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| Geese at the Tarn, Eltham. |
Today’s walk threads through the hinterland of
Eltham, Bromley and Beckenham, linking a typically varied selection of Green
Chain sites. Small, local parks, including hidden gem the Tarn, and a
surprising expanse of open fields provide reminders of the old rural estate of
Eltham Lodge and Middle Park. Substantial patches of woodland link Mottingham
with Sundridge Park, then the trail crosses the high ground between the rivers
Quaggy and Ravensbourne (passing from the eastern to the western hemisphere) to
reach one of London’s loveliest, but lesser-known, large parks at Beckenham
Place. Though there are several street-based sections, they reveal more than their share of hidden gems.
Though there are numerous ups and downs, the going isn’t
as rugged as parts of the previous walk. As well as the National Rail stations
at each end there are four others on or near the route, and numerous bus stops,
so splitting up this relatively short section further is very easy.
This walk combines several official Green Chain sections.
It includes the rest of Section 7, begun in D1.1, to Middle Park, Eltham; a
short part of Section 6, also the Capital Ring, to where it ends on Mottingham
Lane; and all of Section 9 to its end in Summerhouse Hill Wood, Beckenham Place
Park. We then follow the end of Section 8 to Stumps Hill Road, Beckenham, and a
short length of Section 10 to New Beckenham station, both also part of the
Ring, with a couple of suggested diversions to vary the route.
See the Ramblers guides for directions on the official sections, and my information sheet for stretches not covered in these. The routes and places mentioned are on my Google map.
New Eltham
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| Greenwich civilisation's last hope? The bunker in Southwood Park, New Eltham. |
New Eltham was once a rural hamlet known as Pope’s Street or Pope Street amid farmland to the south of Eltham. It stood on the Maidstone Road, now Footscray Road, running from Eltham via Foots Cray into deepest Kent, where this crossed a minor road, then also Pope Street, now Avery Hill Road, linking with the Bexley Road at Avery Hill. The old name is commemorated by the Pope Street Bar, in a 19th century building on the southwest corner of the junction, though this is a recent renaming.
When the South Eastern Railway (SER) opened the Dartford
Loop Line through the area in 1866, trains ran through without stopping. The
main purpose of the line, which ran from the SER main line at Hither Green via
Sidcup to Slade Green where it rejoined the existing Dartford line, was to
relieve congestion on the latter. The station, originally also named Pope
Street, opened in 1878, and a scattering of new houses followed, rather large
and grand ones intended for wealthy middle-class commuters. Scenting potential
for passenger growth, the SER renamed the station New Eltham in 1886 to
encourage the idea of an exclusive suburb, and the old name began gradually to
fall out of use. The area kept its upmarket character until the early 1930s,
when Woolwich borough council facilitated the development of much of the
remaining agricultural land as cheaper, denser and more modest housing.
Much of the streetscape visible today is interwar. A good
example stands next to the station drive: the neo-Georgian New Eltham Library
in stern red brick, separated from Southwood Road by a prim stretch of hedges
and shrubs. It was built in 1931 as part of the municipally sponsored expansion.
Immediately adjacent is a smallish park, Southwood Park, added around 20 years later
to serve the growing population..
Prior to this, it was farmland, apart from a cricket ground to the west which,
although in Woolwich, was owned by Bromley council. The railings and strip of
shrubbery parallel to the road retain their 1950s flavour.
The Green Chain Walk enters the park, and as you follow it
past exercise equipment, note the windowless and near-featureless rust-coloured
blockhouse behind the library, with a large radio antenna sprouting from its
flat roof. This is a rare Cold War remnant, built in 1954 as 51C1 Woolwich
Borough Civil Defence Control, where selected local council officers would in
theory have kept calm and carried on in the event of a nuclear war, reporting
to a regional HQ in Chislehurst. Although above ground, it has extremely thick
concrete walls and two reinforced blast doors and was equipped with an air
filtering system and a diesel generator. It became part of Greenwich’s civil
defence infrastructure when the boroughs merged in 1965.
