (3d) per acre, although our rich neighbours living close to the river had the value of their marsh-land reach the dizzy height of 4d an acre. Due to the uses put to the land, the number of dwellings could be numbered in single figures until the 1880's when the Ely Cartridge Powder Co. gunpowder factory was built on the site of the old beacon and EC (Bean Hill) Cottages (Nos. 1-16) were built for the workers. A datailed list of past occupants of these cottages is in a series of articles, commencing in the June 2011 BeansTalk, written by June Conway.

If you roam through the Country Park; see Map, there are still many signs of the long since demolished factory.  See also Country Park History.

We are told in Hasted's 1793 'History of Kent' and John Thorpe's 'Customale Roffense' 1788, that at a point close to where the present day Southfleet Road meets the old hamlet of High Cross there was an area known as Cockle Shell Bank, where the ground was littered with fossilized sea shells. To identify the shells, Thorpe enlisted the help of Dartford ornithologist and naturalist John Latham who is best known for his discovery and naming of the rare 'Dartford Warbler' and who was later honoured by Queen Victoria, when she sent her Prime Minister, Lord Palmerston, to thank him for his services to science.

Unfortunately, due to road and land development, the shells are no longer easily found. Although not in the exact location, the nearby Shellbank Lane celebrates our distant past.  Likewise, urban sprawl has long since banished the Dartford Warbler from the site of its discovery.  It is more likely to be found in Hampshire and France.