Bromley South
Post to the north Bromley North
Post to the south Hayes
Post to the west Shortlands
Thames Tributary Ravensbourne. The Ravensbourne flows north and slightly eastwards through the area and is met by other tributaries roughly around the junction of Hayes Road and Westmoreland Road.
Aylesbury Road
Southhill Park Nursery. Horticultural business here in the 1890s
St. Mark’s Church of England Primary School. This was Aylesbury Road Board School built in 1889 and in use until 1938 as a boys' school. It appears to have been rebuilt and became Aylesbury Secondary School for Girls in the 1950s. It is now a primary school
Kitson’s Works. They made heating and cooling equipment for buildings.
Bromley Common
Cosmos House. This building, on the corner of Holmesdale Road, stood unfinished for many years. It dated from 1965- 7 by the Owen Luder Partnership. Described as ‘ruthlessly brutalist’. There are now new buildings on the site.
Cromwell Avenue
Was called Pieter's Lane.
17 Bromley Hospital. In 1869 a committee was formed through Dr Walter Thomas Beeby to establish a cottage hospital and money was raised. Two small cottages were bought here and it opened in 1869 with six beds. In 1875 the cottages were demolished and a new building erected. In 1886 a further extension was added and more followed and by 1911 there were 42 beds. In the Great War it was used to treat wounded Belgian soldiers. In 1928 it was renamed Bromley (Kent) and District Hospital by which time it had children’s’ wards, an operating theatre, X Ray and more. A nurses' home was built and opened in 1929 and other extensions continued including a new children’s wards and a massage department. The site was near the main road and many accidents were dealt with. By the late 1930s there were 96 beds. In the Second World War an extra ten beds were added to each ward to deal with air-raid casualties. In 1946 a Rehabilitation and Occupational Therapy Centre was opened. The Hospital joined the NHS in 1948. By 1957 the Hospital had 187 beds and was in a muddle of buildings – brick, wooden huts, old houses and sheds. By 1966 with 155 beds plans were made in completely rebuild as a small district general hospital with 400 beds but this plan failed. By 1990 it was known as Bromley Hospital, an acute hospital with 170 beds, including 10 day care beds. It closed in 2003. The site was sold to Barratt Homes, who demolished it and built housing.
Foresters House. Office block for the Foresters Friendly Society. This is on the site of the Masonic Hall.
Masonic Hall. This dated from at least the Great War and was on the site of South Hill House. It now appears to have been replaced. The Foresters office block is now on the site
Masonic Hall V.A.D. Hospital. This was a military convalescent hospital. The Hall had been promised to the Red Cross and was to have been the site of a Masonic gathering but became a hospital in 1914. Overnight it had two wards with 47 beds and an operating theatre. By 1917 it was affiliated to the Brook War Hospital and had 52 beds for servicemen. It closed in 1919.
South Hill House. In the late 19th this was the home of William Willis who developed Platinotype process for photography. Some of the research was carried out in a garden building on this site.
Elmfield Road
The road is now almost entirely large office blocks.
25 Telephone House. 12 storey block built 1967
26 Bank of America House. 10 storey block
27 Bromley Conservative Club
28 Unicorn House. 9 storey block
Bromley High School. This was founded here in 1883 and was on a number of sites. It was the thirteenth foundation of the Girls Public Day School Trust. It moved away from this area in 1981.
Ethelbert Road
Bromley Town Church. This building was originally the Labour Exchange. It appears to be an evangelical church.
The Salvation Army. The Light Cafe. Bromley Temple
Fletchers Close
Sheltered housing managed by Moat HA
Glanville Road
Scout hut. Third Bromley Scout Group. This is one of the longest existing scout troops in Bromley.
Bromley Wendover Tennis Club. The club was founded in 1906 and has been on its present site since 1907.
