Halstead is a village and civil parish in the Sevenoaks District of Kent, England. The parish is located on the North Downs, 3 miles (4.8 km) south of Orpington and 5 miles (8 km) north of Sevenoaks.
The name Halstead is derived from the Old English hald (refuge, shelter) and stede (site, place), meaning 'safe place' or 'place of refuge'. The parish church is dedicated to St Margaret.
Author Edith Nesbit spent some of her adolescence in Halstead during the 1870s and her book The Railway Children is thought to be based on her time living in a house, Halstead Hall, whose garden is about a mile and a half from the railway line.
The parish is adjacent to Fort Halstead, a government defence research centre that is thought to have developed Britain's first atomic bomb.