bromley’s railways — accidents will happen · 2019-04-14 · war housing front patrick hellicar...

Bromleag Volume 2: Issue 32: December 2014

Bromley’s railways — accidents will happen

Darwin and World Heritage Site status

Romans in Beckenham

Finding Orpington’s lost documents

2 Bromleag December 2014

Bromleag The journal of the Bromley Borough Local History Society

Society officers Chairman and Membership Secretary Tony Allnutt

Woodside, Old Perry Street, Chislehurst, BR7 6PP 020 8467 3842

[email protected]

Treasurer Pam Robinson

68 Rolleston Ave, Petts Wood, BR5 1AL 020 8467 6385 [email protected]

Secretary Elaine Baker

27 Commonside, Keston, BR2 6BP 01689 854408

[email protected]

Programme co-ordinator Mike Marriott

2 The Drive, Orpington, BR6 9AP 01689 820794

[email protected]

Publications John Barnes

38 Sandilands Crescent, Hayes, BR2 7DR 020 8462 2603

[email protected]

Minutes Secretary Valerie Stealey

9 Mayfield Road, Bickley BR1 2HB 020 8467 2988

[email protected]

Publicity and website Max Batten

5 South View, Bromley, BR13DR 020 8460 1284 [email protected]

Bromleag Editor Christine Hellicar

150 Worlds End Lane, Chelsfield, BR6 6AS 01689 857214 [email protected]

BBLHS website www.bblhs.org.uk

Bromleag is published four times a year. The editor welcomes articles along with illustrations and photographs. These can be emailed, on disk or a paper copy.

Items remain the copyright of the authors and do not necessarily reflect Society views. Each contributor is responsible for the content of their article. Articles may be edited to meet the constraints of the journal. Articles are not always used immediately as we try to maintain a balance between research, reminiscences and news and features about different subjects and parts of the borough.

Next journal deadline — 15 January 2015

mailto:[email protected]

http://www.bblhs.org.uk


News

Contents — December 2014 News and Events 3 — 7, 16

Letters and queries 26 — 31

Book reviews 8 — 9

Society Meetings Members’ Evening 10 — 12

Mayfield’s lost documents 12

Grove Park in the Great War 13 — 14

Features Beckenham’s Roman road 15 —16

Trouble on the line, Part 1 17 — 23

Charles Darwin WHS bid 24 — 26

After a six-month break Bromleag is back— catching up on some of the articles that are not WW1-related though, inevitably, both world wars make an appearance in these pages.

Over the summer BBLHS has acquired the services of a new programme secretary. We are delighted that Mike Marriot — one of our newer members — has stepped up to take over from Peter Leigh, who has brought us a great selection of speakers and visits over the last five years. Many thanks to Peter, who will still be around to help as he is remaining on the committee.

Mike has been co-opted onto the committee and will stand for election at the April AGM. As you will see from Page 5 and your enclosed programme of events, he has put together an interesting variety of talks and visits for next year. And watch these pages for other walks or visits he hopes to slot into the calendar in 2015.

Home Front for Christmas But before then we have Christmas. We hope some of you will be giving Home Front to your Bromley friends and family as a present this year.

It has been a real and positive collaborative project by Society members and is being well received in the borough. Copies are available from John Barnes (contact details on Page 2). We wish you all a happy Christmas and New Year and hope to see many of you at meetings and events throughout 2015.

Welcome to our new programme secretary


News

Max Batten has added a new layer of interest to our website, Photo Essay pages.

Articles which, for one reason or another, have not appeared in Bromleag or only in an abbreviated form will be published on these pages.

The first articles are The Landscape Legacy of Deer Parks in Kent & Bromley — an expanded version of the illustrated talk Susan Pittman gave to the Society in 2013 — and Mike Marriott’s September Members’ Evening presentation on the History of the Priory Gardens.

The Photo Essays are stored as Adobe Reader files using the pdf format. Please note, all articles are copyright of their authors and if you wish to make commercial use of them, you must make a formal request which we will forward to the author.

If you have an article or presentation you would like to share (and it is too long for Bromleag), please contact Max at [email protected]

Summer visits Over the summer we had a visit to St Mary’s Church in College Road, a guided tour of Chislehurst Caves, took in some of the Arts & Crafts houses in Bickley in a walk led by Chairman Tony Allnutt, and visited the last remaining major development of prefabs in South London .

A picture record of all these visits is on the website.

Photo essays and events coverage on website

Fire hits Prefab Museum just saved from closure

Part of the unique Prefab Museum in Lewisham has been damaged by fire, which destroyed equipment and art work as well as the fabric of one room. The rest of the building has been affected by smoke damage.

The damage is currently being assessed, says museum curator Elisabeth Blanchet. The blow came just a few weeks after the museum, which has been under threat of

closure and demolition for some time, was given a reprieve. Lewisham Council has agreed to let the museum — Britain’s only living museum to

document post-war prefabricated housing — stay until 2017. Council support will not be in place until the next financial year so Elisabeth had

raised £15,000 from online donations to keep the museum open in the meantime. This summer BBLHS members had a really enjoyable tour of the museum and what

remains of the prefab estate on the Excalibur Estate in Catford. Much of the estate has already been vacated or demolished but it is still an historical gem that is worth taking a look at before it disappears.

To find out more go to www.prefabmuseum.uk


Meetings

January — March 2015 Meetings are held at 7.45 pm on the first Tuesday of the month

(unless otherwise stated), from September to July, at Trinity United Reformed Church, Freelands Road, Bromley.

The hall has free on and off-street parking, good public transport links and facilities for the disabled.

Non-members are welcome at meetings for a nominal charge of £1.

6 January The 1000th House — Orpington’s amazing record on the post war housing front Patrick Hellicar 3 February The History of Kemnal Road, Chislehurst Tony Allen 3 March The Story of George Allen — Ruskin’s Publisher on our doorstep Paul Dawson

News

Charles Darwin and Sir John Lubbock For those who were unable to come to Annie Kemkaran-Smith’s talk on The relationship between Charles Darwin and Sir John Lubbock, we hope to have a feature on the relationship between our two great men next year. See also feature on Page 24 on the Darwin at Downe World Heritage Site bid

How are we going to pay to support our ageing population? The Welfare State has got out of hand with all those undeserving poor and spiralling health service costs. I put down the Sunday papers. Too much doom-mongering.

Instead I browse through some old Bromley histories and pick up No 4 of our earlier publications. First article of this 1979 booklet is by Muriel Hughes, on the Parish Chest. She comments: “The problems of the old, the sick and the inadequate weighed more heavily on the Vestry and the Rates than anything else.”

Nothing changes — same worries, same problems, just different scale. CH

Vestry lessons from history


Bromley Council has pulled out of its £2.5 million Heritage Lottery Fund “Priory Revisited” bid to transform the Bromley Museum in Orpington because it will not commit to funding the museum for the next 25 years.

Museum curator Marie Louise Kerr and council officials are now drawing up alternative plans for the future but the possibility of closure, saving the council £130,00, has already been raised at one of Bromley Council’s consultation meetings.

Commenting on the Bromley Council’s decision to withdraw from the bid, she said: “We are all very disappointed but trying to be positive that there are other ways to run the museum service. This is by no means the end of the road. We will be contacting all the local community groups that worked so hard on our behalf and were involved in the bid to see what ideas and possibly solutions we can come up with as a team.”

