Bearsted Bearsted Bearsted ( , ) is a village and civil parish with railway station in mid-Kent, England, two miles (3.2 km) east of Maidstone town centre. The village was historically concentrated around Church Lane and The Green which includes The Street. The village is on the north bank of the River Len, a tributary of the River Medway at the foot of the North Downs. A stream, the Lilk, flows south into the river Len through Bearsted. Although part of the growing conurbation of Maidstone, the centre of Bearsted retains a traditional village look with 59 listed properties, many surrounding
Buffalo, Rochester and Pittsburgh Railway coal was the extension of the line north from Lincoln Park through Rochester up to the coal dock it built at the mouth of the Genesee River in 1896. With an initial capacity of 4,000 tons a day, it was expanded in 1909 and 1913. To get coal to Canada, the BR&P arranged a cross-lake ferry service with the Grand Trunk Railway. This service was highly successful, carrying passengers and coal cars to Cobourg and other lake destinations. By 1913, over a million tons of coal a year passed through the Rochester coal dock. As the national economy grew, more