A settlement which dates back to the middle ages and was once full of life is nowhere to be seen today.

Where once there was a chapel, an inn and some shops is now the busy Key Street junction near Sittingbourne.

Allen Whitnell, chairman of Sittingbourne Heritage Museum, said: "For hundreds of years it formed the centre of a sprawling area of dwellings, from Keycol Hill in Bobbing, along the main road eastwards and southwards along the Maidstone Road towards Borden.

"Its downfall probably came around the time of the First World War, when traffic levels started to be considered a hazard."

In the 1930s, one of the first sets of traffic lights in Kent was installed at the junction which meant that the community was split either side of a busy road.

There were a number of accidents in the area as a result – one being in 1954 where several people were injured and taken to hospital following an accident between a lorry and a Maidstone and District bus. So it needed to change.

Allen said: "The real crunch came in 1980, when the traffic lights were replaced with the roundabout, and a number of buildings were removed including the Key Inn, and the general shop and post office, literally cutting out the heart of a little settlement."

In 1995 further improvements were needed so more buildings were removed and the underpass was created.

Most of the people who lived in Key Street were agricultural labourers, and shops in the area included a bakery, a grocers, a shoemakers and a sub-post office.

Two out of three of the pubs in Key Street survived the transformation – the British Queen on the A2, which is now called the Long Hop, and the Royal Oak, now the Tudor Rose, which is now next to the dual-carriageway.

The public house that was in the middle of the settlement, the Key Inn, was demolished in 1980. This pub stood on the Sheppey side of the crossroads and offered food and a bed for travellers.

"This is where weary travellers would have rested for the night," Allen said. "For centuries it stood on the north east corner of the junction, it would have been right on the roundabout.

"A number of shops clustered around Key Street in the late 19th century and into the 20th. For some of those along the main road, away from the junction, the buildings remain today but others have disappeared under the traffic layout."

There was a chapel built for pilgrims to use on the south side of the road, which later became a hospital. Then, in 1867 a Wesleyan Chapel was built on the Bobbing side of the A2 which could seat 200 people, but this was demolished in 1969.

There was also a Primitive Methodist Chapel further along the road towards the Long Hop which survived and is now a private residence.

The original post office has survived as a private house, but the village shop which was a grocer, draper, butcher and post office, run by EE Kingsnorth from 1901, stood close to the junction and was demolished in 1980.

There were also two garages – one on the Borden side established in the 1920s and one on the Bobbing side of the road.

The second was the Pearce and Batt Garage which was demolished in 1992 and rebuilt on land behind it. This is still there today.

Numerous houses and cottages disappeared – thatch cottages were demolished in the 1940s and myrtle cottages were knocked down in the 1960s.

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Manor House, which was opposite the Key Inn, was demolished in 1994, and the two pine trees which were a recognisable landmark in the garden of Manor House were cut down in 1994.

Manor Cottage was demolished in 1980.

Elm House was run in the 19th century as a school and was demolished in 1980. Horace Tucker, the shoemaker, lived and worked in one of the Elm House cottages, in 1908.

Allen said: "These are just some of those that were specifically demolished for the traffic system.

"Many others further along the road towards Sittingbourne and Westwood up Keycol Hill disappeared as they became less desirable and a less peaceful place to live, due just to the increase in traffic flow during the last 100 years.

"So next time you drive through on your way to the Isle of Sheppey or join the traffic snaking around the roundabout on your way to the motorway, there's something to think about – the people, and the little settlement that was once not so long ago part of a community."