Come together, to admire the spectacular golden bloom of broom in springtime in Bromley! Gather your friends and family, dress in green and yellow, and be part of this joyful revival of Bromley’s heritage.
We’ll see you there!
Here’s some pictures from previous years (Thanks to Your Bromley for the photos)!
Development of the old Civic Centre – now to be called Bishop’s Place.
Details of the proposals can be seen on the planning application: 25/05307/FPA
The consultation deadline has officially passed but not to worry – there’s still plenty of time to make comments before it is considered by Bromley Council.
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On Sunday the 1st February, the Friends of Bromley Town Parks and Gardens, held a traditional well dressing and blessing. Thanks to Father Saju from St Josephs RC church for conducting the blessing, the service and talk about the well. Despite the rain, 50 people turned out to mark the occasion!
St Blaise was a 4th-century Armenian bishop and martyr, celebrated as the patron saint of throat illnesses, wool combers, and wild animals. His most famous miracle was saving a child with a fish-bone caught in his throat.
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Update: Thank you to everyone whose objections meant that this lovely shop front, our piece of heritage has been saved! The application has been refused.
Continue readingThe council has announced that they have accepted an offer from a developer for the freehold of the Churchill Theatre ‘site’. They state that this secures the future of the Theatre for the town
The site was left in covenant to the Council by Emily Dowling, which limits the uses of the sites to those that would improve the people of Bromley. Here is a more detailed explanation. 1901: https://www.bromleycchurchill-theatre-what-is-the-future-how-is-it-affected-by-the-terms-of-the-lands-endowment
Continue readingThe proposals were approved. One of the major problems we had with the campaign was the approx 100 supportive comments lodged on the proposals after the first consultation. Most of these were because the authors thought that this proposal would help the local ‘housing crisis’. Unfortunately, it will not.
It will not help local housing need; even the few “affordable” ones will be at 80% of market rates, pricing them beyond local people’s pockets – to be precise this is requiring an income of £51K and costing £1196 a month*.
Continue readingThe public meeting was well-supported and very constructive, but the committee it elected folded a few weeks later. There is still a group on Facebook to continue in attempts to save the building, but only the facade is in the Conservation Area. The rest of the building falls in one of the council ‘Opportunity Sites‘ along with the Hill car park and the Telephone Exchange building – when this site comes forward and is marketed to developers (for high-rise housing), it will be difficult to prevent demolition.
Continue readingWe are very proud that our Chair, Tony Banfield, was one of ten recipients of the Mayor’s award (for contributions in the voluntary sector). Tony has been pivotal in saving our historical buildings and green space in the town centre, in founding the Heart of Bromley Residents Association (HOBRA) in the 1980s, then the Bromley Civic Society in 2007 as part of the national Civic Voice movement.
Continue readingIn May we were contacted by a friend-of-a-friend in the South of France, about a rather stylish antique table. When they bought it, and got it home, they found a note inside:
UPDATE! As of today, 7th March 2023, the developers have withdrawn the current application. This is great news. We will keep an eye on the site though.
PREVIOUSLY we said…
Continue readingThe Council is currently consulting on the Bromley Town Centre Supplementary Planning Document (SPD) which will govern how large and where future buildings will be, in the town centre. It will provide better control of the development (that affects the character and appearance of the town) by providing detailed guidance – in fifteen Guidance Notes and 8 Character Areas/Sub-Areas. The SPD is a dense document and long read (as it needs to be) but there’s 4 areas we would like you to comment on:
Make your comments – not forgetting to cc us at : chair@bromleycivicsociety.org.uk
* by email to: ldf@bromley.gov.uk;
* in writing to: Head of Planning Policy and Strategy, London Borough of Bromley, Civic Centre, Stockwell Close, Bromley BR1 3UH; or
* via bromley council’s survey monkey link (see our post here on how you might want to fill this in)
The council is consulting on how new buildings should appear, by creating an Urban Planning Guide for architects. Most of this document is good, there are only… the illustrations. These are nearly all cheap, ugly, and very undesirable. Including these will make it very hard to object to schemes like the brutalist-car-park design for Churchill Quarter, because they look just like what the council has used as best-example illustrations!
We would like to see these examples removed and replaced:
It is late to object (as the author is not a planner and has a job to earn a living) but you can still write to ldf@bromley.gov.uk. Please cc your email to us at chair@bromleycivicsociety.org.uk, and to the town centre councillors at btcouncillors@bromleylibdems.org.uk. You can write to Head of Planning Policy and Strategy, London Borough of Bromley, Civic Centre, Stockwell Close, Bromley BR1 3UH.
