Elvington is a small pit village

Pit village

A pit village is a term used in the UK for the village serving a deep coal mine.Many of the workers lived in houses that were provided by the colliery. Many villages have experienced depopulation after colliery closures forced people to move to other towns and cities where there are jobs for them...

 on a ridge in between Canterbury

Canterbury

Canterbury is a historic English cathedral city, which lies at the heart of the City of Canterbury, a district of Kent in South East England. It lies on the River Stour....

 and Dover

Dover

Dover is a town and major ferry port in the home county of Kent, in South East England. It faces France across the narrowest part of the English Channel, and lies south-east of Canterbury; east of Kent's administrative capital Maidstone; and north-east along the coastline from Dungeness and Hastings...

 in the county of Kent

Kent

Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

 in Southeast England. Located near Eythorne

Eythorne

Eythorne is a civil parish and small village of about 1000 homes, located 7.3 miles NNW of Dover in Kent. There are currently about 2500 residents. Eythorne holds many historical attributes. Situated a few miles away from Dover beach, it offers many articles of evidence of the war...

, Elvington was mostly built in the early 20th Century to serve the nearby coal mine

Coal mining

The goal of coal mining is to obtain coal from the ground. Coal is valued for its energy content, and since the 1880s has been widely used to generate electricity. Steel and cement industries use coal as a fuel for extraction of iron from iron ore and for cement production. In the United States,...

 at Tilmanstone

Tilmanstone

Tilmanstone is a small village in Kent, in the South East of England, near Eastry a much bigger and more developed area. Tilmanstone has no schools, few shops and a church and town hall. The population of Tilmanstone often work for the nearby companies, such as Pfizer or Tilmanstone Salads, or in...

, as were other Kent Coalfield

Kent coalfield

The Kent Coalfield was a coalfield located in the eastern part of the English county of Kent.Coal was discovered in the area in 1890 while borings for an early Channel Tunnel project were taking place and the resultant Shakespeare colliery lasted until 1915...

 villages including Snowdown

Snowdown

Snowdown is a village near Dover in Kent, England. It was the location of one of the four chief collieries of the Kent coalfield....

, Aylesham

Aylesham

Aylesham is a village and civil parish near the cathedral town of Canterbury. Aylesham has its administrative and political seat in the Dover district of Kent in England. According to the 2001 census the parish had a population of 3,884....

 and Betteshanger

Betteshanger

Betteshanger is a village near Deal in East Kent, England. It gave its name to the largest of the four chief collieries of the Kent coalfield.-Before the coal mine:...

.

History

The name Elvington derives from the Old English meaning "farmstead of someone named Ælfwine"; a manor or farm of that name reportedly once stood at what is now the bowling club.

Apparently the Romans

Ancient Rome

Ancient Rome was a thriving civilization that grew on the Italian Peninsula as early as the 8th century BC. Located along the Mediterranean Sea and centered on the city of Rome, it expanded to one of the largest empires in the ancient world....

 once marched through this area of Kent using the Ashey path to Barfrestone

Barfrestone

Barfrestone is a hamlet in East Kent, UK between Shepherdswell, Eythorne and Nonington and close to the pit villages of Elvington and Snowdown...

 and the Roman Path across the downs and along what is now Roman Way, hence the name.

In 1916 the East Kent Light Railway

East Kent Light Railway

The East Kent Light Railway was part of the Colonel Stephens group of cheaply built rural light railways in England. Holman Fred Stephens was engineer from its inception, subsequently becoming director and manager...

 opened a station at Elvington called Tilmanstone Colliery Halt

Tilmanstone Colliery Halt railway station

Tilmanstone Colliery Halt was a station on the East Kent Light Railway. It opened on 16 October 1916 and was renamed Elvington in 1925. It closed to passenger traffic on 30 October 1948. The station served the pit village of Elvington. Part of the platform is still in situ hidden in...

. This served passengers until 1948, and closed entirely in 1951.

Today the site of the mine is an industrial estate between Tilmanstone and Eythorne located on the Pike Road. A new housing estate was built in the mid-1990s and has been extensively added to.

Community

Services today include a community/learning centre, school, shop, hairdressers, and takeaway shop as well as local information centre providing access to training and employment for local residents. The post office closed in 2008. Eythorne Elvington Community Primary school serves 104 pupils from school years one to six from Elvington and Eythorne.

Recent investment from agencies such as the South East England Development Agency

South East England Development Agency

SEEDA, more officially the South East England Development Agency, is one of a number of regional development agencies in England. It was set up as a non-departmental public body in 1999 to promote the region and to enable a number of more difficult regeneration projects which otherwise might not...

has led to the development of the former miners hall into a communication and learning centre.

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