Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 2/2 (Old Homeopathy Hospital)

Posted on 17 July 2024 by campaignr

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Queens Gardens – Old Homeopathy hospital

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) in Queen’s Gardens.

This park used to carry on, under where the Glades are now, all the way to Market Square (so the Cedar trees used to be central).

Where the flats are to the east, used to be the Homeopathic Hospital. Bromley was a centre for Homeopathy medicine from its early days in the 1800s, originally in the former White Hart Inn on the high street (unfortunately this fine coaching inn was demolished for an Owen Luder building in the 1970s).

Fun Fact

Josiah Oldfield (there’s an Oldfield road named after him) founded the large Lady Margaret homeopathic hospital on London Road.  He promoted the Fruitarian diet and was very evangelical about both the diet and abstinence from alcoholic drinks.  

Queens Gardens

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The White Hart was a historic coaching Inn on the High Street; at various times it hosted the early local fire-engines, various Magistrate court hearings, a local library, and a homeopathic medicine practise.

The whole of the Bromley Town Park Heritage and Biodiversity trail can be found here.

There is more information on Queens Gardens at the entry on this park in the Bromley Civic Society site, here.

To continue the Heritage Trail, walk through the Glades shopping centre, then in Market Square, turn left down the High Street until you reach the Churchill Theatre, just past there turn under the arch into Library Gardens.

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Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 2/1 (Queens Gardens former White Hart Field)

Posted on 16 July 2024 by campaignr

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Queens Gardens – Former White Hart Field

Welcome to Bromley Palace Park and it’s historic features! This location is the first stop on the heritage and biodiversity trail (around the historic parks in Bromley Town Centre) for Queens Gardens.

The land was a field, gifted to the people of Bromley, by the Lord of the Manor, in the year of Queen Victoria’s Diamond Jubilee, on condition that it was an ornamental garden. Before that, it had been known as White Hart Field, and was one of the early places where cricket was played.

Fun Fact

HG Wells would never have become a famous author, and written The War of The Worlds, if he hadn’t broken his leg here while his father played cricket. 

drawing of a Victorian gentleman in a hat, only the face is detailed.

Joseph Wells, professional cricketer and HG Wells father

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The White Hart was a historic coaching Inn on the High Street; at various times it hosted the early local fire-engines, various Magistrate court hearings, a local library, and a homeopathic medicine practise.

Gate posts from Quernmore School

The fine set of gates used to be at the entrance to the park from Market Square – before the Glades were built over that part of the park. However, originally they had been bought at auction to grace the entrance to Quernmore House, before it became Quernmore School, and then Parish Primary School. This is why they are not large enough to close in the middle!

There is more information on Queens Gardens at the entry on this park in the Bromley Civic Society site, here.

To continue the Heritage Trail, walk towards the Glades shopping centre and stop by the large Cedar tree next to the entrance.

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Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 1/3 (Moat)

Posted on 15 July 2024 by campaignr

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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.

very weedy small lake with a chest-high fountain
The moat with its algae/blanket-weed bloom in July 2023. Fountain at about 2/3 proper height.
The Moat in the 1960s (Stockwell College grounds), with the 1760 stones of St Blaise’s well in the foreground.

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?

a medieval pen-and-ink drawing of a beaver with a fish for a tail

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.

Colourisation of a 1908 postcard of the Moat with the Boathouse (the ruins are behind a fallen tree) and the Palace.

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.

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Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 1/2 (The Fernery)

Posted on 15 July 2024 by campaignr

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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.

The Fernery and Victorian Fern Collecting

The Fernery is one of the four Grade 2 listed features in the park. When Coles-Child bought the title of ‘Lord Of The Manor’ of Bromley from the Diocese of Rochester, he set about creating a garden worthy of his new position.

a rockery with school buildings behind
The fernery in the 1990s with Stockwell College buildings behind where there is a car park nowadays. This is before the bamboo and self-seeded yew trees overshadowed the rocks.

Fun Fact

Pteridomania!

little fern

Do you think this is the study of flying dinosaurs… or the collection of ferns?
Sadly, it’s not as interesting as flying dinosaurs / pterosaurs, it’s the Victorian obsession of collecting ferns.
When this fernery was built, there was a fashion for collecting ferns – ‘pteridomania’ (the fern craze). This term was coined by Charles Kingsley, clergyman, naturalist (and later author of The Water Babies). Wealthy garden owners would collect ferns plants, native and from their travels,, and then wanted suitable structures to show their collection off – such as the Fernery and Cascade in this park.

An Order for ‘Waterfalls and ferneries’

Coles-Child bought two fashionable ‘Pulhamite’ features, later described in their catalogue as ‘Waterfalls and ferneries’. This historic structure is their fernery, complete with little scoops in, for planting the ferns. The structure was built from bricks, and a skilled plasterer would apply the ‘Pulhamite’ over it, making it closely resemble real rocks. Pulhamite was an early form of concrete, made to their own recipe, by James Pulham & sons (which was lost on the death of the proprietors). They sent the craftsmen to Derbyshire to look at Millstone Grit outcrops so they could imitate the rocks realistically. Even Buckingham Palace had a couple of pulhamite installations!

honey-suckle-like crimson flower
Carolina Sweet Bush, a rare flowering bush that has survived from the original historic planting.

English Heritage officially listed the features were Grade II listed in 2007. The reasons for listing were: It is a good and little-altered example of the artificial rockwork (Pulhamite) produced in the c19th by James Pulham and Son
It sits within a little-altered mid-c19th landscape setting, at the end of a lake and amidst trees.