The council won a first tranche of funding, £186,000, in 2012. It financed the drawing-up of outline plans — including more museum space, disabled access and a cafe — consultation with the public and the setting-up of groups such as Bromley Heritage and Arts Forum (BHAF), of which BBLHS is a member.

Community Development Manager at Bromley, Lydia Coelho, told BHAF: “We are disappointed that the Priory Revisited scheme will not be realised. The council has long had aspirations to restore The Priory and improve the museum offer. However, the HLF scheme relied on the council giving a revenue commitment of 25 years to Bromley Museum at The Priory, and at a time of huge financial pressures with unprecedented cuts across all services, it is simply not possible to make such significant financial guarantees for a generation at this time.”

Anniversary exhibition Meanwhile, Marie Louise is planning an exhibition to mark the 50th anniversary of

the museum. She is researching the origins of the museum and would like to hear from anyone who has information on how and why it was established.

It was originally Orpington Museum — and continued to be known as such for many years even after the change of name to Bromley Museum. It was set-up by the Orpington Urban District Council only weeks before that council was absorbed into the new borough of Bromley to become part of Greater London.

It opened in March 1965 with Marie Bowen as the first curator. Marie Louise says it has changed a great deal over the years: “The collection in the 1960s was made up mainly of the John Lubbock artefacts and local archaeology. We have been told that

Museum celebrates 50th anniversary despite an uncertain future

News


News

originally the museum was based in just one room in The Priory. “With the museum collecting items from, and representing the whole of the

borough, not just the history of Orpington, the name was changed. Now we have an interesting social history collection and a lovely fine art collection, as well as the Lubbock and Archaeology material.”

Research has shown there have been various proposals over the decades (even as far back as June 1913) that a local museum should be set up in Bromley or Orpington.

Marie Louise added: “We are hoping to research and find out more as to the origins of the museum and why it was based at The Priory. The display hopes to look at some of our past exhibitions, the first acquisitions and the most recent acquisitions, and to chart how the museum has changed and developed.

“We would love to hear people’s memories, stories and experiences of the museum service over the last 50 years and particularly see any photos people have of how the displays used to look. I have heard a lot about the model prehistoric village we apparently used to have. I would also be interested to hear what are people’s favourite artefacts from our collection and why.”

West Beckenham Residents’ Associations (WBRA) bid to have Elmers End Green registered as a Town Green — which was supported by BBLHS — has been rejected by Bromley Council.

WBRA applied for registration in 2013 when Bromley Council put the toilet block on the Green up for sale. The council agreed not to sell the freehold, but WBRA believe the building has subsequently, been sold leasehold.

Cliff Watkins researched the history of Elmers End Green for WBRA’s Town Green bid and found it dates back, in its present form, nearly 300 years.

The photo (right) shows part of a survey of 1723 made by J (or F) Piddock of lands owned by Peter Burrell around Elmers End. The land was mainly fields and meadows but Elmers End Green is clearly named. Also part of a map of circa 1775 clearly shows the same triangle bounded by the same roads as today.

Town Green bid for Elmers End rejected


Book reviews

Beckenham Through Time, by David Johnson

The latest in the prolific series of Through Time picture history books published by Amberley is a volume on Beckenham compiled by BBLHS member David Johnson.

The format of the book is, as usual, a comparison of then and now pictures and David has decided to group them by theme — for example, Administration and Parks, High Street, Transport, Schools, People.

I am always impressed by the reproduction quality of the Amberley publications. Old pictures are always of varying quality — here they are good, clear and sharp.

Each duo of pictures has a linking caption of around 100 words and David has decided to concentrate most of this tight captioning on the past rather than the present.

On several pages he has used paintings, rather than old photographs, such as the canal Beckenham Wharf c1820 and a painting of Alexandra Junior School from its opening in 1950. He has also included event pictures such as Churchill inspecting the Beckenham guns and, from 2001, the unveiling of a blue plaque on the house in Kings Hall Road where Rorke’s Drift hero, Colour Sergeant Frank Bourne, lived.

It is surprising how much of old Beckenham can still be seen in the modern pictures, mainly the areas developed in the late 19th century which did not suffer bomb damage. The High Street, particularly, is in parts totally recognisable in the old photos until you get to the section towards the war memorial and cinema where there was little 19th century development. However, as the photos show, some old properties existed into the 1960s.

In what was countryside, some old houses and cottages have survived amid suburbia, though much changed. The Old Cottage near the Chinese Roundabout is still there but elegant -looking buildings like Clock House, pictured c1822, made way for the Technical Institute. Shortlands House is still there, as Bishop Challoner School.

The book has a wide geographical range including West Wickham, Shortlands and Penge. David has selected a good cross-section of 200 or so pictures to capture the feel and history of the area and I particularly liked that he included some events and people pictures and not merely views of buildings. After all, an area is not just bricks and mortar, it is its people. CH Beckenham Through Time is available at the Beckenham Book Shop, WH Smith and other Beckenham outlets as well as on line and on the BBLHS bookstall. Price variable.


Book reviews

Lest We Forget, Beckenham and the Great War, by Pat Manning and Ian Muir

To mark the 100th anniversary of the outbreak of the First World War Pat Manning and Ian Muir have published Lest We Forget. It tells us a little, and sometimes a great deal, about many of the Beckenham men who died fighting. There are 711 recorded on the Beckenham War Memorial but some, if they died of wounds or elsewhere, are recorded on other memorials or sometimes not at all.

About two-thirds of the book lists the name, with date of death and as much personal information as can be found in official records and the Beckenham Journal, of 600 of the men who fell. But Pat and Ian have also researched the history of the period and Ian says: “I studied the names on the memorial, what they did for a living and even what schools they went to.”

These extended stories have been wrapped up in chapters that tell us not only about the men but also about the town and the time. A great deal of the local material was recorded in the Beckenham Journal and throughout the book the authors give details of this and other sources they have used, which will be a great help to anyone who wants to find out more about individuals.

The early chapters set the scene in Beckenham, starting with the stories of people who were caught in Europe when war broke out, the work of the Voluntary Aid Detachments in Beckenham, background on the British Army and the Effect of the War on Beckenham and much more. Embedded in them are pictures and stories of men of all ranks and even whole families, such as that of local councillor James Crease who had five serving sons.

There are also stories of those who survived, such as that of Bert Hanscombe, one of nine brothers who all served. Bert was chosen to unveil the Beckenham War Memorial because of his war record.

With many pictures from private collections and several colour plates, this 192-page books is a fascinating insight not only into the lives of the fallen of the Great War but also life in Beckenham at this time. Lest We Forget is available at the Beckenham Book Shop and online. Price £9


The September members’ evening always produces some interesting talks. This year it was a bumper evening of fascinating material.

Lost and found documents, overgrown gardens and a raft of forgotten characters and eccentrics who once walked the streets of the borough were brought to life in a series of talks. Papers

The lost documents, some dating back to the 17th century, were from the Manor of Mayfield in Orpington. Geoffrey Copus transcribed them in the 1950s but when he tried to track down the originals four decades later they had disappeared. His account of the rediscovery of these important documents is on Page 12.

Geoffrey has also been given access to the diaries c1883-1923 to Edward Norman of Chelsfield House (now Chelsfield Park Hospital) – the son of George Warde Norman of Bromley Common, who was Governor of the Bank of England.

