Farthing Common and Postling Down
Travellers have likely stopped here at the top of the hill and admired the views for thousands of years, and who can blame them?!
Postling
Open all year round
Free
Car parking
Facilities
- Viewpoint
Geosite details
A Geosite with stunning views from the top of the Downs, Farthing Common sits at a junction of current and former routes across the Kent Downs, including the former Roman road, Stone Street, the ancient Pilgrim’s Way, and the more recent addition of the North Downs Way National Trail.
Just along the North Downs Way from the Farthing Common viewpoint you can find Postling Down.
In this area you can see an unusually clear example of how the landscape has been formed by ancient processes, in this case either erosion by a stream or river or of mass movement similar to that which created the Devil’s Kneading Trough a bit further northwest of here.
Sites such as Postling Down are great places to gain an understanding of how, despite Chalk having been formed 100-60 million years ago, it is the relatively recent erosion processes that happened at the end of the last Ice Age (around 12,000 years ago) which carved out the rough shape of the landscape we know and love today.