As I mentioned when passing a similar installation at
Gravesend on London Countryway 1 original route,
I can’t help thinking that such facilities were little more than performative
propaganda, and the people who commissioned them knew full well they were
woefully inadequate for keeping any kind of civilisation going following a
nuclear apocalypse. This one was at least intended for use in other emergencies
too: it was last occupied during a 1976 exercise to prepare for potential
flooding while the Thames Barrier was still under construction. The GLC
declared it unfit for use in 1980, after which it was sealed and a new control
centre constructed in the basement of council offices in Woolwich, though this
was only completed in 1991, by which time the Cold War was over and the civil
defence network was being dismantled.
By 2003, security measures had deteriorated to the extent
that members of urban exploration group Subterranea Britannica gained access,
posting photos and a report online. They found something of a time capsule with
the generator still intact, alongside phone switchboards, radio equipment, maps
and paperwork and a kitchen with a 1950s cooker and electric kettle. Among the
equipment was a radio console intended for relaying four-minute warnings and
activating sirens and other alerts. After this the building was sealed again
and it’s likely nobody has been inside since. I’m not sure why it still stands:
presumably, demolishing or repurposing such a solid and specialised
construction would be difficult and expensive.
The trail makes the first of several doglegs here, following
the park perimeter before returning to Southwood Road. Much of the space is
rather dull open grassland, but it’s at least green and airy, with a band of
trees separating it from the railway line. There’s a larger patch of planted elm
woodland marking the boundary of the old cricket pitch in the far corner. The
pitch itself is now used for football, leased by the London Girls Football Club,
alongside the pavilion which you pass on your way out of the park. Just by the
exit, the Friends group has installed a rainbow-themed memorial to victims of the 2020-21 Covid-19
pandemic, incorporating a collage of flowers on the fence and, ingeniously, a
string of cheerfully painted wooden posts.
Turning off Southwood Road onto Park View, you’re only a
short distance from the busy Fiveways Junction on the A20, here very much a
1920s suburban trunk road lined with semidetached houses, apartment blocks and
shopping parades. The block on the left corner of the main junction at the end
of Southwood Road is known as Southwood House, though it’s not the original
Southwood House that gave its name to both street and park: this is to the
northeast at Avery Hill, now part of the University of Greenwich site, and
we’ll pass close by on D2.2. Meanwhile the Green Chain stays on the south side
of the A20 for some time as it ventures into the old estate of Eltham Lodge.
Eltham Lodge
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| The deciduous woodland in Fairy Hill Park. Fairies not included. |
This stretch is something of a street-based trudge, so it’s hard to imagine that Green Lane, which you cross at the end of Parkview Road, really did once live up to its name. The land on its opposite side (west) was royal property since at least the mid-11th century, and by the early 1300s was part of Eltham Great Park, the vast hunting estate attached to the royal palace at Eltham which at its fullest extent stretched from Shooters Hill to Chislehurst. I’ve covered the general history of park and palace in more detail on Ring 1, but this tranche eventually formed a distinct part of the estate.
In 1650, during the Commonwealth period following the English Civil War, the whole estate was confiscated and ended up in the hands of prominent Parliamentarian Nathaniel Rich (c1620-c1702), a former colonel in Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army. Rich tore down much of the woodland, selling the timber for shipbuilding and creating farmland, with this corner becoming Chapel Farm. Following the Restoration in 1660, the estate was returned to royal hands and in 1663 leased to John Shaw (c1615-80), a confirmed Royalist who had used his considerable mercantile wealth to bankroll Charles II in exile in France.
In 1678, Shaw created a new, modern country estate in the east of
the park, centred on Eltham Lodge, a Palladian mansion on the site of an
earlier and more modest lodge. It was designed by architect Hugh May (1622-84),
one of the pioneers of the English Classical revival. By the 18th
century, Eltham Lodge was associated with horse racing and a racetrack ran from
the house to Chislehurst.
