FM Conway - Going the Extra Mile

Going the Extra Mile

The Rochester Way site (actually an ‘L’ shape, although the toe of the ‘L’ isn’t drawn in on the map) lies along the boundary between Kent and the London Borough of Bexley, at the edge of Dartford Heath.

Guns, which were manufactured there during the war. There was, in short, an awful lot to be done: physically, legally, and financially. But to my eyes it was perfect: I wanted it, and I bought it. I sold the sites at Oakfield Road and Minden Road, which paid for the deposit, and I borrowed the rest. It was a risk, but I was confident it was the right thing to do. (And I was right: we paid the banks off within a couple of years.) The first thing we had to do, however, was get the planning permissions. So, we measured, photographed, and documented every single thing on those eleven acres. We wanted to show that what we were going to do on that site would be an awful lot better than what was happening before. And Kent County Council agreed. We got our permissions – under various conditions, of course, which we have been very careful to observe. And in November 2000, we began to move in. Neil Leaver, who was project managing the development of our new offices, moved in first. The previous occupier of the office space was a company called Doree Bonner who did international removals. They had a storage area (which would become our office space) and, perched on top of

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