WE HAVE become rather accustomed to seeing hoardings around building sites in Sevenoaks as the face of the town changes yet again.

As I wrote last week, the old Caffyns Garage area in the High Street, later a furniture emporium, is making way for new development.

And at Tubs Hill, where the Railway and Bike and the Farmer's Arms once stood proud and tall, the scene is more reminiscent of the blitz.

Twenty-five years ago Sevenoaks was experiencing change at such a rapid rate that controversy was almost inevitable.

The decision had just been made to demolish the popular swimming pool in Eardley Road, the library in The Drive and rebuild on Buckhurst Field.

Sevenoaks District Council was considering the logistics involved in rebuilding new offices on the same site at Argyle Road.

On top of that, Tunbridge Wells Health Authority wanted to close the Emily Jackson Wing of Sevenoaks Hospital, re-site the physiotherapy unit, close the maternity unit, take away its status as an acute hospital and stop overnight stays for surgery patients.

This newspaper received scores of letters of outrage and more than 600 people packed Wildernesse School Hall to more than twice its legal capacity to voice their defiance.

The swimming pool was the first to go. On September 4, 1984, the last-ever ticket was sold and a demolition team moved in to remove the place where thousands of Sevenoaks children learned to swim.

Some months later the Buckhurst Field became a building site as work got under way on a new swimming pool, library, museum and gallery.

The buildings were finally opened by Sevenoaks MP Mark Wolfson in May 1986.

By this time Sevenoaks District Council was courting great controversy over the design of the new £2.5m council offices, which were condemned by a leading architectural magazine.

Readers were also horrified. Some compared it to a battleship, others said it was "prison-like" and "fortress-like" and "a cathedral gone wrong".

However, for the first time since local government was re-organised in 1974, the district's 280 employees were about to start work in the same building and move out of the Tubs Hill tower block which had became their temporary home.

There were plenty of other changes. Sevenoaks School's new girls' boarding house, in a walled garden behind Upper High Street, had been opened by Lady Sackville, and the arrival of Sevenoaks Community Centre at Bat and Ball was being hailed by one man "as a victory for ordinary people over town hall bureaucracy".

His name? Tony Branson, three times mayor of Sevenoaks.