Eltham Lodge has a curious connection to modern Irish
history. Between 1845-89 it was the home of Anne Wood, who later shared it with
her niece, Katharine “Kitty” O'Shea (1846-1921). In 1880, O’Shea began an
extramarital relationship with prominent Irish nationalist politician and
leader of the Irish Parliamentary Party Charles Stewart Parnell (1846-91), who
fathered three of her children. Although the affair soon became the subject of
political gossip, it was kept from the public with the quiescence of Kitty’s
husband William O’Shea, also a committed Irish nationalist whom Parnell had
supported as an MP.
Kitty even acted as a liaison between Parnell and UK prime
minster William Gladstone in negotiations over Irish home rule, and in 1886
Parnell moved into Eltham Lodge to live with her. William finally lost patience
in 1889 and filed for divorce. The resulting scandal caused a split in the nationalist
movement which was to have repercussions for decades afterwards, with the Roman
Catholic hierarchy arguing Parnell was no longer a fit leader while more
secular campaigners continued to support him. The church was successful in
forcing him from office in 1891: he married Kitty the same year but died just months
afterwards.
Wood helped determine the way the area was subsequently
carved up by successfully arguing that the South Eastern Railway should build
the Dartford Loop Line through the south of the park, well away from the house.
In winter, you might be able to glimpse the red brick mansion, now Grade I
listed, through the trees and across the railway to your right as you finally
return to green space in Fairy Hill Park. The mansion is used a clubhouse by
Eltham Golf Club, which leased the land from the Crown in 1892 and turned the
surrounding park into a course.
As the successor of Blackheath Golf Club, the club claims to
be the oldest in England. It traces its history to 1603, the year of the Union
of the Crowns, when ‘goff’, as the game was then known, travelled south from
Scotland with James I and VI’s courtiers. They took to playing it on Blackheath,
conveniently close to the king’s residence at Greenwich Palace. The Blackheath
club merged with the Eltham one in 1923 when the incursion of cars and other
recreational users drove golfers from the heath.
Fairy Hill Park is named after Fairy Hall, another mansion
originally within the Eltham Lodge estate, though curiously this is well over 1
km to the west: we’ll pass it later. The park was once the fields of Chapel
Farm, with the racetrack passing through, and in the early 20th
century was used as a rifle range. The A20 carved up the estate further in 1923
and the land between it and the railway line could easily have been developed
for housing like the surrounding streets, but the London County Council recognised
the need for green space and bought it from the Crown for £7,250 as a public
park.
A little like Southwood Park, it’s largely mown grass, but
is much loved by locals and benefits from the attentions of a keen Friends
group. It’s well-kept enough to enjoy Green Flag status and includes a new
community woodland, with around 1,000 trees planted on the southern and western
perimeter in 2011-12, including willow, elder, hornbeam, poplar, hazel,
buckthorn, rowan, cherry, downy birch and ash. In the northwest corner is a
patch of conifers with a ‘conifer trail’ threading between them: there’s an easy
detour along this which gives you a closer view of the golf course and a
glimpse of the house.
Mottingham station on the Dartford Loop Line, almost
opposite when you reach Court Road, is technically in Eltham rather than
Mottingham and indeed was named Eltham on opening in 1866 despite its location
on the very edge of the district. It was renamed Eltham & Mottingham in
1892 and became plain Mottingham in 1927, by which time the present Eltham
station had opened on the Bexleyheath Line closer to the town centre. Some of
the original white clapboard structure is still visible today.
The Tarn
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| The Tarn: a particularly bright hidden gem. |
Crossing the railway, the Green Chain makes its most extreme detour. Stand by the fingerpost that points you through the gate of the Tarn on your right and you can see the junction of Middle Park Avenue, which carries the trail to Middle Park, just 20 m ahead along the road on the left. But this corner is almost 500 m away by the official route. Thankfully the extra distance is more than justified as the Tarn is one of southeast London’s most delightful hidden gems (though if you’re walking with a dog you’ll miss out as they’re banned from the site).
