| Bromley | |
|---|---|
 Bromley town high street | |
  Bromley Location withinGreater London | |
| Population | 87,889 [1] |
| OS grid reference | TQ405695 |
| • Charing Cross | 9.3 mi (15.0 km) NW |
| London borough | |
| Ceremonial county | Greater London |
| Region | |
| Country | England |
| Sovereign state | United Kingdom |
| Post town | BROMLEY |
| Postcode district | BR1, BR2 |
| Dialling code | 020 |
| Police | Metropolitan |
| Fire | London |
| Ambulance | London |
| UK Parliament | |
| London Assembly | |
| 51°24′25″N0°01′16″E / 51.4070°N 0.0210°E /51.4070; 0.0210 | |
Bromley is a large town inGreater London, England, within theLondon Borough of Bromley. It is9+1⁄2 miles (15 kilometres) southeast ofCharing Cross, and had an estimated population of 88,000 as of 2023.[2]
Originally part ofKent, Bromley became amarket town, chartered in 1158.[3] Its location on a coaching route and the opening of a railway station in 1858 were key to its development and the shift from an agrarian village to an urban town. As part of the growth of London's conurbation in the 20th century, Bromley Town significantly increased in population and wasincorporated as a municipal borough in 1903 and became part of theLondon Borough of Bromley in 1965.[4] Bromley today forms a major retail and commercial centre.[5] It is identified in theLondon Plan as one of the 13 metropolitan centres of Greater London.[4]
Bromley is first recorded in anAnglo-Saxon charter of 862 asBromleag and means 'woodland clearing wherebroom grows'.[6][7] It shares thisOld English etymology withGreat Bromley in eastern Essex, but not with theBromley in theEast End of London.[8]
The history of Bromley is closely connected with theSee of Rochester. In AD 862Ethelbert, the King of Kent, granted land to form the Manor of Bromley. In 1185Bromley Palace was built byGilbert Glanvill,Bishop of Rochester.[6] Pilgrims came to the town to visitSt. Blaise's Well.[6] The Palace was held by the Bishops until 1845, when Coles Child, a wealthy local merchant andphilanthropist, purchasedBromley Palace and became lord of the manor. The town was an important coaching stop on the way to Hastings from London, and the now defunct Royal Bell Hotel (just off Market Square) is referred to inJane Austen'sPride and Prejudice. It was a quiet rural village until the arrival of the railway in 1858 inShortlands, which led to rapid growth, and outlying suburban districts such asBickley (which later overflowed intoBromley Common) were developed to accommodate those wishing to live so conveniently close toLondon.[9][6]
Bromley, also known asBromley St Peter and St Paul, formed an ancient parish in theBromley and Beckenham hundred and theSutton-at-Hone lathe of Kent.[10] In 1840 it became part of the expandedMetropolitan Police District. The parish adopted theLocal Government Act 1858 and alocal board was formed in 1867. The board was reconstituted as Bromley Urban District Council in 1894 and the parish becameBromley Urban District. It formed part of theLondon Traffic Area from 1924 and theLondon Passenger Transport Area from 1933.[11] In 1934, as part of acounty review order, the borough was expanded by taking in 1,894 acres (766 hectares) from the disbandedBromley Rural District; an area including parts of the parishes ofFarnborough,Hayes,Keston andWest Wickham. Bromley became part of the newly createdGreater London in 1965, in the newLondon Borough of Bromley.
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Bromley forms part of theBromley and Biggin Hill Parliament constituency. The current MP isPeter Fortune.Thomas Turrell is theLondon Assembly member for theBexley and Bromley constituency, in which the town is located. This post was previously held by Fortune.
Bromley's most prominent MP was the former Conservative prime minister,Harold Macmillan.
Bromley is part of theBromley Town ward for elections toBromley London Borough Council.
Climate in this area has mild differences between highs and lows. TheKöppen Climate Classification subtype for this climate is "Cfb". (Marine West Coast Climate/Oceanic climate).[12]
Bromley is one of the major metropolitan centres identified in theLondon Plan.[13] Bromley had one of the highest gross disposable household incomes (GDHI) in the UK, at £27,169 in 2018.[14]
Bromley was ranked fourth in Greater London by Retail Footprint in 2005, behind theWest End,Croydon andKingston upon Thames.[15] Bromley competes with both Croydon and theBluewater centre inDartford as a shopping destination.[5]
The town has a large retail area, including apedestrianised High Street andThe Glades centre, the main shopping mall, which has a catchment of 1.3 million people.[16] Development at the nearby St. Mark's Square has seen further restaurants and a cinema established.
Bromley High Street is also the location for the Bromley Charter Market, which runs on a Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday.King John granted a charter for the Market to be held every Tuesday in 1205, withHenry VI revising this charter to every Thursday in 1447.[17][18] The Market sells food and confectionery items, clothing and other goods like jewellery.