The diaries are in the keeping of the Edward Norman’s descendants, who also have many original family photographs. This was a time when the village of Chelsfield was home to some very distinguished families, not only the Normans but also the Aspreys (of Bond Street jewellers fame) and the Lord of Manor and major landowner William Waring. Geoffrey brought along some of the photos and images from the diaries. People

Geoffrey’s final recent research project has been into the life of Arnold Harris Mathew, self-styled Count Polivari, de Jure Earl of Llandaff and Archbishop of London who lived in Pratts Bottom. But that tale will be told in Bromleag next month.

The Archbishop was not the only surprising character of the evening. Max Batten had gone of the trail of Bromley’s Charles Paget Wade, pictured right, who he came across when visiting the National Trust property of Snowshill Manor in Gloucestershire.

People, places and papers — our members’ evening compendium

Society meeting


Born in Scotts Lane, Shortlands, in 1883, Wade proved to be of considerable interest, from his early life as an architect and artist to the later management of his grandfather’s West Indian estates. His legacy, the creation of a unique collection of over 20,000 objects ranging from suits of armour, to musical instruments, model ships and mousetraps, is now housed at Snowshill.

Max told us how he tracked down the family home in Scotts Lane – which still stands — and filled in a little about the early life of Wade before he moved from the area. He told us about the career of this talented artist and eccentric collector. Many of us will now have put a visit to Snowshill on our list of must-see places.

Another unexpected family to have lived in Bromley were shipowners Dansey & Robinson, who Bob Milburn came across in an intriguing reference to Bromley in the book Mrs Robinson’s Disgrace. As with the Archbishop, this is a tale deserves more than a passing reference in my synopsis so a much longer article will appear in Bromleag next year. Places

Our other speaker for the evening was our new Programme Secretary Mike Marriott, who has researched a place rather than a person. We are all aware of the importance of The Priory in Orpington as a building, but from the late 19th century it was to became a garden of some consequence.

In a comprehensive slide show ,Mike traced how the gardens would have been when the building was a working medieval rectory and farm and showed us some of the older walls and outbuildings that have survived.

But its heyday as a garden came after Herbert Broom acquired it in 1860 and decided to rename the rectory – henceforth it was known as The Priory – and laid out the gardens. The property passed through the hands of Benjamin Greene Lake until in 1919 it was sold to Cecil Hughes.

Hughes was one of the founder members, and Hon Treasurer of the Landscape Institute, working alongside Geoffrey Jellico who designed The Priory’s theatre garden in the Italian style.

Mrs Hughes was a keen gardener and friendly with garden designer Gertrude Jekyll. “There is a great deal of Jekyll influence in Priory gardens. However, Mrs Hughes was herself an accomplished gardener, running a large staff and growing thousands of bedding plants,” said Michael.

The Friends of Orpington Priory Gardens had hoped to re-create the Priory gardens as they appeared in the Arts & Crafts period as part of the now-defunct Heritage Lottery Funding bid. Images of how the gardens may once have looked and the work that has already been carried out can be seen on the Photo Essay pages on our website.

Society meeting


Back in the early 1950s, Arthur Eldridge, that great historian of Orpington, lent me a collection of documents relating to the Manor of Mayfield, or Little Orpington. They had been given to the Orpington Historical Record Society, with a view to depositing them eventually in a local archive collection, then yet to be established.

The documents included a beautifully written survey of the Demesne land of the Manor, taken in 1678, and Court Books from 1618 to 1669 and 1792 to 1801. I set about transcribing them, and I was very fortunate because St Thomas’s Hospital, formerly considerable landowners in Orpington and Lords of the Manor of Crofton, had recently appointed an archivist, Miss McInnes. I had already contacted her about the Hospital’s large collection of Crofton records, and now she was very helpful to me in my efforts at transcribing, and where necessary translating, those of Mayfield. It was no easy task, particularly as the entries are in abbreviated dog Latin for all of the period except during the Republic and Commonwealth. However, I completed and typed out the work and returned the documents to Mr Eldridge.

My wife, Brenda, and I moved from Orpington to Tunbridge Wells in 1960 and I did not seriously resume local history studies until I retired in 1990. Then a few years ago I helped fellow BBLHS member Elaine Mackay catalogue some of the unsorted collections of Orpington documents in Bromley Local Studies Library, on which she did an excellent job. Among the collections were the files of the now-defunct Orpington Historical Record Society, with frequent references to the Mayfield documents, but with no trace anywhere of the documents themselves. I searched everywhere I could think of in an effort to find out what had happened to them, and put out appeals in Bromleag and on Judith Habgood’s Orpington historical records site.

This at last produced results. Out of the blue, I had a phone call from Hedda Johnstone, the daughter of Marie Bowen, the first curator of what is now Bromley Borough Museum, at Orpington Priory. Hedda’s daughter had happened to notice a parcel of papers on top of her grandmother’s wardrobe, which turned out to hold the precious Mayfield documents.

Marie Bowen has done a good deal of valuable work in her retirement, notably in producing a study of the mediaeval accounts of the farm attached to Orpington Priory. She had evidently intended to work on the Mayfield documents but these had been put aside and forgotten, and with her ready agreement Hedda passed the documents to me. I scanned them before thankfully depositing them locally, in accordance with the donor’s original intentions, at Bromley Local Studies Library.

Geoffrey’s transcriptions from the 1950s are also in the Local Studies Library.

Recovering Mayfield’s lost documents Geoffrey Copus

Society meeting


Society meeting

To many people Grove Park is just an adjoining suburb at the southern end of the London Borough of Lewisham which one might pass through on the train to London or even change at the station of that name if travelling from Sundridge Park or Bromley North. Other members may think of Grove Park as an irritant when queuing at traffic lights en route to Lee and Blackheath.

As for the district itself, some might describe it as a characterless mixture of inter-war private and municipal housing with a bland collection of shops, although a few Victorian and Edwardian houses have survived while a large Territorial Army block of a Stalinist character dominates Baring Road just to the north of the station.

So what importance could this district possibly have in the Great War when the area was still growing up? A number of large houses had been built in the 1870s following the opening of the railway station, but there was still considerable farming activity.

At our October meeting, BBLHS member John King decidedly put paid to any idea that Grove Park’s history was not interesting. And he was most emphatic that the district played a very important military part in the Great War. But how could that be?

John explained that one of the interesting historical features in Grove Park that has survived in part is a building complex that some would remember as Grove Park Hospital in Marvels Lane. It was built at the beginning of the 20th century, but not as a hospital. In common with some other hospitals, it began life as a workhouse though not for the locality. It was built for Greenwich, which was under pressure from the Local Government Board to expand onto a new site, although at the time there was a growing tendency to concentrate on outdoor relief. It was eventually opened in 1903 but in the years up to WW1 was always under-occupied.

With the outbreak of war in August 1914, there was a need for somewhere to mobilise and train the Army Service Corps recruits to

Grove Park in the Great War


Society meeting

drive and maintain vehicles – the ASC was the department of the army that dealt with transport and supplies.

Before the end of September, the army had moved in. Over the ensuing four years, nearly a quarter of a million ASC men passed through Grove Park. Some were on their way overseas within 24 hours while others stayed longer to learn to drive and maintain vehicles. For the duration Grove Park’s streets were littered with buses, lorries, ambulances and cars as there was no space to house them in the workhouse which, not surprisingly, was designated the barracks.

