It has a general store, a bakery, a post office, a hairdresser, a car dealership and the Junction Inn public house.

Groombridge Place has been owned by some of Kent's most distinguished families, including the de Cobhams and Sir Richard Waller.

The first reference we have is from Saxon times, when there was a settlement on the north bank, the Kent side, of the stream which is now called The Grom.

MacKinnnon's History of Speldhurst records that Groman built a castle within a moat and that the Normans later destroyed it after the conquest.

One was granted in 1239 to William Russell and his wife to build a Chantry Chapel to their house at Gromenbregge, endowed with a Priest.

Originally it was held on and around the Green but in Victorian times it moved over the stream to a site in Withyham Road opposite the garage and became a fortnightly cattle market until the 1950s when it closed for good.

He owned the Buckhurst estate at Withyham and his land, including Pollies Hall, run up to the stream on the Sussex side.

He would have been familiar with the intrigues of the day and made it clear he did not approve of Prince Charles' somewhat harebrained scheme, encouraged by his father James 1, to go to Spain, in disguise in 1623, in an attempt to woo and wed the Spanish Infanta.

John Packer said if Charles failed he would build a chapel on his land at Groombridge as a thank-offering to God for escaping a union with a Catholic country.

Burrswood Health and Wellbeing, situated on land that was once part of the Groombridge Place, was operated as an independent non-surgical hospital, "treating the whole person in a Christian environment".

Burrswood was founded in 1948 when Dorothy Kerin established her healing ministry and was run as a charity, The Dorothy Kerin Trust, also providing healing services, guest house, tea room, gift shop and Christian book shop on the site.