Hayes Lane
Ravensbourne School. This was built as Bromley County Grammar Schools for Boys and Girls, later Bromley Grammar Schools, and opened in 1911. This site was the boys' school. Plans for the building were by H. P. Burke Downing, and were exhibited at the Royal Society as an example of the ideal school design and construction. It was extended in 1933, using the original architect and keeping to the original design. The old gymnasium was converted into the War Memorial Library as a “Memorial of the boys in the School who fell in the war.” The school was controlled by Kent Education Committee until 1965. In the late 1960s it was merged with the nearby Raglan Road school to form Ravensbourne Schools. In 1988 it was reopened as a new co-educational comprehensive school here and a programme of building works began. In 2003, a new dedicated sixth form block was created, the drama studios expanded and the War Memorial Library refurbished in the original style. It has since become an academy’,
Caretaker’s House. Rough- cast building of 1933
High Street
Bromley South Station. Built in 1858 this lies between Bickley and Shortlands on South Eastern Trains. The Mid-Kent Railway opened it as ‘Bromley’ or ‘Bromley Common’ on land used to provide gravel for road repair and so. The Company paid compensation to the parish and the station was built after the opening of the line via St. Mary Cray to Beckenham.. In 1861 The London, Chatham and Dover Company secured a monopoly over the line to Faversham and Dover by this route. Eventually the number of lines had to be doubled to accommodate increased rail traffic, and the original station was rebuilt and in 1893 it was rebuilt built by South Eastern Railway as a rival to the London Brighton and South Coast Railway station at Shortlands. In 1899 it was renamed ‘Bromley South’. In 1987 uit was refurbished with new stairs and a plaque commemorates this.
A stream runs under the eastern end of the platform.
Goods yard, a slope ran down to it. It closed in 1964.
35 Rising Sun. old pub, rebuilt. Gone.
44 The Gaumont Cinema. This was built on the site of a music college and a health centre designed by William E. Trent. It opened in 1936. The auditorium was designed with an undersea effect like the inside of a gigantic shell and the colour scheme was in graded mother of pearl tints. It resembled the shape of the auditorium of Radio City in, New York. It had a fully equipped stage, a 4Manual/10Rank Compton organ and a cafe. Outside was a corner flat topped tower with a neon vertical sign spelling out the cinema's name in neon on both sides but it was closed by the Rank Organisation in 1961, and converted into a department store.
44 Debenhams. This was in the converted Gaumont cinema they later moved to The Glades
44 Habitat. This is on the site of the entrance to the Gaumont cinema.
53-57 Poundland. This was previously Woolworths which closed in 2008. It appears to once have been the site of a house used as the Conservative Club.
64 TKMax. This is on the site of Harrison Gibson’s furniture store extension. Built as a furniture store in 1960 by Forrest & Barber. It later became the Army and Navy store. The original building was burnt down in 1968 and rebuilt.
64 TKMax. This is on the site of the Army & Navy store built by Elsom, Pack and Roberts. Army and Navy bought the Bromley stores of Harrison Gibson Ltd, in 1968. The building on the High Street had been almost completely burnt out and a new store was rebuilt here and opened in 1970. It was connected to the older Rings Road store by a walkway over the High Street. Army & Navy Stores Ltd was bought by House of Fraser in 1973 who no longer trade from the Bromley store
75 The Mall. This was built 1967-9 by the Owen Luder Partnership. It is now owned by Henry Boot Developments. The site was once partly a British Gas showroom. It was opened in 1970 on part of the Bromley High School site
75 Kentucky Fried Chicken. This was once a British Gas showroom,
Police station. Built by John Laing in 2003;
Kentish Way
Opened 1985 to bypass the town centre.
Masons Hill
Masons Hill. This name dates from at least the mid 6th and is probably a family name. There were once gravel pits here and in the 16th a fair ground at Whitson. In the 17th a farm here was called Stubarfields and later this was Sparke's or Clarke's Cottages demolished in 1877. There was also a pond here and cottages along the edge of what had been the gravel pit.
1 Railway Signal pub. This has been demolished and is now the site of the police station, with an address in the High Street. The pub dated from at least the 1870s.