So where did the recruits stay? The officers were billeted in the big Victorian houses while Other Ranks were mostly under canvas, as seen in the picture above, in the fields that adjoined Grove Park Road – and they suffered in the first winter, which was particularly damp, with questions asked in Parliament. There was, of course, considerable interplay between the military and local community – there were several marriages at the local church of St Augustine’s while a number of children were born out of wedlock. At least two people in Grove Park made spare houses available for social use by the soldiers.

There was also a little aeronautical activity in the district — the Grove Park Emergency Landing Ground for aeroplanes of the Royal Flying Corps that had run out of fuel or had technical problems. This, however, was on the Bromley side of the boundary.

The war effectively ended on 11 November 1918 but this was not formalised until the following June. The Army was slow to leave and it would be another year before the complex was handed over to the Metropolitan Asylums Board which had bought it to be a tuberculosis hospital, but that is another story. There may be nothing of a military character to remind us of the army’s presence in Grove Park in the Great War but the frontage and the administration block of the workhouse do survive in Marvels Lane.

This story ,however, is as much a Bromley one as Lewisham’s in that the workhouse complex lay on the boundary.


Feature

E very so often the Romans make their appearance on these pages. It may come

as a surprise to learn that Beckenham was a hive of activity in Roman times

and Roman soldiers would have been a common sight. In 43 AD Aulus Plautius landed a 40,000 strong Roman army at Richborough in Kent.

This started the colonisation of Britain which was to last until around 410 AD when the legions returned home.

By 47 AD, the conquest of Southern England was complete and the military campaign continued into the South West. Road building was an essential part of the success of the invasion and roads were surveyed and constructed from the late 40s AD onwards. Exploitation of Britain’s mineral resources such as iron was a priority for the army and this would have begun promptly after the South had been secured.

From around 50 AD onwards, a military highway was constructed either under the Emperor Claudius or his successor Vespasian from near Lewes, Sussex, to the capital, Londinium.

The road would have passed between Westerham and Oxted before coming up to Beckenham near West Wickham. This road passes through Beckenham and was an essential route carrying tools, iron products and weapons from the iron smithies and foundries in the Weald under the auspices of the Classis Britannica (Roman Fleet).

In order to maintain the power of the legions, the consumer needs of the capital and growing Roman towns across Britain, metal goods had to be transported quickly and the London to Lewes road through Beckenham, served this purpose. It would have been constructed of gravel and metal scalpings on a hardcore, crushed stone base and would have varied in width from four to nine metres.

The road would have been a series of straight lines. It runs through Beckenham from the Chinese Garage via Kelsey Park, close to the present day cafe, cutting across Court Downs Road, The Knoll, Albemarle Road, Foxgrove Road, Southend Road and leaving Beckenham at the bend in Greycot Road.

Another function of the road would undoubtedly have been to carry agricultural goods such as corn and vegetables. The Beckenham area, in common with the South East, was a well-populated landscape noted for small Romano-British farms constructed out of timber and many of these farms were used by Rome to generate food for its armies.

The road also ran near a small Romano town between West Wickham and

A hive of activity along Beckenham’s Roman road By Rod Reed


Feature/news

Addington so the traffic using the highway would have included soldiers, civilians, from the town and farming goods. According to local residents, the outline of the Roman Road can be seen at Sparrows Den, West Wickham, during summer months.

We can speculate that Beckenham’s first traffic jam occurred in 100 AD as soldiers tried to get past local Britons.

Archaeological evidence of Roman activity in the area and for the road is plentiful. Intact gravel from the route was found just south of the Forest Hill Cricket Ground, a Romano British farm was found in Bromley Common, a Roman bath building near Baston Manor Hayes, evidence of Romano British settlement at North Pole Lane, West Wickham, an early Christian shrine in Keston and a remarkable villa at Crofton, Orpington.

The next decade may yet reveal more clues to Beckenham’s Roman past. Further reading; Roman Britain, Life in an Imperial Province by Keith Branigan. Excavations in West Kent 1960-70, by Brian Philp

Documents rescued from eBay sale A collection of documents relating mainly to Cudham, Downe and Orpington and dating from the early 1700s has been saved from being broken up and “lost” through eBay by the swift action of the North West Kent Family History Society.

NWKFHS stepped in when about 30 documents, which had been held by the Norfolk seller’s family for generations, began to appear as individual items on the online auction site in July. After an urgent email exchange and an appeal for donations to a rescue fund, several hundred pounds was raised within days and the society successfully bid for all but four of the documents, one a will. These were sold before NWKFHS was aware of the disposals.

A total of £300 was spent and the society will use the remainder to buy special archival safe boxes to store the papers. Some of the documents measure more than two feet (60cm) wide and up to 23 inches (58cm) long.

The so-called “Cudham documents” include mortgage agreements, abstracts of title to land and premises, deeds and indentures. They are now being scrutinised, transcribed and indexed. It is also intended to research details of individuals named.

All the documents were put on display in a one-day exhibition in August at the society’s library at Summerhouse Drive, Joydens Wood Estate, Bexley. They are currently kept there, though society trustees are considering where they might eventually be deposited. Society chairman Walter Eves says they will definitely stay in the Kent area.

Meanwhile, the originals will be made available to researchers and it is hoped transcriptions will be posted soon on the society’s website at www.nwkfhs.org.uk


Feature

T he first railway line anywhere in the present day London Borough of Bromley was the route from London Bridge to West Croydon via Penge West and Anerley* which opened in June 1839. Initially it was operated on the time

interval system — that is, if a certain time had elapsed, it was considered safe for the next train to follow. With an hourly service this was reasonably safe and at night the trains carried two red lamps on the back for added safety.

On Friday 5 October 1844, the last day of the Croydon Fair, the final train back to London was divided into two, the front portion for London Bridge, the second portion for Bricklayers Arms. Unfortunately the second train ran into the back of the first at Anerley. The Inspector-General of Railways, having read of the incident in his Sunday paper, immediately arranged to interview all those involved to discover the cause of the accident.

It transpired that on this occasion the staff at West Croydon could supply only one lamp for the first train and that it went our somewhere en route. The second train, which had set off only five minutes after the first, was making better time and, not seeing any red tail lamps, collided with the London Bridge service just as it was departing from Anerley. Around 20 people were injured, mainly suffering cuts and bruises. The railway company were requested to sort out their lamp arrangements and to caution drivers to be more careful.

In a fairly rural area, no other line was built anywhere else in the borough until 1857, when the line between Lewisham and Beckenham Junction came into use¹. Since then, the area has been fortunate in that, while there have been many incidents, they have not been on anything like the scale of our neighbour Lewisham with the sad claim to have been the location of Britain’s third and sixth most serious railway accidents.² However, the death toll, tragic though it may be, often reflects only the fact that heavily loaded trains were involved, not the interest or complexity of what went wrong.

The early days of railways were characterised by infrequent and slow trains in a relaxed atmosphere where people worked very long hours. Consequently many things could and did go wrong, but usually with only minor consequences. When Mr Gripper from West Wickham approached Beckenham Junction station on 30 November 1861, only for his horse and cart to bolt, throwing him and two companions out, the horse then galloped on to the line and set off towards Shortlands, eventually being

Trouble and tragedy on the line In the first instalment of a three-part article Max Batten takes a look at some tragic

or near-tragic incidents that have beset our local railway network since 1844


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recaptured between there and Bromley South. Fortunately, a message reached Bromley South in time to stop the 8.35 am to London Bridge from departing.