This small but atmospheric and charming 3.6 ha public park
takes its name from the lake which forms its centrepiece, ‘tarn’ being a
northern dialect term derived from Old Norse tjǫrn,
meaning a small lake. Likely, though, this an early 20th century
affectation as the lake is shown on older maps as Starbucks Pond, after a local
farming family in the 16th and 17th centuries. The lake
is fed by various streams that rise in the golf course, forming part of the
catchment of the river Quaggy. It was originally a farm pond that was extended
and reshaped into a decorative feature when Eltham Lodge was refurbished and
expanded in the 18th century.
The lake and the remnant woodland surrounding it weren’t included in the golf course and by the early 20th century were leased separately from the Crown. In 1935, by which time the lake had become overgrown and stagnant, Woolwich borough council bought the property as a public park, creating the current layout with winding paths and a wooden bridge on round brick piers across the eastern end. The site was restored with a lottery grant in 2001, including measures to mitigate pollution from runoff water from the nearby A20, which was adversely affecting wildlife. A Friends group established in 2008 has made further improvements and holds regular volunteer maintenance days.
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| Bridge over untroubled water: The Tarn, Eltham. |
The trail first tracks the southern lakeshore until it reaches the entrance to a recent Friends project, the Butterfly Garden. This is worth a quick detour as a delightful hidden corner with a bench surrounded by trees and rich vegetation, equipped with a wildflower meadow, bird nesting boxes and bee homes. Following the signs across the bridge, it’s worth pausing halfway across to take in the view to the left of the placid waters surrounding two artificial islands with a fountain beyond, and bird life which includes mallards, shelducks, Aylesbury ducks, Canada geese, swans and occasional herons and cormorants. When the light strikes the trees in a certain way, the effect is curiously dreamlike. On the other side, a toe of the lake reaches towards the golf course, visible through the trees.
You return along the north shore, passing woodland to the
right which has long been fenced off as a bird sanctuary, popular with a wide
variety of garden birds. Overall, 73 species have been recorded here. The brick
hut with its veranda overlooking a lawn likely dates from when the site was
first converted to a park: it’s used for open air events like afternoon teas
organised by the Friends, education groups and volunteering. It also contains
toilets, but these are kept locked except for organised events and activities.
Past this, it's worth taking a few steps down from the trail on the left to admire the marshy gardens that surround a stream flowing westwards from the lake towards Eltham Middle Park. This is the Little Quaggy, the first of several tributaries of the river Quaggy that we’ll encounter today. There’s one more feature of interest just before the park exit: a Grade II-listed brick ice well from around 1760, originally serving Eltham Lodge. Before artificial refrigeration, ice was cut from the lake on freezing winter days and packed in the well, insulated by a double layer of brick, so it could be used in warmer weather. The original domed brick roof collapsed in the 1960s while being stripped of ivy, and its replacement has a cutaway section that reveals the interior.
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| 18th century ice house at the Tarn, Eltham. |
Back on Court Road, originally a country track between Eltham Palace and Chapel Farm, our hairpin detour is almost complete. But first step a little right to note no 133, Tarn Lodge, built for the keeper of the site around 1905 when it was still in private hands to replace an earlier keeper’s lodge. It’s an attractive locally listed building broadly in Edwardian mock-Tudor style but with some unexpected Classical flourishes in the columns that support the first-floor gable.
Eltham Middle Park
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| Two of the Blackheath Donkeys at Eltham Middle Park with no buildings in sight. |
Middle Park owes its survival partly to its continued
status as Crown land, with little economic motive to develop it. Much was still
leased as farmland until World War II, then between 1945 and 1992, the Royal
Army Educational Corps was based at the palace, retaining the land nearby as
open space in case it was needed for military use. Today the Crown leases out some
of the fields as horse paddocks, while others are managed by Greenwich council
as public open space.
