College Green, the K2 Telephone Kiosk (Box) and the National School.
Welcome to College Green. This location is a stop on the heritage and biodiversity trail around the historic parks in Bromley Town Centre. There is a page on College Slip and College green on the Bromley Civic Society site here, it talks about the locally famous seedsman who lived in the little cottage you can see, J.R.Pocock.
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The park was formerly a plant nursery, to supply food to the Clergy widows living in the (collegiate) Colleges.
In the Victorian era it supplied both vegetables and bedding plants to the town, and when it was closed in the 1980s, it had been the longest running plant nursery in London. The house on the alleyway is the Seedsman’s Cottage, where the gardener lived.
On the opposite side of the road, where the Methodist Church now is, was the Parish School, built in 1854. It was designed by the eminent architect James Piers St Aubyn, who also designed the romantic additions to Saint Michael’s Mount in Cornwall. It suffered sudden weekend demolition in 1980s as part of the Glades development, to thwart attempts to save the building. There’s a page on the school here.
Fun Fact
The local famous author, HG Wells, described the town’s education in his autobiography:
“Bromley was served by a National School… It was the mere foundation of an education…Even that … had been achieved against considerable resistance. There was a strong objection in those days to the use of public funds for the education of “other people’s children,” … [of the teachers] crudely trained mechanical grant earners of the contemporary National School … that my mother’s instinct was a sound one in sending us all to this antiquated middle-class establishment.”
The Phonebox is and iron-framed K2 model, designed by designed by Giles Gilbert Scott. Though this is ‘K2’, it is the oldest model found, as K1 was a concrete prototype that did not leave the headquarters.
All the stops in the Bromley Town Centre Parks Heritage & Biodiversity trail can be found on the page about it here.
The Friends page on this pocket-park is here.
To continue the Heritage Trail, cross the road and go down leafy North Street. At the end, go past the Railway Tavern and turn down East Street. In another 100 meters turn left up South Street, then right down Court Street. Cross the street diagonally and go down next to the car park, this emerges into Queens Gardens. Turn left here, and continue to the edge of the park by the crossing.
Browse our old photos, in 
from being dominated by tower blocks: Look here and email our ward councillors about:
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