Penge East to Beckenham Junction

For a few years, London, Chatham and Dover Railway (LCDR) trains from Bromley South to Victoria had to travel via Crystal Palace (and pay the Brighton railway for the privilege) so the construction of a more direct line underneath Sydenham Heights was a priority. Involving the digging, largely by hand, of a tunnel well over a mile long,³ the line from Herne Hill to near Kent House opened on 1 July 1863.

Just over a year later, the 7.30 am express from Victoria to Dover set off in misty conditions with 2-4-0⁴ Snowdrop in charge and, shortly after passing through Penge East at a speed of 25 to 30 miles an hour (the engine did not actually have a speedometer), the train crew heard a strange noise on the right hand side and stone ballast started flying up. The fireman applied the tender break (sic) — the engine did not have brakes either — and independently the first and second guards at the rear of the four-coach train started to apply their brakes as well, but it seems clear no-one actually appreciated there was a serious problem.

In fact, at least one of a pair of the locomotive’s wheels was off the track and running outside the rails and, 373 yards after this started, the whole train derailed on a slight bend. The locomotive and tender fell down the embankment and considerable damage was done to the following coaches. Amazingly, of the 12 passengers, only one person suffered serious injury (a broken leg) while those in the first class carriage next to the engine were able to continue their journeys later in the

Hyacinth: A sister engine to Snowdrop, with the large springs visible above each wheel.


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day. The train crew were less fortunate, the driver breaking both legs, the guard losing three fingers and the unfortunate fireman succumbing to his injuries. The precise location is unclear but must have been round about the site of Kent House station (which didn’t open for another 20 years).

After a very thorough examination of both track and train by Captain Tyler RE, it was concluded that the engine had developed a roll leading to the middle wheels slipping off the track because five of its eight axle springs, which were supposed to spread the weight evenly, were actually broken. Although only 15 months old, Snowdrop had already travelled nearly 46,000 miles and an improved maintenance regime was recommended.

By the strange coincidence that railway accidents often seem to occur in the same or very nearby locations, just over two years later there was another incident between Penge East and Beckenham Junction. The area had been the source of repeated flooding but the Chaffinch and the Beck were now largely confined to pipes. You can see the course of the Chaffinch under the concrete path running between the two embankments as it passes beneath the railway in the “V” formed by the lines from Beckenham Junction to Kent House and Birkbeck.

On 14 November 1866 there was a free flowing stream with a cast iron and brick two-arch bridge carrying the main line over it. It was recorded that at 3.54 am the 0-6-0 goods engine Tacita with 30 trucks trundled past the Penge Junction signal box (at the point of the “V”) at about 12 mph. Moments later came a great crash as the train and the down side⁵ of the bridge fell into the water. The normally modest stream, a foot or so deep and two or three feet wide, had been swollen by melting snow and had already flooded surrounding land. Combined, it transpired, with local efforts to deepen the river at this point, the fast flowing water had undermined the western abutment or bridge support and the weight of the train proved too much.

The engine and tender fell into the stream, crushing the unfortunate fireman, 20-year-old John Maxted, followed by a brake van and 14 trucks. Another goods train had passed safely over the bridge an hour earlier and, apart from some minor recommendations, the Inspecting Officer had little to criticise and the accident was effectively attributed to an Act of God. But in one respect, the inspector seems to have erred. As he was a trained engineer, no doubt his measurement of track damage and other technical details were correct, but his geography was at fault. He refers to the Chaffinch Brook as the cause of the trouble, but the culprit was actually the River Beck, the stream that drains Kelsey Park.

Less than two years later, on the 6 January 1868, the 9.20 am from Beckenham Junction departed Penge East and a few moments later entered the tunnel. When nearly halfway through, the driver of the engine, Gorgon, felt a jerk sufficient to cause


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him to bring the train to a stand and investigate. He was alarmed to find the rear two coaches of the four-coach train had derailed and, more critically, were standing in the gap between the up and down lines, known as the “six foot, and fouling the down line along which the 9.15 am train from Victoria was due.

Collision in a tunnel is always a very serious situation, but happily he did not panic and, moving the front part of the train forward some distance, placed three warning detonators (small explosive caps) on the track and then carried on to Sydenham Hill station where he was able to get the down train stopped.

Investigation, again by Captain Tyler, showed that the cause was a broken rail, one of several in the tunnel, the track being the original laid during construction and clearly of poor-quality iron. They were now being replaced with steel rails. Given the minor outcome of the incident (only one passenger claiming any sort of injury), most interest centred around the reporting of events, which today would cause a major scandal.

It transpired that the crew of a preceding boat train from Dover had felt some rough riding 25 minutes earlier and the head guard had decided to report the matter to the station master at Herne Hill (where the train would divide into Victoria and Blackfriars portions) and to the district engineer who lived nearby. However, the engineer had already set off for his Victoria office so he had to be tracked down once the train arrived in London.

It then came to light that the guard of the train from Sevenoaks which had followed the boat train through the tunnel had experienced a similar rough ride, enough to alarm passengers, but this was attributed to a broken spring on the engine. After arriving at Blackfriars he wrote a note to the traffic superintendant warning of a broken rail in the tunnel, but only after learning of the incident.

And what about Mr Hancock, the station master at Herne Hill? He had passed a message to the signalman to telegraph to his colleague at Penge East but the signalman had been unable to attract his colleagues’ attention. In fact, the signal box at Penge was unlike anything we would see today. Only the telegraph instruments were inside, the signalman having to leave his box to operate the signal levers and, probably more distracting, open and close the four gates of the level crossing (located at the south end of the station – the crossing keeper’s house is still there). Captain Tyler was not impressed by this arrangement nor the dilatory way other train staff reported the potential problem.

Bickley

On 23 June 1869 local season ticket holder Mr Richard Jennings set off to work on the 7 am train from Bickley to the now vanished Ludgate Hill Station (just beyond Blackfriars). After a long day at work, he joined the 7.08 pm home and, seated in a


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first class coach towards the centre of the train, eventually reached Bickley station at 8.03. It appears he did what many of us have done: he had fallen asleep and only the jerk of the re-starting train alerted him to his location. Panicking, he opened the window and called to the several platform staff and, as one signalled the engine crew to stop, another ran towards Mr Jennings as he opened the door and apparently almost hurled himself on to the ticket collector, before falling between the train and platform, trapped by the train’s steps.

The train was quickly halted and Mr Jennings pulled onto the platform with no obvious injuries. But clearly this was not the case and after a few muttered words, he expired. No blame was attributed to the station staff, who had performed their duties before and during the incident quite correctly. But the indefatigable Captain Tyler⁶ had a few comments to make on an issue dear to his heart, namely the size of coaches and the level of platforms which varied greatly from line to line and station to station.

At Bickley the platforms were around 27 inches above the rail (typically 36 inches today) with the coach floor at 48 inches, so it would clearly be easy to fall when in a hurry despite the intermediate step below the door. His main suggested improvement was that coaches should have “an additional latch fastening, judiciously placed, below the level of the door-handles, such as is employed on the Continent”. (See picture) Nine years later, on 29 November 1878, there was a rather more destructive accident at Bickley, although happily this time not attended by fatal consequences. An early-morning LCDR boat train from Dover with six coaches was approaching the South Eastern Railway (or SER) over-bridge near Chislehurst at around 45 mph (there was then no connection between the two companies’ lines – these were not built for another 24 years) when Driver Stark heard a strange noise and discovered

Old coaches: Typical coaches of the era which led one writer to say that a train in motion gave the impression of moving castellated walls. The large coach on the right is similar to the one used by the unfortunate Mr Jennings


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that the automatic brake had operated. After passing under the SER main line, the train slowly came to a halt. It was

discovered that Europa’s tender was off the line, the following brake van had become uncoupled and turned over and several other vehicles were derailed. Unusually, most of them had suffered severe damage to their undersides and the brake gear. After a full search of the line, it was clear that the leading iron axle on the tender had broken and then one wheel and half the axle had got caught under the train, finally ending up under the last vehicle. Two passengers only complained of “being shaken up” but the front guard (from the overturned van) was, unsurprisingly, not fit enough to attend the inquiry a few days later.