Since 1971, the golf course, the Tarn, Middle Park, the
palace itself and the surrounding streets have been designated as the Eltham
Palace Conservation Area. By then, the not particularly attractive late 1950s
flat blocks on the south side of Middle Park Avenue had already appeared:
they’re described in the official conservation area character assessment as ‘an
unwelcome intrusion’, but we’re soon past them, suddenly transported into a
fragment of rural Kent on a rough and sometimes muddy path that climbs the
hillside through a strip of woodland grown out from a hedgerow. This, it will
turn out, is another dogleg detour that you wouldn’t want to miss.
The path takes a westward turn, emerging from the trees
through an original late 1970s Green Chain kissing gate to run between two
horse paddocks, with a stretch where there are no buildings whatsoever in sight.
Shetland ponies often graze in the northern field on the right, but they’re upstaged
by their neighbours to the south, the Blackheath Donkeys. This is a small drove
of 10 donkeys who are so-called because in the early 2000s, they provided rides
for children at the Blackheath Gate of Greenwich Park. When off-duty, they were
kept in a field by Woodlands Farm and the garden centre on Shooters Hill
(passed on D1.1).
They retired at the end of the 2011 season as the park was
due to become an Olympic venue the following year and have lived here ever
since. As you’d expect given their background, they’re a curious and friendly
bunch and often approach passing walkers, doubtless hoping for a treat or two,
though notices ask you to feed them only carrots, and not whole ones. They’re
much loved locally and regularly attract small crowds of admirers at the junction
of our path and King John’s Walk, in the northwest corner of their paddock.
They even have their own Facebook fan page.
Green Chain Section 7, which we’ve followed since New
Eltham, ends at the junction, where we join Section 6 and the Capital Ring
(D4.1) downhill, with Eltham Palace itself in the opposite direction. I’ve said
a lot more about the palace and the next section of the route on Ring 2
so I won’t repeat it here, except to say that King John’s Walk, an ancient path
that once connected the palace with the lower park, was likely named after
Valois king Jean II of France (reigned 1350-64), also known as John the Good,
who was held prisoner at the palace following his surrender at the Battle of
Poitiers in 1356. Vista Field on the right is part of the public open space, so
named because of its views: a Green Chain alternative runs right past the
viewpoint, but we’ll explore this on walk D5.
King John’s Walk returns us to Middle Park Avenue then crosses
a triangle of grass by Joan Crescent, another vestige of Middle Park, leaving
the conservation area. It crosses the Dartford Loop Line on a footbridge then
finally takes us across the A20, the current incarnation of the road from
London to Ashford and Folkestone which branches from Watling Street (the Kent
Road) at New Cross. The highway originally ran though Eltham as the Bexley Road
which we crossed in the last section at Avery Hill. This new alignment, the
Sidcup Road, is sometimes claimed to be the first modern bypass. It opened in 1923,
running just over 5 km from Lee to Kemnal Corner in Sidcup, avoiding the
bottleneck of Eltham High Street. This was just as the Ministry of Transport
was introducing its road numbering scheme, so the section we cross has always been
designated A20.
Mottingham
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| Eltham College, the former Fairy Hall, not yet disappeared into a sinkhole. |
Across the road, King John’s Walk crosses the Little Quaggy, which follows the A20 a short distance further before joining the Quaggy itself where the road bends north. We’re now officially in Mottingham: the stream became the boundary when the parish was carved out of Eltham in 1866 in anticipation of an increase in population following the opening of the railway the same year. When Eltham became part of the London County Council area at the end of the century, Mottingham remained in Kent, before joining the London Borough of Bromley in 1965. This is still the point where the Green Chain (and the Capital Ring) leave Greenwich and enter Bromley. I introduced the latter borough on London Loop 2, and as we’re still sharing a route with the Capital Ring, there’s a bit more about Mottingham under Ring 1.
King John’s Walk continues as a fenced path between more
fields used as horse paddocks, attached to Mottingham Stables over on the
right, and then between houses to end on Mottingham Lane. The fingerpost at the
junction marks the end of Green Chain Section 6 and the start of two further branches.