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Bromley is served by two main rail stations.Bromley South providesNational Rail services toLondon Victoria (non stop, semi fast viaDenmark Hill and stopping services viaHerne Hill),London Blackfriars viaCatford,Orpington,Sevenoaks viaSwanley,Ramsgate viaChatham,Dover Priory via Chatham &Canterbury East and toAshford International viaMaidstone East.
Bromley North provides shuttle services toGrove Park, where onward connections can be made for services toLondon Charing Cross &London Cannon Street viaLewisham.
Finally,Shortlands railway station serves primarily residential areas immediately southwest of the town centre. Being one stop west ofBromley South,Southeastern andThameslink services connect the station toLondon Victoria andLondon Blackfriars.
Bromley is served byLondon Buses routes 61, 119, 126, 138, 146, 162, 208, 227, 246, 261, 269, 314, 320, 336, 352, 354, 358, 367, 638, N3, N199, SL3 and SL5. These connect it with areas includingBeckenham,Bexley,Bexleyheath,Biggin Hill,Catford,Chislehurst,Croydon,Crystal Palace,Downham,Elmers End,Eltham,Grove Park,Hayes,Lee Green,Lewisham,Locksbottom,Mottingham,New Addington,Orpington,Penge,Petts Wood,Sidcup,West Wickham &Westerham.
Since May 1929, Bromley has had an annual festival of "dance, drama and comedy" in and around the town's venues.[19] TheSouth London Film Festival has been hosted annually in Bromley since 2022.
The large open spaces have lent themselves to outdoor concerts, festivals and outdoor screenings, as well in the venues such as Norman Park,[20] Hayes Farm, Beckenham Place Park[21] and Croydon Road recreation ground.[22]
Bromley has a number of theatres in the borough, in the town centre there are three, a professional, theChurchill Theatre, an amateur, theBromley Little Theatre (close to Bromley North railway station) and an outdooramphitheatre located in "Church House Gardens" behind the Churchill theatre.
The Churchill Theatre was opened on 19 July 1977 by thePrince of Wales, and seats 781.[23] It is run on a contract currently held by HQ Theatres Ltd acting as both a receiving andproducing house, with productions transferring to the West End or touring nationally. An example being recent tours ofClub Tropicana The Musical.
Bromley also has a central library in the same building as the Churchill Theatre with a large book stock, Internet and wifi access, reference library and local studies department. It functions as the central library of the broaderBromley Borough Libraries Service.
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BromleyPicturehouse was opened in June 2019 in the previous Empire theatre. The cinema closed on 1 August 2024.[24]
Vue Cinemas own a nine-screen cinema, which is part of the Bromley South Central scheme at St Mark's Square, opened on 28 November 2018.[25]
Bromley has its own team ofMorris dancers,The Ravensbourne Morris Men, founded in 1947 as a post-war revival team following an inaugural meeting at the thenJean's Café, which was located opposite Bromley South Station.[26]
Bromley Civic Society is acivic society for the historic centre of Bromley.[27] It is a founder member ofCivic Voice. It seeks to educate the public about the community's history and to preserve historical sites.
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In the famousMonty Python "Spam" sketch Bromley was stated to be the location of the fictional Green Midget Café, where every item on the menu was composed ofspam in varying degrees.[6] In anotherMonty Python sketch, it was stated that all seven continents are visible from the top of the Kentish Times building in Bromley.
TheBromley Contingent was the name given to the entourage that followed theSex Pistols and helped popularise the punk movement. It was so called because many of its members were from Bromley, some of whom later became famous as musicians in their own right, likeSiouxsie Sioux andBilly Idol.[6]
The 2018 humorous film,The Bromley Boys is set in Bromley and surroundings in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Based on a real-life memoir by Dave Roberts about followingBromley F.C., it includes many scenes filmed locally, althoughCrockenhill F.C. was used as a substitute for the Hayes Lane stadium.[28]
Guitarist Billy Jenkins, born in Bromley, released an album titled "Sounds like Bromley" in 1982 and another in 1997 titled "Still Sounds Like Bromley". In a BBC Radio 3 interview he said that "if Kent is the Garden of England then Bromley is one of the compost heaps". He then moved to Lewisham.
Local news is provided by theBromley Times.