In an accident eerily similar to that at Bickley in 1869, as the 7.35 pm from Holborn Viaduct departed Shortlands at 8.13 pm on Saturday 10 December 1882, Mr Frederick Barnard, the publisher of the Sporting Times, opened the door and alighted. It seems likely he had taken too long to collect up his belongings (an umbrella, a bottle, a basket of fish, a hare and some newspapers) and then attempting to close the door behind him fell between two carriages. Although the train was quickly stopped and he was taken to Bromley Cottage hospital to have his leg amputated, he died after the operation.

One curious feature of the incident was at the inquest the following Tuesday. It was held unusually in the Tiger’s Head public House on Mason’s Hill⁷. Despite repeated requests from the coroner for the lady superintendent at the hospital to attend (reinforced by the visits of two policemen), she refused to do so and had to be arrested before giving evidence. Since the hospital and pub were only about 50 yards apart, her reason for not wishing to attend is unclear, but perhaps she was a member of the Temperance movement! Happily, she was simply admonished and released after the verdict of Accidental Death was reached.

Bromley North branch

For the first time we are able to leave the main line of the LCDR, and move to their then arch-rivals, the larger and more prosperous SER. Although just over the borough border, Grove Park plays an important role for the Bromley North branch.

On the evening of 19 August 1883, some five years after the branch was opened, the 8.10 pm train from Bromley North approached the junction where the engine should have stopped at the signal, separated from the train, run round to its rear, and then propelled the coaches on to the back of the waiting main line train in the up platform.

Instead, driver Overy found the train sliding past the signal and despite his best efforts with sand beneath the wheels and the fireman operating the screw brake, collided with six empty carriages in the bay platform. However, although 11 passengers and the guard complained of being shaken, the coaches were successfully


transferred on to the back of the waiting train and only 10 minutes delay incurred! Six years later, on Monday 24th June 1889, an almost identical collision occurred.

The 8.32 am from Bromley North arriving outside Grove Park, failed to stop in time and smashed into empty coaches already there. This was clearly a more severe impact than previously and the engine driver, Thomas Greyland, who remained with his engine, was severely shaken while his “stoker” leapt to safety. The passengers were also cut and bruised to varying degrees, one lady requiring the attention of a doctor, but most were able to continue their journeys later. The cause appeared, as before, to be the failure of the hand brake to operate on wet rails and a lack of appreciation of the loss of adhesion.

Much more recently, during the afternoon of 29 October1962, an empty train somehow “ran away” from Bromley North and, travelling down the steady slope to Grove Park successfully negotiated the curve into the bay platform before crossing the trap points and colliding heavily with the wall supporting the station buildings and blocking the main line for 24 hours.

When I learned of this I (naturally) cycled to the station to see what I could, which turned out to be a rather bent coach and some brick dust. Runaways, in days when vehicles were not fitted with automatic brakes were all too common and often had serious consequences. However, when an unattended van rolled out of the up siding at Knockholt in the 1870s and trundled steadily towards London, finally coming to rest just beyond New Cross station, there were happily no ill consequences.

Good luck also held in 1890 when a runaway engine crashed through the level crossing gates (where there is now a subway) at New Beckenham although it no doubt caused some alarm! To be continued in our March 2015 edition

*The current or final names of stations are used even though they may have been different at the time of the event.

¹See The Fall of the first Ivy Bridge, Bromleag December 2007

²Viz. Quintinshill (1915), Harrow and Wealdstone (1952), Lewisham (1957), Armagh (1889), Tay Bridge (1879), Hither Green (1967) ³Actually 1 mile 381 yards. Dug entirely through London Clay, the excavated material was used to make the bricks to line the tunnel bore. ⁴Indicating it had 2 small wheels at the front, 4 large driving wheels in the middle and, in this case, no trailing wheels under the driver’s cab. ⁵Down = from London, Up = To London ⁶Sir Henry Whatley Tyler (1827-1908) was an Inspecting Officer for Railways from 1853 to 1879, becoming the Chief Inspector in 1871 and later a Conservative MP. ⁷The White Hart, and sometimes The Bell, near the Market Square in Bromley were the usual locations for inquests

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The speaker at the BBHLS meeting in July, Annie Kemkaran-Smith, the English Heritage curator at Down House, was asked about the bid for Darwin at Downe to be

recognised as a UNESCO World Heritage Site (WHS). She could not answer. This was unsurprising, since there appears to have been no published account of what

happened. Michael Banton fills in some of the background. It would be interesting to

hear if anyone can tell us about Bromley Council’s part in the nomination, and particularly about who first suggested it.

I n 2006 the United Kingdom government nominated Darwin at Downe for recognition as a World Heritage site within the terms of the UNESCO Convention Concerning the Protection of the World Cultural and Natural Heritage.

The Convention had been adopted in 1972 and ratified by 190 states. An International Council of Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) and an International Union for the Conservation of Nature (IUCN) had been created earlier. Only states that are parties to the 1972 Convention can nominate sites; to succeed, these must demonstrate “outstanding universal value” according to one or more of six cultural and four natural criteria. The UK submitted its nomination in time for a decision at the 2007 World Heritage Committee session.

Nominations are assessed by the World Heritage Committee against a set of cultural and natural criteria that can be read in the Wikipedia entry on UNESCO World Heritage Site. Darwin at Downe was nominated under the two cultural criteria iii and vi, not under the natural criteria. Nominations are evaluated by ICOMOS and IUCN on the basis of expert desk reviews and the report of a mission expert sent to the site. An evaluation includes a recommendation of one of four possible decisions: inscription; referral (minor revision of the nomination); deferral (major revision and new mission required); or non-inscription (no re-submission will be considered). In the case of Darwin at Downe, ICOMOS’s recommendation was for the fourth option, non-inscription, and the draft decision text prepared by the secretariat of ICOMOS and IUCN for the World Heritage Committee session upheld that recommendation.

Draft decision texts are published a few weeks before the session. When non-inscription has been recommended, states often withdraw their nominations for reconsideration. The UK withdrew its nomination. It then hosted a meeting in London that brought together experts from 15 countries worldwide in the fields of science and technology. This was to develop a framework for the identification and recognition of sites of interest for the heritage of science and technology. The

Charting ‘Darwin at Downe’ heritage site bid

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conclusions and recommendations from this Workshop were welcomed by the World Heritage Committee at its 32nd session in Quebec in July 2008.

In the following year the UK submitted a revised nomination for decision at the 2010 Committee session in Brasilia. Though it now had the new name Darwin's Landscape Laboratory, it cited the same criteria of iii and vi. ICOMOS again recommended non-inscription, and that recommendation was upheld in the draft decision text put before the Committee. As on this occasion the UK did not withdraw its nomination, it was considered by the Committee.

