Town in Kent, England

Ashford

Ashford was once a Eurostar stop with Paris just down the line. It is also the town where the infinity symbol's inventor was born and a railway works built locomotives.

Key information

County: Kent
Nation: England
Known for: Railway works, Eurostar's old Kent stop, Designer Outlet, shared-space town centre
Famous people: John Wallis, mathematician who gave us the ∞ symbol
Football clubs: Ashford United, nicknamed the Nuts and Bolts

About Ashford

The town that gave the world infinity

In 1616 a boy called John Wallis was born in Ashford. He grew up to be one of the leading English mathematicians of his century, and he is usually credited with introducing the sideways-eight symbol for infinity, ∞, in 1655. Wallis also served as a code-breaker for Parliament during the Civil War and later taught at Oxford. Every time a maths student draws a lazy eight on its side, they are borrowing from a Kent schoolboy.

Why the football club is called the Nuts and Bolts

For more than a century Ashford was a railway town first and a market town second. The South Eastern Railway set up its works here in 1847, and the town grew around it. Rows of terraced houses went up for the workers, and locomotives, carriages and wagons rolled out of the yards. That heritage lives on in the nickname of Ashford United, the Nuts and Bolts, who play at Homelands. New locomotive construction ended in the early 1950s, and the locomotive works closed in 1962, while carriage and wagon work continued into later decades. The railway never really left, though. It simply changed gear.

Paris from platform 3 (once upon a time)

When the Channel Tunnel opened, Ashford International station became Kent's gateway to the continent. From 1996 you could board a Eurostar here and be in Paris or Brussels without ever seeing London. Eurostar trains stopped calling at Ashford in 2020, but the station's huge international platforms are still there, a reminder of the ambition. The domestic high-speed service is still the town's trump card. Fast trains reach London St Pancras in under 40 minutes, which is why so many Londoners have moved here and why Ashford keeps expanding.

The town centre where the road markings vanished

Ashford was once strangled by a ring road that cut the centre off from the rest of town. Planners took a famously radical approach: they removed barriers, kerbs and much of the usual road clutter and created a 'shared space'. Drivers, cyclists and pedestrians have to make eye contact and negotiate their way across. The idea was that when you take away rigid rules, people slow down and pay attention. Ashford became a regular stop for visiting urban designers who wanted to see the experiment for themselves.

Church towers, Jacobean staircases and a shopping outlet

The tower of St Mary's Church, built in the 15th century, is the old town's great landmark, and it still rises above the streets near the High Street. Just outside town, Godinton House is a Jacobean mansion famous for its carved Great Staircase and its gardens. On the modern side, Ashford Designer Outlet opened in 2000 and draws bargain-hunters from across Kent and Sussex. The William Harvey Hospital, named after the physician who discovered how blood circulates, serves the area. Harvey was born in nearby Folkestone.

Market-town roots in the Garden of England

Ashford sits where several valleys meet beside the Great Stour, and that is why routes, railways and markets all converged here. Its livestock market was for centuries the place where farmers from the Weald and Romney Marsh came to trade. Step outside the town and you are in orchard, hop and sheep country. The Kent Downs rise near Wye, where a giant crown is cut into the hillside, and the countryside is a short bus ride from the station.