Medieval Moat and Fish Ponds
Welcome to Bromley Palace Park and it’s historic features! This location is the second stop on the heritage and biodiversity trail around the historic parks in Bromley Town Centre.
This lake is the ‘Moat’ of the Bishops Palace, it originally encircled the Palace buildings. By the 1700s it was quite fragmented but there was still a string of fish ponds along the spring line – we know because they were itemised when the palace was sold in the 16th Century Commonwealth. Most high-ranking Lords and Ladies would have fish ponds conveniently close to their Manor houses, usually 3 or 4, or even 6 in some cases.
Fun Fact
When is a bird – or beaver – a fish?
Eating fish as often as faith-abiding Medieval households did, people got rather tired of it. Chefs would make it appear to be meat or fowl (but obviously it would still taste like fish!). In looking for alternatives, they were very inventive in their classification of ‘fish’… puffins, tiny baby rabbits and beavers (because of their fishy tails) were all fish; after all, they would not have needed to be on the Arc to survive Noah’s flood?.
There was 150 days a year that the Church calendar stipulated that no meat should be consumed, so fish was eaten on those days instead. The household accounts of the 14th Century Bishop of Coventry and Lichfield have survived. These show that the household ate more sea fish than fresh-water fish (despite them having to travel quite a way) but that he paid more for the fresh-water fish.
Pike (a native predatory fish) were sometimes given as rent, or gifts. They are recorded to have been kept in fishponds.
The whole of the Bromley Town Park Heritage and Biodiversity trail can be found here.
The Moat also has its own entry here in Bromley Civic Society’s page on this park, here.
To continue the Heritage Trail, carry on walking down the Carriage Drive.
Browse our old photos, in 
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