2 Bromley Christian Centre Church. Evangelical church
1 Crown Buildings. 1950s office block in general use. Originally used by Social Security.
6 Two Brewers pub. This may at one time have been known as the Railway Tavern. It is now gone and demolished.
Charity school. In 1716, a group of local people signed a subscription list to set up and run a school. The following year, they opened in what was then known as ‘The Gravel Pits”. In 1814 a new school was built on the site as a National School using the monitorial system developed by Andrew Bell. Within 40 years, the condition of the building was such that there seemed to be no point in repairing it in addition land here was wanted by the railway. . It was decided in 1854 to build a new and larger school and this was to be in College Road.
8 St. Mark's School. This was designed in 1910 by the C.H.B. Quennell as a Church of England elementary school for girls and infants. It is in red brick with octagonal lead cupola. The infants' school had a baby’s room and two other classrooms. The girls’ school had four classrooms. Each school had an assembly hall in the centre. The building ceased to be a school in 1984 and has subsequently been used as offices and now the Councils Youth Offending Team
Ravenscroft. This is first mentioned as a mansion house in the mid 16th and probably rebuilt around 1660. It included an Elizabethan fireplace. It became a school and later was a hotel in the 1950s. It was demolished in 1965
Bristol Street Motors
14 Tiger’s Head. In the late 17th a house stood here in Tygor Grove and by 1729 there was certainly a pub of this name here. It was rebuilt in the early 20th and is now called the Crown and Pepper.
Tiger Lane. This was adjacent to the pub but was taken into the grounds of the hospital
William Morris Hall. This housed Bromley Labour Club but was demolished for hospital expansion.
34 Bertha James Day Centre. Age Concern centre named after a former Mayor of Bromley
40 Phoenix Children’s Resource Centre. With community based paediatricians.
44 Rutland House. Used by Bromley Mencap
45 Waitrose, vast
113 Lorna Wing Centre for Autism. National Autistic Centre
143 Bricklayers Arms. Shepherd Neame pub with a relationship with the local football club.
153-155 Linden House. Offices and part use by Oxleas Mental Health Trust.
Maternity Hospital. This was an annexe to Bromley Hospital
Napier Road
In the 19th this was Palace Lane.
1 Palace Tavern. Closed and in other use. It claimed to be an old coaching inn.
Lola Cars Ltd. Racing car business, Lola, began in premises in this road
New Farm Avenue
Site of New Farm which stood close to what is now Cameron Road. This road appears to cover the rear of the site – and presumably the farmyard.
Prospect Place
15 Frank Rhodes Centre. Scout headquarters
34 Eureka Lodge. This building became the Eureka Garage and later a factory. In the 1920s a private bus company ran from here which had been set up to rival Tillings by Walter Glen.
Eureka Engineering Company. They made hydraulic compressors here 1947s- 1986s. The site is now housing.
Ravensbourne Road,
46 Friends Meeting House. This dates from the early 1960 and is architecturally unassuming, and won a Civic Trust Award in 1962.
Simpson’s Place. This was on the site now used by Friends Meeting House. It was a moated mansion although there is now no sign of the moat. There was a building here in the l4th but it was a ruin by the early 19th. In the 14th the site belonged to the De Banquel family and passed to the Clark family who later built it as a fortified manor house. John Simpson acquired it in the early Tudor period but by 1796 it was a farmhouse. It was demolished around 1870 and the surrounding roads date from 1873
Ringers Road
Jeremiah Ringer was a tenant of Simpson’s Place in the late 18th and the road covers part of what would have been the grounds. He apparently filled in the moat
Harrison Gibson store extension. This was accessible by footbridge from their main building but the footbridge has since been removed by TKMax. The store extension was eventually demolished and new apartment blocks built.
Kings Dialysis Unit. Opened in 2006.
Simpsons Road
This road is named for the manor house which once stood nearby. It provides a service road to a multi storey car park, and the rear of houses and shops. In the past it ran from the high street and was lined with houses.
