Did You Know?

It is first recorded in a charter of 862 as Bromleag and means 'woodland clearing where broom grows. The town was an important coaching stop on the way to Hastings from London.

The old Kent market town of Bromley became a major residential area following the growth of rail access to London after 1860. It is now also an important centre for shopping, entertainment, and business offices.

The biggest of the London boroughs, Bromley stretches from Crystal Palace in the west to the Cray valley in the east. It reaches out to the borders of Kent countryside in the south, where some of suburban London’s best attractions can be found.

Nearby is Darwin’s real home, Down House.  Living there from 1842 until his death in 1882, Down House has been preserved as it was when it was the Darwin family home, down to his and his wife’s recreated room.  You can also wander the gardens where Darwin formulated many of his evolutionary ideas and walk in the footsteps of one of history’s most famous scientists.

The foundations of modern London come from the Roman settlement here during the height of the empire, and there are still many ruins left from this time. Crofton Roman Villa was inhabited from 140 to 400 AD and was the center of a farm that stretched 500 acres. 

It also has the cultural distinctiveness of having its own Morris team, The Ravensbourne Morris Men. Founded in 1947. In the famous Monty Python Spam sketch Bromley was stated to be the location of the fictional Green Midget Café, where every item on the menu was composed of spam in varying degrees.

H. G. Wells, the famous author who wrote War of the Worlds' was born in Bromley in 1866. His father was the founder of the towns Cricket Club and the proprietor of a shop that sold cricket equipment.

Chislehurst caves.The caves are a series of intersecting man-made tunnels and caverns covering some 22 miles. Although they are called caves, they are entirely man-made and were dug and used as chalk and flint mines. The earliest recorded mention of the mines and lime-burning kilns above dates from a 9th-century Saxon charter and then not again until around 1232AD; they are believed to have been last worked in the 1830s.

The growth of the railway system turned the northern half of the borough into a dormitory for London, although most of the southern half remains open countryside. Subsequently, the town has grown to become one of the most important commercial and shopping centres in South East England.

It was in the county of Kent until 1965, when it was transferred to Greater London. Until 2000, when the necessity to include a county in an address was removed by the Royal Mail, it was proper to write “Bromley, Kent" on envelopes put in the post.

The London Borough Of Bromley is very large. Actually, it is the largest borough in London. It occupies an area of 153 square kilometres, which is approximately 59 square miles. The green belt comprises a large portion of this land.

One of the saddest events in the history of this part of London was the destruction by fire in 1936 of the Crystal Palace, a huge steel-and-glass exhibition hall set in a park at Penge. The building had been relocated here in 1854 from its original site in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition in 1851.