Hammill owes its existence to Arthur Burr, an entrepreneur who formed the first Kent coal company in 1896.
He believed coal could be mined locally to make him a fortune but died penniless in 1919.
He had not figured on the fact that Kent coal was some of the most difficult to extract and hence prohibitively expensive.
A colliery was started on site in 1910 by Burr's Goodnestone & Woodnesborough Colliery Ltd, with surface buildings erected.
But it was mothballed in 1914 before being sold in 1923 to Pearson & Dorman Long, which sold the colliery on to the Hammill Brick Co.
Woodnesborough and Ham Mill Colliery station was opened on nearby the East Kent Light Railway in 1916, two years after the colliery was abandoned.
The brickworks were opened in 1927 before closing in 2006 – it has been run on a care-and-maintenance basis to keep the site viable.
At one point, after the First World War, the colliery was taken over by the army for a cavalry remount unit and, in the Second World War, a rotary clay drier was used to salvage water-damaged grain.
