In the thirty years or so that I’ve lived in Dartford, I’ve driven, walked and occasionally jogged down Dartford Road in West Hill on thousands of occasions. It’s a road that I’ve got to know well over the years. One thing that’s always puzzled me though is the presence of two small metal markers that appear at the side of the road towards the junction with Maiden Lane. By the look of them they’ve clearly been there far longer than many of the houses along Dartford Road. Until last week, when I got a letter from English Heritage that finally explained their purpose, that’s all I could have told you about them though.

The two marker posts, which date from the mid nineteenth century, are in fact grade two listed monuments. According to English Heritage they are surviving examples of the ‘coal tax posts’ that were first erected in the early 1850s on all the main commercial routes that fed London. Erected in a ring roughly twenty miles from the centre of London they marked the points where taxes on coal and wine due to the Corporation of London had to be paid.

The two coal tax posts are among over 250 listed buildings and monuments in Dartford that feature on a new list that’s been compiled by English Heritage. It makes for fascinating reading. Some the buildings, such as the grade one listed Holy trinity Church in Dartford or the Church of St Nicholas in Southfleet, will be familiar to most people. Others though, the coal tax posts being a prime example, are much less well known. Another lesser known gem on the list for instance is a telephone kiosk in Pier Road in Greenhithe. Apparently it’s one of the best examples of the K6 class of kiosk that was designed back in the mid 1930s to mark the silver jubilee of King George V.

It’s reassuring to see such ‘ordinary’, everyday buildings on the list. It speaks of a healthy respect for the lives of the ordinary Dartford residents that built our borough and made it what it is today.