In Bromley, the council has policies designed to stop ‘Protected Views’ from being destroyed by developers. In practise, this is not always the case. Two protected views that are on the line with current planning proposals:
Continue readingThe Carnegie Library replaced Neelgharies house, bequethed to the council by Emily Dowling, second wife of George Sparkes. She had required the site to be used to benefit and better the townspeople. The generous philanthropist, Andrew Carnegie, provided funds to construct a purpose-built library on the site, provideing a valuable service (libraries were not normally free, and were usually provided by book shops). This survived until the council demolished it in 1969 for a new Central Library (after finding they could not build their own offices there), opened by Prince Charles (now King Charles III) in 1972.
Bromley Gloss (in 2026) writes: Carnegie Public Library; in the Edwardian era it was pride of the town. Demolished in 1969. It had been donated by one of the greatest industrialists and philanthropists of his era, Andrew Carnegie. A significant number of Carnegie library buildings are still standing in Britain today. Many continue to be used for their original purpose, though a number of them have been repurposed, intact. Many that survive have been given listed status which continues to help protect them from short sited demolition as happened in Bromley Town. Of the approx. 660 built, 437 remain standing and are rIghtly deeply cherished by their local communities. Many of the surviving libraries have dedicated “Friends of” groups that raise funds for repairs, host community events, and lobby for the buildings’ preservation. Bromley’s Carneigue Library was not given this chance once conservation-skeptic town planners and developers set their sites on it.
Bromley Parish Church dates from the around the 1090s or 1110sAD when the Bishop of Rochester decided that the parish should worship in their own building rather than the chapel of St Blaise within the Bishops Palace. Our page on the building is here and the church has a page on its history here
However, all the church apart from the tower was destroyed in a German bombing raid, on the 16th April 1941. Church House, St Marks Church, and the Dunns store in Market Square, were among the buildings that were also destroyed that night.
On rebuilding the church, the architect included masonary from the medieval church within the walls, and two Green men can be found.
(1) enter via the car park entrance nearest Primark. Go around to the end wall of the church, and it is about 10 foot up on the right of the window.
(2) continue round to the back of the building, and the second one is above the first doorway:
Green men were quite a popular church decoration in the medieval era, and many churches have them. They were a folklore symbol that combined pre-christian fertility symbols with the Christian themes of resurrection and rebirth at Easter. They also expressed the Medieval sense of humour. It’s also a popular pub name, and there are Jack in the Green festivals held in some towns, along the lines of the Broom Day here in Bromley. There’s a page about them here, from Historic UK, that also says that the stone masons might have been hedging their bets!
Look at this building and you can see the charming villa it once was. One of the string of villas built along the High Street when the railway came in 1858.
This building is proposed to become a high rise block with complete demolition.
Saturday 3rd May.
Bromley (formerly ‘Broomleag’) gets its name from the profusion of broom that flowered on Martin’s Hill. The broom had all but disappeared by the 1980’s but it has revived and in recent years there has been a spectacular display of yellow flowers across the hillside.
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This beautiful Art Deco building is thought to have been built in 1885, when it is recorded as the shop for H.J. Luker, a ‘Silk Mercer’.
Happily, the 2024 planning application to turn this into a plain block of flats with a modern frontage was refused.
It has a distinctive Egyptian-inspired classical frontage, which is a much-valued part of the Conservation Area it is in.
In the Edwardian era the store was the Bromley outlet of The International Tea Stores Ltd., (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Tea_Co._Stores) only a few years after Hudson Kearley and Gilbert Augustus founded the company to sell tea direct to consumers instead of through wholesalers.
This building is well-remembered for being Zodiac Toys, a fondly regarded chain of 90 stores, mostly in South London. This shop also sold Prams. Before it was Zodiac Toys, it was Sidney Ross Toys & Pram shop and Youngsters Toys.
“I have fond memories of being taken to Zodiac.” (Matt Perrin in Bromley Gloss)
“Yep, Back in the mid 80’s I used to buy an outfit for my action man every week for 2 quid. Cosy days.”
“It used to be one of my favourite shops as a child, but never got to go in much. I got a a pair of roller boots from there. The blue and yellow ones with the zig zag down the sides. I was most upset when it closed.”
Zodiac toys was formed when Maynards confectionary decided to diversity in the 1970s due to their concerns about being dependent on the confectionary market. They launched their new brand with over 800 “keenly priced lines” in their self-service stores.
In the 2000s the building housed Calligulette, a fanciful Mediterranean restaurant that painted a lovely classical mural on their wall that faces onto the slip into Walters Yard.
Browse our old photos, in
