An £80 million "garden village" will be built near Dartford town centre, after a leading house builder acquired a 7.6 acre site.

Mill Ponds, once part of the Victorian era Wellcome Pharmaceutical Factory - which provided medicines and supplements to the nation - will be transformed into 400 mixed use homes, including one and two bedroom apartments and two and three bedroom houses. 

It will be built over the next three years, and will front onto the historic mill pond and the River Darent, and be located by Dartford Railway Station.

Once complete it will feature a large local high street - a total of 28,567sq ft of retail space - complete with shops, cafes, restaurants, a cinema and a supermarket, as well as green spaces and leafy lanes.

A spokesman for Weston Homes - the London and Home Counties house builder that is developing the site - addressed concerns it will lead to increased traffic in the area by saying all amenities will be accessible by foot.

He added the housing will be a mix of affordable and private, while Weston aims to sell the homes to local, ordinary families and buyers, rather than investors. 

He said: "The master plan project has been specifically designed to provide a sustainable mixture of uses - housing, local shops, leisure, restaurant and community facilities. 

"All of this is being constructed completely on redundant former industrial land, none of it is being built on the green belt. 

"Alongside housing there will be 53,820 sqft of retail and commercial premises; new cafes and restaurants and landscaped areas complete with children’s playgrounds. The project has been designed so that people can go to the local shops, supermarket and cafes on foot or by bicycle.  

"The closure of the former GSK factory led to the loss of employment and investment from Dartford and left a large redundant piece of land adjacent to the railway station in the town centre."

Dartford Council leader Councillor Jeremy Kite welcomed news of the development, but added it would not replace Dartford town centre.

He said: "It will boost the town, it will boost the centre of Dartford. It will bring new people to the shops, to the cinema, new footfall. A good number of affordable houses will go to local people.

"We will need to make sure we deal with any traffic issues."

Meanwhile a further 650 homes are expected to be built at the neighbouring Northern Gateway site by a separate company, providing the South East of England with what Weston describes as "a large new urban centre, built entirely of brownfield land".

For more information on Weston Homes, call 01279 873 300 or visit weston-homes.com    

History of the site

The Mill Ponds site was once occupied by the Pheonix Paper Mill, built in 1852, with the large mill pond created to help power the facility. 

This was replaced in 1889 by the Wellcome Pharmaceutical Factory founded by Henry Wellcome and Silas Burroughs. 

The factory produced cod liver oil, malt and saccharin and supplied medicine chests to explorers, aviators and members of the Royal family. Famous explorers who carried Wellcome medicine chests prepared at the site include Admiral Peary (first person to reach the North Pole), Captain Amundsen (first to reach the South Pole), Scott of the Antarctic and Shackleton. 

Later the factory produced medicines including insulin, migril, zovirax and retrovir. In its Edwardian heyday the factory covered 33 acres, employed more than 1,300 people and relied on raw materials transported up the River Darent by barge.

After the Second World War the company opened newer plants on other sites, and by 2008 the Dartford factory was wound down and eventually closed by then owners GlaxoSmithKline. 

Plans to remediate and regenerate the former factory’s brownfield land Mill Ponds and neighbouring Northern Gateway sites began in 2010.