In prehistoric times, the first people appeared in the Dartford area around 250,000 years ago: a tribe of prehistoric hunter-gatherers whose exemplar is called
Swanscombe Man. Many other archaeological investigations have revealed a good picture of occupation of the district with important finds from the
Stone Age, the
Bronze Age and the
Iron Age. When the Romans engineered the
Dover to London road (afterwards named
Watling Street), it was necessary to cross the
River Darent by ford, giving the settlement its name.
Roman villas were built along the Darent Valley, and at Noviomagus (
Crayford), close by. The
Saxons may have established the first settlement where Dartford now stands. Dartford
manor is mentioned in the
Domesday Book, compiled in 1086, after the
Norman conquest. It was then owned by the king. During the
medieval period Dartford was an important waypoint for
pilgrims and travellers
en route to
Canterbury and
the Continent, and various religious orders established themselves in the area. In the 12th century the
Knights Templar had possession of the
manor of Dartford; the
National Trust property at
Sutton-at-Hone, to the south of the town, is a remaining piece of that history. In the 14th century, a
priory was established here, and two groups of friars—the
Dominicans and the
Franciscans—built hospitals here for the care of the sick. At this time the town became a small but important
market town.
Wat Tyler, a key figure in the
Peasants' Revolt, may have been from Dartford, though three other towns in Kent also claim him, and there are some doubts about the strength of Tyler's connection to Dartford. It is, however, probable that Dartford was a key meeting point early in the
Peasants' Revolt, with a detachment of Essex rebels marching south to join Kentish rebels at Dartford before accompanying them to Rochester and Canterbury in the first week of June 1381. Although lacking a leader, Kentishmen had assembled at Dartford around 5 June through a sense of county solidarity at the mistreatment of Robert Belling, a man claimed as a
serf by
Sir Simon Burley. Burley had abused his royal court connections to invoke the arrest of Belling and, despite a compromise being proposed by bailiffs in
Gravesend, continued to demand the impossible £300 of silver for Belling's release. Having left for Rochester and Canterbury on 5 June, the rebels passed back through Dartford in greater numbers on 12 June on their way to
London. In the 15th century, two kings of England became part of the town's history.
Henry V marched through Dartford in November 1415 with his troops after fighting the French at the
Battle of Agincourt; in 1422 Henry's body was taken to
Holy Trinity Church by
Edmund Lacey,
Bishop of Exeter, who conducted a funeral. In March 1452,
Richard, Duke of York, camped at the
Brent allegedly with ten thousand men, waiting for a confrontation with
King Henry VI. The Duke surrendered to the king in Dartford. The place of the camp is marked today by York Road, Dartford. The 16th century saw significant changes to the hitherto agrarian basis of the market in Dartford, as new industries began to take shape (
see below). The
priory was destroyed in 1538 during the
Dissolution of the Monasteries and a new manor house was subsequently constructed by
King Henry VIII. In 1545, Henry held a series of meetings of his
Privy Council in the town, and from 21 to 25 June 1545 Dartford was the seat of the national government. Henry's fourth wife
Anne of Cleves lived at the new priory for four years before her death in 1557. Many Protestants were executed during the reigns of
Queen Mary (1553–1554) and
Philip and Mary (1554–1558), including
Christopher Wade, a Dartford linen-weaver who was burnt at the stake on the Brent in 1555. The Martyrs' Memorial on East Hill commemorates Wade and other Kentish Martyrs. In 1576
Dartford Grammar School was founded, Assiduous efforts to extract gold were made over five years, but the ore proved to be a valueless rock containing
hornblende and was eventually salvaged for
road metalling and wall construction. Sir
John Spielman set up the first
paper mill in England at Dartford in 1588 on a site near Powder Mill Lane, and soon some 600 employees worked there, providing an invaluable source of local employment.
Iron-making on the Weald was in full operation at this time, and iron ingots were sent to Dartford, to England's first iron-slitting mill, set up by the Darent at Dartford Creek in 1595 by
Godfrey Box, an immigrant from the
Low Countries. In 1785,
John Hall, a millwright set up a workshop in Lowfield Street and began to make engines, boilers and machinery (some of it for the local
gunpowder factory run by
Miles Peter Andrews and the
Pigou family), marking the foundation of
J & E Hall, an engineering firm specialising in heavy
engineering, and later refrigerating equipment, and, for 20 years from 1906, vehicle production, plus
lifts and
escalators. From those humble beginnings in the 18th century was to come the industrial base on which the growth and prosperity of Dartford were founded. In 1840 the mustard factory of Saunders & Harrison was described as being "perhaps the largest in the kingdom".
Dartford Paper Mills were built in 1862, when excise duty on paper was abolished. Between 1844 and 1939 the
fabric printing works of
Augustus Applegath were in being in Bullace Lane: again a firm using the waters of the river.
RAF Joyce Green, at Long Reach, near Dartford was one of the first
Royal Flying Corps airfields, It was established in 1911 by
Vickers Limited (the aircraft and weapons manufacturer, who used it as an airfield and testing ground. It was superseded by Biggin Hill, and closed in 1919. The demand created by
World War I meant that output at the local
Vickers factory multiplied, with a positive effect on the local economy. Burroughs-Wellcome chemical works (later incorporated into
GlaxoSmithKline) made Dartford a centre for the
pharmaceutical industry. There had been a large power station at
Littlebrook on the Thames, to the north of the town, from 1939 until its closure in 2015. The station, including one of the tallest chimneys in the UK, was completely demolished in 2019.
Post-industrial economic plans The
Mazda motor manufacturer has its UK head office at the large Thames-side Crossways Business Park.
Thomas Walter Jennings created the
Vox musical brand, with products such as the
AC15 and
AC30 amplifiers originating in Dartford. In early 2006, the since-closed
South East England Development Agency (SEEDA) purchased the former
Unwins depot on the edge of the town. The warehouse was demolished and a business centre, The Base, built in its place, funded by the
Homes and Communities Agency. By 2018, the former GlaxoSmithKline manufacturing site in Mill Pond Road had been redeveloped with residential apartments and is known as Langley Square. Further regeneration is taking place at Market Street, to be known as Brewery Square. ==Economy==