The town has threeNon-League football clubs, and oneLeague Two club.Bromley Football Club andLondon City Lionesses play their home games at theHayes Lane Stadium; as didCray Wanderers F.C. from 1998 until 2024. The latter club is claimed to be the oldest football club in what is today Greater London.[29] The other teams,Holmesdale F.C. andGreenwich Borough F.C., play at Oakley Road. Bromley F.C. are the only professional team in Bromley and play in League Two after being promoted from theNational League in 2024.[30]
Fiverugby clubs in Bromley are,Old Elthamians RFC (a National League 2 side),[31] Park House FC (established in 1883),[32] Bromley RFC (founded in 1886),[33]Beckenham RFC (established in 1894),[34] and Beccehamians RFC (founded in 1933) which plays competitive rugby at Sparrows Den at the bottom of Corkscrew Hill in nearby West Wickham.[35]
Bromley Cricket Club was founded in 1820,[36] but evidence of cricket being played in Bromley dates to 1735.[37] Bromley CC has a significant success record, with 9Kent Cricket League championship titles to their name.[38] Bromley field four senior teams. Three compete in theKent Cricket League (a designatedECB Premier League[38]) and one plays in the British Tamil Cricket League.[39] They also have an established junior training section that play competitive cricket in the North Kent Junior League.[40]
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Bromley has numerous schools, and is home toBromley College of Further & Higher Education.There are two specialist Media Arts Schools,Hayes School and TheRavensbourne School.Bishop Justus School is a specialist Music College. It also has the Ravens Wood andDarrick Wood Schools. There are many independent schools within the London Borough of Bromley, including Eltham College (in the nearby area of Mottingham – within the borough of Bromley and near the London Borough of Lewisham) and Bromley High (situated in the nearby area of Bickley - also within the borough of Bromley).
Bromley town as a whole, including the surrounding area, its neighbourhoods and villages, is formed of six wards for the2021 census:
The 2021 U.K. census reported the entire borough of Bromley overall had a population 329,991.[46]
The life expectancy in Bromley Town ward (which covers the town centre) was 79.3 years for males and 83.7 years for females, during 2009–2013. The highest in the town were in Shortlands: 86.1 years for males and 88.1 years for females. The lowest for both genders was in Plaistow and Sundridge: 77.5 and 82.1 years respectively.[47]
According to the 2021 census, ethnically the Bromley town ward was 70.1% White, 54.0% wereWhite British,White Irish 1.7%,Roma 0.4% and 14.0%Other White.[48] Asians were 12.8%, Black were 7.4%, mixed 6.7% and other were 3.0%.[49]
| Bromley Town (ward only) 2021[50][51][52] | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ethnic group | % | Population | ||
| All usual residents | 100.0 | 15,396 | ||
| White | 70.1 | 10,802 | ||
| White British | 54.0 | 8,312 | ||
| Other White | 14.0 | 2,155 | ||
| Asian | 12.8 | 1,969 | ||
| Black | 7.4 | 1,137 | ||
| Mixed, Multiple | 6.7 | 1,031 | ||
| Other ethnic group | 3.0 | 457 | ||
In Bromley Town, 18.5% of the population was of minority ethnicity. The highest in the town was 19.3% in Plaistow and Sundridge, and the lowest was 8.3% in Hayes and Coney Hall.[47]
The median house price in Bromley Town ward was £327,000 in 2014, compared to £295,444 in Plaistow and Sundridge, and £480,000 in Bickley. 37% of houses in Bickley were detached, more than other wards. In all wards, over 60% of houses were owned by households, peaking at 88.2% in Hayes and Coney Hall.[47] In 2020, the average cost of a house was £519,619.[53]
The parish church ofSt Peter and St Paul stands on Church Road. It was largely destroyed by German bombing on 16 April 1941 and rebuilt in the 1950s incorporating the medieval tower and reusing much of the flint and fragments of the original stone building.[54] The most noteworthy historic building isBromley College, London Road. The central public open spaces are; Queen's Gardens, Martin's Hill, Church House Gardens, Library Gardens and College Green.