The key session was convened at a late hour after a long day. Someone who was present recalled that many delegates participated in a very engaged manner, demonstrating that they were truly concerned, whether they were in favour or against. ICOMOS had argued along the lines of the evaluation, saying that the house itself lacked authenticity and integrity, while the nominated landscape bore no physical traces of Darwin’s activities, unlike some previous nominations of sites that displayed physical traces of what had occurred there. This recommendation overlooked some contrary precedents, but if the UK supporters knew of them they failed to draw attention to the possible inconsistencies.

Others objected to the ICOMOS reasoning, however, and although the Brasilia session was the first in which the Committee regularly departed from ICOMOS and IUCN recommendations, the observer did not gain the impression that this reflected lobbying by the nominating state. Committee members took a genuine interest and formed their own opinions. A verbatim record of the discussion can be accessed on the internet, but such a record can provide only hints of the increasing political influences upon acceptances. The first vote, by secret ballot, was on a proposal to inscribe the UK nomination; it failed. The second vote was on a proposal to defer a decision; it secured exactly the simple majority of 11 votes that it needed.

According to a press statement from the UK Department of Culture, Media and Sport on 2 August 2010: “At its meeting in Brasilia, the World Heritage Committee announced that although Darwin’s Landscape Laboratory was very strong in terms of recognising scientific achievement, further in depth study and analysis was needed before the site could be considered for World Heritage designation. The Committee voted to defer the nomination back to the UK authorities for these issues to be addressed.”

The Minister, Jeremy Hunt, said: “Whilst this is disappointing for all those involved in taking this nomination forward, the World Heritage Committee’s decision has given the bid partnership the opportunity to re-visit this nomination and to look at ways in which the case might be strengthened for re-nomination in the future.

“However I’m pleased the Committee has recognised the value of the site not only

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in terms of historical interest, but also the celebration of achievements in science and technology on the World Heritage List.”

Reference to the bid partnership was presumably to the partnership between the Government and Bromley Borough Council. Note For further information on UNESCO proceedings, see: Christoph Brumann, Shifting tides of world-making in the UNESCO World Heritage Convention: cosmopolitans colliding, Ethnic and Racial Studies 2014 37(12): 2176-2192.

I can shed some light on the bronze sculpture pictured in June’s Bromleag.

The sculpture/portrait bust (pictured below) of the head of a man with flat cap and hollow irises, mounted on a marble block, is on loan from the Bromley Museum collection and is museum item No. 94.599.

Our records suggest that the model for this piece was Fred Brigden who lived in the Star Lane area of St Paul’s Cray and was well known in pigeon racing circles. The sculpture is attributed to Hilary Field ,though sadly we haven’t a date for it and we have no more information on the artist.

I hope this is of interest and answers some of the questions about the artwork. [Marie Louise’s information answers one question but raises another. Does anyone know any more about Hilary Field? — Ed]

Bromley Museum also holds a large collection of art works by Janet Simpson, [her sketch of the Market Square is on our website and we asked for information, again in June’s Bromleag].

Janet Simpson was born in Camberwell in 1874. She studied art at Lambeth, both she and her sister, Agnes, being talented artists. By 1916 Janet was living at 155 Widmore Road, Bromley (now demolished). Local printers, Bush & Sons, produced a book of 18 of her etchings of Bromley. This also acted as a catalogue of her work, originals of each picture being advertised for sale for around a guinea. Views included the Market

Bronze bust — a pigeon racer from St Paul’s Cray


Letters and queries

Another sculptural conundrum — March family plaque

A member of the public has approached us about the commemorative plaque for the March family at Sainsbury’s at Locksbottom, Farnborough, previously the site of their property Goddendene.

They have been unable to locate the plaque visually and staff at Sainsbury’s were unable to help with its location. Unfortunately, our conservation planning hold no information regarding its precise location either.

We have looked through the council minutes, newspapers and periodicals that we have here and discovered that the plaque was requested by BBLHS in July 1983. By January 1984, the council had agreed to fund the plaque and Sainsbury’s had no objections to its being erected. However, we hold no further information which would shed light on where it was erected.

Does anyone know of its current location? Lucy Allen Archivist London Borough of Bromley Tel: 020 8461 7170

Square and various old buildings around the old town, including “A bit of Old Bromley”.

The catalogue was reprinted in 1929 by Strong & Sons, with 15 of the original scenes still available (at the same price!) but no new ones, although she had produced two new prints of Bromley High Street in 1924 and Church Road in 1925.

Both books of reproductions can be seen at Bromley Local Studies Library. Janet exhibited at the Royal Academy regularly from 1905 to 1933. She was in the news in 1944 when vibrations from anti-aircraft guns in a

neighbouring field to the cottage caused damage to the roof. The gunners were forced to move elsewhere to avoid further damage.

She died in April 1968, aged 94. Marie Louise Kerr, curator Bromley Museum

Michael Lewis is trying to find where motor racing driver Malcolm Campbell lodged in 1903 after leaving the family home in Chislehurst.

Campbell was born in Chislehurst and lived there until 1908. “Would you have any idea where the private hydro in Sundridge Park was?” asks Michael. “Sir Malcolm Campbell lodged there after an argument with his father at the age of 18. I can find no reference to it in Kelly’s.”

The only hydro he has located is the Bromley Mansion Hydro on Bromley Hill – was

there another at Sundridge? [email protected]

Where was the Sundridge Park hydro?



Letters and queries

Penge Home Guard in Parish Lane I am collating information on the 1914 Territorial Army Drill Hall in Parish Lane, Penge. When researching 1944 I came across accounts of the disbandment of the Home Guard, including the D (Penge) Company of the 57th County of London Home Guard (Catford) Battalion and the 101 Surrey Rocket Anti-Aircraft Battery (Anerley), which was formed from volunteers from D Company in 1942. This was the first reference I found on a Penge Home Guard.

The farewell speech from their commanding officer, Major VA Baker, at their stand-down ceremony took place at the Parish Lane Drill Hall. There was also a passing reference to their HQ being in Parish Lane. I subsequently found a few brief references to the Penge company. Does anyone have information on: No. 7 Company (Penge) Home Guard; East Dulwich Local Defence Volunteers; 8th County of London Home Guard (East Dulwich) Battalion and D (Penge) Company, 57th County of London Home Guard (Catford) Battalion.

No. 7 Company in 1940 and D Company in 1941 were commanded by Captain PF Weaver, MC, DCM. I suspect that No. 7 Company was part of the 18th East Dulwich Battalion and was transferred to the 57th Battalion on its formation on 1 April 1941.

The 57th was formed as an offshoot of the 18th Battalion. I have tried five different borough local study centres, the National and Metropolitan Archives and the Department of Defence without success. There seems to be very little information preserved on the Home Guard.

Was the Penge Home Guard HQ in the Parish Lane Drill Hall and between what dates? If so, I would like as much information relating to its use as possible.

Peter Holliday email: [email protected]

Bishop Wilcocks’s lead box

Several people have come forward with information about the large lead box in Bromley Civic Centre that has intrigued Mike Cronin (June Bromleag).

Bromley’s principal conservation officer Robert Buckley understands the box was a water tank moved to its current location, an enclosed garden in the civic centre, from elsewhere in the grounds. Bromley historian, ELS Horsburgh refers to it, and includes a picture of a near-identical one, which was in the grounds of Freelands, off Plaistow Lane, in his history of Bromley. The Freelands Road water tank is now in the Victoria & Albert Museum

The tank dates from the time of Bishop Joseph Wilcocks in 1732. Horsburgh says of him: “His reparation of the buildings [Bromley Palace] and improvements of the garden and grounds, were executed with no small cost and elegance.”



