The modern Whitfield began to appear when the more affluent citizens of Dover built their homes in "West Whitfeld", alongside what was to become the A2 trunk road which bypassed the village.

The village's older pub, the Royal Oak, closed in February 2008[5] and a Marston's Brewery pub/restaurant, the 'Rock Rose', is now open at the junction of Menzies Road/Gordon Road.

White Cliffs Business Park,[9] covering 272 acres (110 ha) is located at Whitfield and is described as attracting "… household names and a raft of companies with international pedigrees".

The village of Whitfield has grown so that it is now physically connected to urban Dover, Kent, yet it has kept its own identity and sense of place.

Church Whitfield seems to have originated around a small, enclosed farmstead; archaeological work in the area showed that there was a collection of structures on the site during the early medieval period and evidence of both Roman and Saxon settlements.

The Roman road from Dover (Dubris) to Richborough (Rutupiae) runs north-south near Pineham, suggesting that the village developed along its route.

This may have been due to the Black Death, whereby many villages moved their centre of habitation a mile or two for fear of being too near the burial site of victims.

However, windmills suffered a rapid decline during the early twentieth century due to an influx of cheap imported grain and new government food regulations.

The village was linked to Church Whitfield and Pineham via Shepherds Cross to the north, and through a series of lanes and footpaths across the fields.

However, by the production of the first small-scale Ordnance Survey maps in 1816, a main route running directly through the village from north to south had been constructed.

This altered the village in a drastic manner, literally cutting the settlement in half – the reasoning behind the chosen route is unclear.

The Royal Oak public house dates from this time, built as a coaching stop along this main route to the improving harbour at Sandwich.

The modern Whitfield developed when more affluent citizens of Dover began to build new homes, alongside the junction of the A2 and A256 roads near the village.