Land around a former mill has been reworked to create a prize-winning business park. You'd never know that turkey mill was there at all unless someone told you. The site in Maidstone, Kent, certainly takes you by surprise, as the 8.9ha parkland and renovated mill buildings are completely hidden from the road behind a solid red brick viaduct. The British Association of Landscape Industries judges described it as a "hidden gem" when they awarded the business park the organisation's top award last year. But once you pass under the arches of the railway there are lawns, mature wellingtonias, cedars and water everywhere you look. The existing lake, mill-race, waterfall and ponds were essential to the site in its previous life as a paper mill, which began manufacturing in 1671 and only closed in 1976. During its heyday, the mill supplied Queen Victoria and George Washington. Napoleon wrote his will here three weeks before his death in exile.
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