Car park. Multi storey car park dating from the 1960s. Likely to be replaced with housing development
St Marks Road
St Mark’s Church. In 1884 a iron church was erected in what is now St Mark’s Road, Masons Hill, on a site lent by Eley Soames, and was used until 1898
Bromley Labour Club. This is called the H.G.Wells Centre. The site in St Mark’s Road was an iron church which was replaced by a new Church Hall on the same site in 1930, built with a legacy of Miss Alice Soames, who died in 1928. It was sold in 1976. It has recently been sold to Waitrose.
Vale Cottages
These are now under Waitrose
Westmoreland Place
23 Richmal Crompton. Wetherspoons pub, named for the local authoress of the ‘Just William’ books.
Churchill Court. Office block owned by an insurance company, named after their advertisement dog. It also has a series of restaurants and bars – one of which is, or was, Rumour Bar. The block was rebuilt from a pre-existing block into its present form.
Westmoreland Road
Ravensbourne River. This corner is at the junction of a number of rivulets. The Ravensbourne is joined here by the Bourne Water, which comes from Hayes Lane but has originated in the Coney Hall area of West Wickham. The Keston Stream, which rises at Keston and forms lakes in Holwood Park. A stream, which rose south of Toot’s Wood, between Broadoaks Way and Pickhurst Park, and come between Stone Road and Westmoreland Road and through the grounds of New Farm. There is also a rivulet from the lakes in Bromley Palace grounds
St Mark’s Church. In 1884 an iron church in St Mark’s Road, Masons Hill was used but in 1897 a site in Westmoreland Road was purchased. A church here was consecrated in 1898 designed by Evelyn Hellicar. The tower was but in 1903 A War Memorial was installed n 1919 but was destroyed in 1941 bombing. Most of the church was destroyed in this raid and only the tower survived. It was rebuilt in 1953 designed by T. W. G. Grant and built by David Nye and Partners. The original foundations were reused, preserving the previous dimensions and shape. The War Memorial garden was replanted with rose trees, the main garden planted with flowering trees and bushes, and the lawns were returfed.
Sources
3rd Bromley Scouts. Web site
Bromley Wendover Tennis Club. Web site
Bygone Kent
Clunn. The Face of London
Emporis. Web site
Heritage Quaker. Web site
Johnson Matthey Technological Review. Web site
Kent Archaeological Review
London Railway Record
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Moat Housing. Web site
Nairn. Nairn’s London
Pevsner and Cherry. South London,
Pevsner. West Kent
Skyscraper. Web site
St.Marks Church. Web site
Walk around Bromley
35 Rising Sun. old pub, rebuilt. Gone.
44 The Gaumont Cinema. This was built on the site of a music college and a health centre designed by William E. Trent. It opened in 1936. The auditorium was designed with an undersea effect like the inside of a gigantic shell and the colour scheme was in graded mother of pearl tints. It resembled the shape of the auditorium of Radio City in, New York. It had a fully equipped stage, a 4Manual/10Rank Compton organ and a cafe. Outside was a corner flat topped tower with a neon vertical sign spelling out the cinema's name in neon on both sides but it was closed by the Rank Organisation in 1961, and converted into a department store.
44 Debenhams. This was in the converted Gaumont cinema they later moved to The Glades
44 Habitat. This is on the site of the entrance to the Gaumont cinema.
53-57 Poundland. This was previously Woolworths which closed in 2008. It appears to once have been the site of a house used as the Conservative Club.
64 TKMax. This is on the site of Harrison Gibson’s furniture store extension. Built as a furniture store in 1960 by Forrest & Barber. It later became the Army and Navy store. The original building was burnt down in 1968 and rebuilt.
