After Jamie Rees submitted some of his pictures of old Tovil taken shortly after the turn of the last century, we went on a hunt to compare the same scenes today and see just how much Tovil had changed over the intervening years.

Tovil was once the paper-making hub of the county, but all the factories have long since been replaced by housing estates. What was surprising was how much old terraced housing has also gone. Cars, of course, have replaced the horse and cart.

The first pair of pictures show the scene looking up Tovil Hill. None of the buildings to the right or the left of the road remain. Only the building at the top of the hill, which is actually on the corner of Church Street, is still there. Even the right-hand side of that, which at the time was the Old English Gentleman pub, has vanished.

The second pair of pictures show the entrance to Church Street more clearly, with the Old English Gentleman to the right of the picture.

Today, only the shop with the awning and the building next to that remain, but if you look carefully you will see one of the fluted columns that once framed the door of the pub is still there.

The third pair of pictures are taken from within Church Street looking back towards Tovil Hill. You can just see the corner of the Royal Paper Mill in the old picture – the pub which is still there today is Tovil’s sole remaining watering hole. What on earth happened to those terraced homes and their proud stone steps?

The next pair of photos show St Stephen’s Church – or rather doesn’t in the case of today’s photo. The church was demolished in 1990 though you can still walk around the graveyard, which is shortly to be given a spruce-up.

A picture of Tovil in flood was impossible to replicate. A footbridge of a very similar design still exists over the river, but the view of it from the upstream side where this old photograph was taken, is now obscured by a secondary bridge carrying utility cables.

Further, the old photo was taken from a height looking down, which we suspect was from the old railway bridge that crossed the River Medway alongside it. The bridge carried a spur off the Medway Valley line that ran into a goods yard in Tovil for the paper factories. That spur and the bridge went with the closure of the mills in 1977, though the bridge support remains aloof on the Fant side. Incidentally, that church in the old photo is St Stephen’s again.

That brings us to the picture of Tovil Rail Station, which was actually in Fant. You wouldn’t think it was possible to mislay an entire railway station, but this was the hardest site to place, but we think the chimneys of the homes on the bank above the station in the old picture match those still visible today. The station closed in 1943.

The final pair of photos are the most unchanged – except there was no snow when we took ours.

They show the overhang of Upper Crisbrook Mill above Cave Hill. Upper Crisbrook Mill is the only one of the 13 mills that once lined the Loose Valley still to have a working waterwheel, although these days, its owner uses it to provide electricity to power his home, rather than making paper.

The mill lies within the Loose Valley Conservation Area (it is still called the Loose Stream even though here it runs through Tovil) so it is hoped this view may remain protected for a good few years yet.