Letters and queries

Cycle shop bombed out again and again Information on the bombing of shops in London Road, Bromley (pictured in June Bromleag), has come from 91-year-old Mr Heather.

He lived near to Hunts [the shop pictured] at the time. His father ran a motor bike and cycle shop, HF Heather, originally in the parade between Park End and Highland Road. It was built in 1911 and included the Laurel beerhouse (no spirits) and Blakes nursery.

The area was flattened in the German bombing of 16 April 1941 and HF Heather moved to the block near Hunts, only to be bombed again in 1944 at which point he moved to a shop in the parade opposite. It is now Kwik-Fit. Mr Heather is very keen to find a picture of his father’s original shop, or at least the parade, but has not yet been successful.

Please let the editor know if you have a pre-war picture of Heather’s original shop.

An explanation of the words “Josephus Roffen” on the front of the box was given by Laurie Mack: “For readers not familiar with bishops’ names, Roffen is the abbreviation for Roffensis, ie Rochester; bishops are formally known by their first name and the place-name abbreviation.”

I have 38 local newspapers (many incomplete) which I found when clearing out a relative’s home.

They are from Sydenham, Forest Hill and Penge Gazette and Borough News, The Kentish Mercury and The Kentish Independent – 16 from 1950, six from 1951, three from 1954, three from 1964, eight from 1965 and two from 1966. If anyone would like them, please let me know. I would like to find a new home for them if possible. Susan Pittman email [email protected] or via the editor

Old newspapers need a new home

I am trying to find out anything I can about the prisoners of war held at the Bromley camp who stayed on after the war. I am a journalist and was asked by an acquaintance whether I could help track down his German father’s family in Germany. The father has been dead a number of years, but was still in the UK by at least 1948, even 1949, which is when I understand the last prisoners left for Germany. If there is anything in the local archives about how the prisoners lived, where they worked and so on, I should be extremely pleased to know. They obviously had a fair amount of freedom! Penny Jackson [email protected]

German prisoners of war in Bromley




A variety of queries come to BBLHS via the website. We try to direct the

writer to a source or person who can help. Two of them, which are of interest to a wider audience and throw new light on Bromley’s history, are included below. You may be able to and add more information. In which

case please go onto the website or reply via the editor.

Dr Hedley Malloch, chair of the Iron Memorial Fund, wrote: “I am trying to write the history of a group of 11 First World War soldiers trapped behind German lines on the retreat to the Marne in the summer of 1914. They were taken in by a French village called Iron, and sheltered for five months before being captured by the Germans and executed at Guise on 25 February 1915.

“One of these soldiers, John Stent, lived at 86a High Street, Bromley. He was aged 21 and a Lance Corporal in the 15th (The King’s) Hussars. In the 1901 census his father, John, is employed as a head gardener at Abbeyfield, Bickley, Kent. The family lived in The Lodge at Abbeyfield. The family who owned Abbeyfield appear to have been called Scott.

“John had a younger sister called Edith who worked as a teacher, possibly in Bromley. In early 1916 she married a local man called Harold Hill, who was killed in action later that year during the Battle of the Somme. Thus she loses both her younger brother and her husband on the Western Front.

“After the war she remarries, to a man called Fred Pryke who seems to have been a comrade in arms of her dead brother — they served in the same regiment, and the proximity of their numbers suggests that both John and Fred joined at about the same time.

“After the war she visited Iron to see the families who had looked after her brother. I have a photograph of her in Iron taken during this visit. While there she was given an important document relating to the tragedy, which I am anxious to trace. She and Fred seem to have moved to Norfolk, where she died some time in the 1930s.”

Does anyone have any information about the Stent or the Hill families and the death of John Stent?

Both John and Harold are thought to be commemorated on the Bromley War Memorial. [email protected]

The Stent family, Iron and executions

Letters and queries



Terry Sheppard of the Rothley Heritage Trust in Leicester contacted the website about wartime evacuees from Bromley. He has been compiling a transcript from the wartime section of the Admissions Register of the Rothley Primary School.

“On 18 July 1944 some 38 children are listed who came here from schools in Bromley and Bickley and who were billeted locally. Many of them stayed only a short time, others stayed until the end of the war. Looking at the list, the inevitable historical question arises. Why were 38 children sent north to Rothley on 18 July 1944? Were others sent elsewhere? Was it a reaction to V1 and V2 attacks?”

BBLHS member Gordon Dennington was able to tell Terry that Rothley was one among numerous places to receive evacuees from the London area during the V1 flying-bomb attacks in the summer of 1944. He added: “I was evacuated from SE London in the latter part of July 1944 to Dewsbury in Yorkshire. In this, the third major evacuation operation from London in the war, the outflow began on 5 July and was officially wound up on 7 September 1944. This was a few days after the main V1 bombardment ended but on the eve of the first V2 rocket to fall on London 8 September at Chiswick). V2s, however, did not prompt another evacuation scheme.

“By 7 September 307,000 mothers and children had left the London area under the Government scheme and a great many more under private arrangements. Many returned while attacks still continued. My notes show that a party under the official scheme left Bromley for the Leicester area on 11 July. I see they were admitted to school at Rothley on 18 July, fast work with a weekend intervening and the summer term almost over. Others appear to have gone to Sheffield”.

Bromley Local Studies holds the evacuation files from Orpington Urban District Council but not Bromley. Arthur Holden at Local Studies was unable to throw any light on why Bromley children went to Rothley, but he did look up the statistics for Bromley District. A list in the library of people killed or injured in Bromley during 1944 shows single figures up to May and then 71 in June and 107 in July. Council minutes from June-August show 8,673 individuals evacuated. This amounts to about 19% of Bromley’s population. Only a very small proportion went to Rothley.

He has also found a school log book for Raglan Road School showing the preparations for evacuation of children to other towns in Leicestershire shortly after a flying bomb hit the school in the early hours of the morning, destroying five classrooms and a storeroom. A list of refugees is available from the editor or from [email protected]. Terry Sheppard can be contacted at [email protected]

Child refugees from Bromley in 1944

Letters and queries


Subscription Rates

Yearly subscription from 1 January

Individual £10.50; couple £12. Senior citizens pay a reduced rate of £8 per person or £10 for a couple.

Members joining after 30 June pay half rates.

Membership Secretary 020 8467 3842

History is continually being made and at the same time destroyed, buildings are altered or demolished, memories fade and people pass

away, records get destroyed or thrown in the bin.

BBLHS was formed in 1974 so that those with an interest in the history of any part of the borough could meet to exchange information and

learn more about Bromley’s history.

We aim, in co-operation with the local history library, museums and other relevant organisations, to make sure at least some of this history

is preserved for future generations.

We hold regular meetings and produce a newsletter and occasional publications where members can publish their research.

The society covers all those areas that are within the present day London Borough of Bromley and includes : -

Anerley - Beckenham - Bickley -Biggin Hill - Bromley - Chelsfield - Chislehurst - Coney Hall - Cudham - Downe - Farnborough -

Green Street Green -Hayes - Keston - Leaves Green - Mottingham - Orpington - Penge - Petts Wood - St. Mary Cray - St. Paul’s Cray

- Shortlands - Sundridge Park - West Wickham.

www.bblhs.org.uk

Registered Charity No 273963

Bromley Local History Society

http://www.bblhs.org.uk