64 TKMax. This is on the site of the Army & Navy store built by Elsom, Pack and Roberts. Army and Navy bought the Bromley stores of Harrison Gibson Ltd, in 1968. The building on the High Street had been almost completely burnt out and a new store was rebuilt here and opened in 1970. It was connected to the older Rings Road store by a walkway over the High Street. Army & Navy Stores Ltd was bought by House of Fraser in 1973 who no longer trade from the Bromley store
75 The Mall. This was built 1967-9 by the Owen Luder Partnership. It is now owned by Henry Boot Developments. The site was once partly a British Gas showroom. It was opened in 1970 on part of the Bromley High School site
75 Kentucky Fried Chicken. This was once a British Gas showroom,
Police station. Built by John Laing in 2003;
Kentish Way
Opened 1985 to bypass the town centre.
Masons Hill
Masons Hill. This name dates from at least the mid 6th and is probably a family name. There were once gravel pits here and in the 16th a fair ground at Whitson. In the 17th a farm here was called Stubarfields and later this was Sparke's or Clarke's Cottages demolished in 1877. There was also a pond here and cottages along the edge of what had been the gravel pit.
1 Railway Signal pub. This has been demolished and is now the site of the police station, with an address in the High Street. The pub dated from at least the 1870s.
2 Bromley Christian Centre Church. Evangelical church
1 Crown Buildings. 1950s office block in general use. Originally used by Social Security.
6 Two Brewers pub. This may at one time have been known as the Railway Tavern. It is now gone and demolished.
Charity school. In 1716, a group of local people signed a subscription list to set up and run a school. The following year, they opened in what was then known as ‘The Gravel Pits”. In 1814 a new school was built on the site as a National School using the monitorial system developed by Andrew Bell. Within 40 years, the condition of the building was such that there seemed to be no point in repairing it in addition land here was wanted by the railway. . It was decided in 1854 to build a new and larger school and this was to be in College Road.
8 St. Mark's School. This was designed in 1910 by the C.H.B. Quennell as a Church of England elementary school for girls and infants. It is in red brick with octagonal lead cupola. The infants' school had a baby’s room and two other classrooms. The girls’ school had four classrooms. Each school had an assembly hall in the centre. The building ceased to be a school in 1984 and has subsequently been used as offices and now the Councils Youth Offending Team
Ravenscroft. This is first mentioned as a mansion house in the mid 16th and probably rebuilt around 1660. It included an Elizabethan fireplace. It became a school and later was a hotel in the 1950s. It was demolished in 1965
Bristol Street Motors
14 Tiger’s Head. In the late 17th a house stood here in Tygor Grove and by 1729 there was certainly a pub of this name here. It was rebuilt in the early 20th and is now called the Crown and Pepper.
Tiger Lane. This was adjacent to the pub but was taken into the grounds of the hospital
William Morris Hall. This housed Bromley Labour Club but was demolished for hospital expansion.
34 Bertha James Day Centre. Age Concern centre named after a former Mayor of Bromley
40 Phoenix Children’s Resource Centre. With community based paediatricians.
44 Rutland House. Used by Bromley Mencap
45 Waitrose, vast
113 Lorna Wing Centre for Autism. National Autistic Centre
143 Bricklayers Arms. Shepherd Neame pub with a relationship with the local football club.
153-155 Linden House. Offices and part use by Oxleas Mental Health Trust.
Maternity Hospital. This was an annexe to Bromley Hospital
Napier Road
In the 19th this was Palace Lane.
1 Palace Tavern. Closed and in other use. It claimed to be an old coaching inn.
Lola Cars Ltd. Racing car business, Lola, began in premises in this road
New Farm Avenue
Site of New Farm which stood close to what is now Cameron Road. This road appears to cover the rear of the site – and presumably the farmyard.
Prospect Place
15 Frank Rhodes Centre. Scout headquarters
34 Eureka Lodge. This building became the Eureka Garage and later a factory. In the 1920s a private bus company ran from here which had been set up to rival Tillings by Walter Glen.
Eureka Engineering Company. They made hydraulic compressors here 1947s- 1986s. The site is now housing.
Ravensbourne Road,
46 Friends Meeting House. This dates from the early 1960 and is architecturally unassuming, and won a Civic Trust Award in 1962.