Another parish church in Bromley isSt Mark's, which stands on Westmoreland Road. The present church is the third. The first was built as a temporary iron church in 1884 to cope with Bromley's growing population, on land slightly to the east of the present church, donated by a local man Eley Soames. The road name St Mark's Road preserves the rough location of the former site.[55]
The second church was built in brick and stone on the present site, and designed byEvelyn Hellicar, son of the then vicar of St Peter and St Paul's. It was completed in 1898 in thePerpendicular Gothic style and consecrated byWilliam Walsh, Bishop of Dover, on 22 October that year. The tower, though, was not completed until 1904. Like St Peter and St Paul's, St Mark's was heavily damaged in theLondon Blitz of 1941. Only the tower survived intact.[55]
On 3 June 1952, theDuchess of Kent laid the foundation stone of the present church, which was designed by T W G Grant and built byDavid Nye. Besides the tower, other parts of the fabric of the original church were used in the rebuilding. Inside there are various monuments: toSamuel Ajayi Crowther,John Cole Patteson andVedanayagam Samuel Azariah, who were all bishops in the Commonwealth.[55]
TheEast Street drill hall was completed in 1872.[56]
AuthorH. G. Wells was born in Bromley on 21 September 1866, to Sarah and Joseph Wells; his father was the founder of the Bromley Cricket Club and the proprietor of a shop that soldcricket equipment.[57] Wells spent the first 13 years of his life in Bromley. From 1874 to 1879 he attended Tomas Morley's Bromley Academy, at 74 High Street.[58] There was a 'H. G. Wells Centre' in Masons Hill near the southern end of the High Street which housed the Bromley Labour Club (the building was demolished in 2017).[citation needed] In August 2005, the wall honouring Wells in Market Square was repainted; the current wall painting features a rich green background with the same Wells reference and the evolutionary sequence ofHomo sapiens featured inOrigin of Species byCharles Darwin, a former resident of nearbyDowne Village.[59]
Wells wrote about Bromley in an early unsigned article in thePall Mall Gazette in which he expressed satisfaction that he had been born in an earlier, more rural Bromley.[60] Ablue plaque marks Wells' birthplace in Market Square, on the wall of what is now aPrimark store.[61] A marble plaque appears above the door of 8 South Street, the location of Mrs Knott'sDame school where "Bertie", as he was called as a child, learned to read and write.[62] H. G. Wells featured Bromley in two of his novels:The War in the Air (which refers to Bromley as Bunhill) andThe New Machiavelli (in which Bromley is referred to as Bromstead).
However, H. G. Wells refused the offered freedom of the town, stating:
"Bromley has not been particularly gracious to me nor I to Bromley and I don't think I want to add the freedom of Bromley to the freedom of the City of London and the freedom of the City of Brussels – both of which I have."
He described Bromley in one of his novels as a "morbid sprawl of population".[63]
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Owen Chadwick was born in Bromley in 1916. He was awarded theOrder of Merit, was Vice Chancellor of University of Cambridge, Master of Selwyn Cambridge, Regius Professor of Modern History, Dixie Professor of Ecclesiastical History, Chancellor of University of Anglia, President of theBritish Academy, and was a Rugby Union International.
Other writers from Bromley include CaptainW.E. Johns (author of the Biggles adventures),David Nobbs (author ofThe Fall and Rise of Reginald Perrin and writer forLes Dawson andThe Two Ronnies), andEnid Blyton who wrote children's fiction. A blue historical plaque can be found on the external wall of her former home on Shortlands Road, Bromley.
Other notable people who lived in Bromley includeDavid Bowie;Jane Downs, (actress);Talbot Rothwell, (screenwriter of twentyCarry On films); actressJustine Lord;Peter Howitt;Richmal Crompton;Pixie Lott;Matt Terry;Christopher Tennant;Hanif Kureishi;Peter Frampton;Aleister Crowley;Fatboy Slim;Jack Dee;Tom Allen;D. Bernard Amos;Rob Beckett;Alexander Molony;[64]Gary Rhodes;Pete Sears; singerPoly Styrene;Billy Idol;Brian Poole (ofThe Tremoloes);Billy Jenkins;Alex Clare; cricketerJill Cruwys;[65] the anarchistPeter Kropotkin;[66] the former Clash drummerTopper Headon; illustratorCharles Keeping, children's writerAndrew Murray; tenorRoland Cunningham; actorMichael York, who attended Bromley Grammar School for Boys;[67] and clarinetistChris Craker. The musical conducting brothersStephen andNicholas Cleobury were born in Bromley, as was suffragetteMarie du Sautoy Newby. ActorJerome Flynn, who starred inGame of Thrones asBronn, was born in Bromley. Gus Lobban and Jamie Bulled of the bandKero Kero Bonito grew up in Bromley.
Deborah Linsley, the victim of one of Britain's most high-profile unsolved murders in 1988, grew up in Bromley.
Richard Reid, also known as the "Shoe Bomber", was born and lived in Bromley. He was convicted of the2001 shoe bomb attempt.
In the 20th century, the Parish Church ofSt Peter andSt Paul produced, in quick succession, threeChurch of England Bishops:Henry David Halsey –Bishop of Carlisle,Philip Goodrich –Bishop of Worcester,David Bartleet –Bishop of Tonbridge. Sculptor Nicholas Cornwell andMaisy James the Big Brother 12 housemate. Sometime before 1881 the engineer and industrialistRichard Porter moved to Beckenham where he remained until his death in 1913.Hanif Kureishi, the writer and filmmaker was born here, and spent a significant part of his youth, here.[6] His first novelThe Buddha of Suburbia was loosely based on his life here and the people he lived and met here.[6]
ComedianFrankie Boyle claims to be a former resident and has described Bromley as a 'lobotomy made out of bricks'.[68] The comedianChris Addison[69] currently lives in Bromley, as does tennis playerEmma Raducanu.
Scottish education secretaryMichael Russell MSP was born and spent the early years of his life in Bromley.
Media related toBromley (town) at Wikimedia Commons
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