Aylesham was originally going to be the main focus for housing the miners with Betteshanger, Snowdown and Tilmanstone all fairly close by. each colliery had its own smaller housing with managers housing, but Aylesham was to be the main centre. There were also mines at Chislet (northeast of Canterbury) and on the sea shore at Dover (Shakespere Beach), though numerous test boring amongst the surrounding villages never amounted to formal mining. The coal field itself stretched in a wedge shape from just east of Canterbury in the northwest to Richborough in the northeast and Folkestone in the southeast and extending out beneath the English Channel.
If both the mining and the steel industry's had both taken off, how different would East Kent have looked?
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