Swanscombe comes from the names Swain's camp a warrior who settled in the area.
Bone fragments and tools, representing the earliest humans known to have lived in England, have been found at the 'Barnfield Pit' about 2 km outside the village. Swanscombe Man (now thought to be female) was a late Homo erectus or an early Archaic Homo sapiens. Lower levels of the 'Barnfield Pit' yielded evidence of an even earlier, more primitive human, dubbed Clactonian Man.
Nearby digs on land for the Channel Tunnel Rail Link revealed a c. 400,000 year old site with human tools and the remains of a Straight-tusked Elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), and evidence of water vole, pine vole, newts, frogs etc., indicating a site with standing water.
The parish church is dedicated to St Peter and Saint Paul, although bult in stone in the 12th Century, as recorded in the Domesday Book, it replaced an earlier wooden Saxon Chapel. An earlier Saxon church was, reportedly, burnt down by Sweyne the Viking.
The Saxon alter, with some consecration crosses carved there by Saxon Bishops, remained after the rebuild. The partially Saxon tower had a spire until 1902, when the church was struck by lightning causing extensive damage.
Swanscombe Halt was not opened until 2nd November 1908, and remained a halt until 1930, when the Southern Railway built a new station from prefabricated concrete, opening on 6th July of that year.