Look behind the brick circle marking St Blaise’s well, where the path goes around the north of the lake.

Raising the crown of the Yew trees allowed more light into the Fernery in 2023.

The whole of the Bromley Town Park Heritage and Biodiversity trail can be found here.

This Fernery also has its own entry here in Bromley Civic Society’s page on this park, here.

To continue the Heritage Trail, retrace your footsteps back to the carriage drive and follow it around the Moat.

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Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 1/1 (St Blaises Well)

Posted on 14 July 2024 by campaignr

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St Blaise’s well & Chalybeate spring

Welcome to Bromley Palace Park and it’s historic features! This location is the first stop on the heritage and biodiversity trail around the historic parks in Bromley Town Centre.

picture of circular low fountain with large lake behind, reflection of tall triangular tree in it
St Blaise’s well with the Moat and the Swamp Cyprus behind it, in 2017.

The well also has it’s own page (here) on Bromley Civic Society’s page on The Bromley Palace Park, here.

In the medieval era, there had been an Oratory at St Blaise’s well in Bromley, and this spring was rediscovered in 1754.  Wool was an important product for the area around Bromley, and through Kent, in the medieval ear, so St Blaise was a popular saint. In those days, they also liked a gruesome martyrdom. The well was supposed to have curative properties, and would help you get better from anything from fever to tummy ache. It even became a pilgrimage destination. However, in the reformation, Bishops of Rochester who lived here, such as Bishop Nicolas Ridley, did not indulge such superstitions, and the location of the well was lost and forgotten.

Fun Fact

Go to St Blaises, so you do less penance!

drawing of hexagonal roof on pillars over well

In the medieval era there had been an oratory (a chapel) at St Blaise’s Well in Bromley.  People who had confessed sins (or been found out about them) could reduce the ‘penance’ (punishment) by saying their prayers at this oratory.

An example was Thomas Ferby, who was excommunicated in 1456, after a ‘clandestine’ (secret) marriage in St. Paul’s Cray Church. He had to present a wax taper of a pound weight at St Blaise’s oratory.

After the discovery, the Bishop Wilcox roofed the well with a thatch roof supported by 6 pillars, which looked fashionably rustic. In 1887 this roof was destroyed in a snow storm, and replaced by a tile one by Mr Coles Child. The stone basin did survive, until it was removed by one of the council officers and the circular brick feature put in, instead.

an pensive looking husband and wife at table
1756 retired surgeon Thomas Reynolds

A retired local doctor analysed the spring waters upon it’s rediscovery in the Georgian era. Thomas Reynolds had been journeying down to Tunbridge Wells to take the Chalybeate water there, and was delighted to find a more convenient source, he said that he “has been many years been obliged to drink the waters of Tunbridge, to mitigate the symptoms a confirmed inveterate irregular gout, which were very various and very severe.” He published his analysis of the waters about 2 years later.

The famous 17th-century English physician, Thomas Sydenham, penned the verse:

These waters youth in age renew

Strength to weak and sickly add

Give the pale cheek a rosy hue

And cheerful spirits to the sad.

diagram of a hill with a perched water table in it
Diagram of the perched water table under Bromley town centre, coming out as spring lines above Shortlands and at St Blaise’s Well. After Paul Rainey, 2012.

All the stops in the Bromley Town Centre Parks Heritage & Biodiversity trail can be found on the page about it here.

To continue the Heritage Trail, follow the little path (on the right hand side of the Carriage Drive) and on your right there is a rocky cliff – this is the fernery.

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Threat to our Art Deco cinema – public meeting on 11th July

Posted on 8 July 2024 by campaignr

The 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.

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Churchill Theatre – what is the future? How is it affected by the terms of the land’s Endowment?

Posted on 8 July 2024 by campaignr

Our theatre building, it has been announced, is at end of life, and the repairs needed will cost more than the council is prepared to pay.  Therefore, council has put the freehold of the building on the market for sale.

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How we celebrated Broomtime 2024

Posted on 3 May 2024 by campaignr

Bromley is named after the little yellow broom flower – it grew in profusion in the fields – and the town held a festival every year. This year, we resumed the custom of celebrating it again. We had our exhibition panels set up in the upstairs of the Glades, with new panels about Broom flowers and Bromley

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Saved Demolition! Thanks for your help!

Posted on 2 May 2024 by campaignr

It was discovered, 9pm on Thursday 2nd May, that the new owners of Community House, planned to demolish the lovely cupola that Saturday (4th May). We did as much as we could to spread the word, so people could email our council leader and other relevant parties to prevent this.

On Friday afternoon, the borough Conservation Officer, Simon Went, had “Preservation Notices” posted on the building and hoardings, and the Cupola was saved! These notices give six months to get the building listed, and full protection in that time.

We are very grateful to everybody who spent the time to email on this issue, and very glad it succeeded.

The new freehold owners – recently sold the property by our council, to save the council tax payers the cost of repairing the property – would also like to avoid the repair costs.

The cupola is an essential and iconic part of this historic building, built in 1939 by the architect C Cowles Voysey. The old Magistrates Court is one of an identifiable group of public buildings on Widmore Road and South Street.

The cupola on the former Magistrate’s court in 2019.

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Our Chair receives the Mayor’s Award for 2024

Posted on 14 March 2024 by campaignr

We 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.

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