Simpson’s Place. This was on the site now used by Friends Meeting House. It was a moated mansion although there is now no sign of the moat. There was a building here in the l4th but it was a ruin by the early 19th. In the 14th the site belonged to the De Banquel family and passed to the Clark family who later built it as a fortified manor house. John Simpson acquired it in the early Tudor period but by 1796 it was a farmhouse. It was demolished around 1870 and the surrounding roads date from 1873
Ringers Road
Jeremiah Ringer was a tenant of Simpson’s Place in the late 18th and the road covers part of what would have been the grounds. He apparently filled in the moat
Harrison Gibson store extension. This was accessible by footbridge from their main building but the footbridge has since been removed by TKMax. The store extension was eventually demolished and new apartment blocks built.
Kings Dialysis Unit. Opened in 2006.
Simpsons Road
This road is named for the manor house which once stood nearby. It provides a service road to a multi storey car park, and the rear of houses and shops. In the past it ran from the high street and was lined with houses.
Car park. Multi storey car park dating from the 1960s. Likely to be replaced with housing development
St Marks Road
St Mark’s Church. In 1884 a iron church was erected in what is now St Mark’s Road, Masons Hill, on a site lent by Eley Soames, and was used until 1898
Bromley Labour Club. This is called the H.G.Wells Centre. The site in St Mark’s Road was an iron church which was replaced by a new Church Hall on the same site in 1930, built with a legacy of Miss Alice Soames, who died in 1928. It was sold in 1976. It has recently been sold to Waitrose.
Vale Cottages
These are now under Waitrose
Westmoreland Place
23 Richmal Crompton. Wetherspoons pub, named for the local authoress of the ‘Just William’ books.
Churchill Court. Office block owned by an insurance company, named after their advertisement dog. It also has a series of restaurants and bars – one of which is, or was, Rumour Bar. The block was rebuilt from a pre-existing block into its present form.
Westmoreland Road
Ravensbourne River. This corner is at the junction of a number of rivulets. The Ravensbourne is joined here by the Bourne Water, which comes from Hayes Lane but has originated in the Coney Hall area of West Wickham. The Keston Stream, which rises at Keston and forms lakes in Holwood Park. A stream, which rose south of Toot’s Wood, between Broadoaks Way and Pickhurst Park, and come between Stone Road and Westmoreland Road and through the grounds of New Farm. There is also a rivulet from the lakes in Bromley Palace grounds
St Mark’s Church. In 1884 an iron church in St Mark’s Road, Masons Hill was used but in 1897 a site in Westmoreland Road was purchased. A church here was consecrated in 1898 designed by Evelyn Hellicar. The tower was but in 1903 A War Memorial was installed n 1919 but was destroyed in 1941 bombing. Most of the church was destroyed in this raid and only the tower survived. It was rebuilt in 1953 designed by T. W. G. Grant and built by David Nye and Partners. The original foundations were reused, preserving the previous dimensions and shape. The War Memorial garden was replanted with rose trees, the main garden planted with flowering trees and bushes, and the lawns were returfed.
Sources
3rd Bromley Scouts. Web site
Bromley Wendover Tennis Club. Web site
Bygone Kent
Clunn. The Face of London
Emporis. Web site
Heritage Quaker. Web site
Johnson Matthey Technological Review. Web site
Kent Archaeological Review
London Railway Record
Lost Hospitals of London. Web site
Moat Housing. Web site
Nairn. Nairn’s London
Pevsner and Cherry. South London,
Pevsner. West Kent
Skyscraper. Web site
St.Marks Church. Web site
Walk around Bromley
Comments
My grandparents William and Edith Fenton bought no 16 New Farm Avenue when it was new in 1936. The site had previously been an apple orchard and we have two or three mature trees in our garden. During WW2 they built a 'air-raid shelter' at the far end of the garden. We lived there after my grandfather died in 1947 until January 1960.i think most of our neighbors were the original set of owners. In the 60s my younger brother married the girl who lived in number 1.