The Capital Ring (D4.1) follows Section 8 right, past various large Victorian
villas noted on my Ring post, and we’ll meet it again towards the end of
today’s walk in Beckenham Place Park. But for the moment our way is left, along
Section 9.
The rather forbidding wall to the right encloses independent
day school Eltham College and the main buildings begin to reveal themselves as
you reach the roundabout. This is the original Fairy Hall, mentioned earlier in
Fairy Hill Park, which was named after it. It was established as a country
estate around 1700 when the big house at its core was built, although the house
has been much altered and expanded since. The magnificent plane tree in front
of the right-hand side of the house was probably planted as an original feature.
In 1771 the estate became the London home of lawyer and high Tory politician Henry Bathurst, Baron Apsley (1714-94), who held the office of Lord Chancellor.
The estate subsequently changed hands several times, in
1889 becoming the home of the Royal Naval School, a boarding school for the
sons of naval officers. This was founded in New Cross, on the site where
Goldsmiths College is today. In 1904 the school added the rather attractive
chapel visible close to the gate, but closed in 1910, with Eltham College replacing
it in 1912. The present institution traces its roots to Walthamstow in 1838,
where it was founded as a school for the children of missionaries, and had also
been based in Camden and Blackheath.
Since 2012 the school has hosted the Gerald Moore Gallery, established by the like-named old boy Gerald Moore (1926-2018), who had a varied and colourful career as a qualified oral
surgeon, medical entrepreneur, visitor attraction operator and sometime actor
as well as an artist. The gallery, which is open every Saturday, displays his
work alongside changing exhibitions by others and runs art classes and other
outreach activities.
One of the adjacent fields was the likely location for the
‘marvellous accident’ in Mottingham in 1585, recounted by Thomas Fuller in his
rather anecdotal book The History of the Worthies of England (1662):
Betimes in the morning the ground began to sink, so much that three great elm-trees were suddenly swallowed into the pit; the tops falling downward into the hole: and before 10 of the clock they were so overwhelmed, that no part of them might be discerned, the concave being suddenly filled with water. The compass of the hole was about 80 yards [73 m], and so profound, that a sounding-line of 50 fathoms [91.4 m] could hardly find or feel any bottom. Ten yards [9.1 m] distance from that place, there was another piece of ground sunk in like manner, near the highway, and so nigh a dwelling house, that the inhabitants were greatly terrified therewith.
Fuller makes the incident sound almost miraculous, but it
was likely a sinkhole created by an underground stream, of which there are
several in the area.
Mottingham’s commercial centre is a little off the route to the left at the roundabout, along Mottingham Lane. It boasts an unusual hexagonal war memorial in the form of a Roman Doric temple, designed by local architect George Hubbard (1859-1936), unveiled in 1920 and now Grade II-listed. But our way is south, straight across the grass expanse of Mottingham Sports Ground. This was an agricultural field until World War II, bought after the war by Chislehurst and Sidcup Urban District Council as a public open space to cater for the large social housing estate the London County Council had begun building on what was once Court Farm to the east. It’s still known locally as Foxes Field.
Mottingham Woods
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| Elmstead Wood in spring. |
Though the useful information boards dotted along the
trail here refer to the whole complex as Mottingham Woods, historically the
woodland was divided into two sections in two different parishes. The northern
part, where we enter, was in Eltham and was once known as Crown Wood, suggesting
it was part of the Eltham Palace estate, although Mottingham manor was
controlled since the 12th century by St John’s Priory in Rochester.
When Henry VIII dissolved the priory in the late 1530s, he passed the estate to
the Bishops of Rochester, who had owned Elmstead Wood, the southern section of
the woodland, since before the Norman conquest as part of their manor at
Bromley.
The surviving woods, like the field, were acquired by the council in the 1950s as public green space. A keen Friends Group spearheaded various improvements in the 21st century, including the information boards, two additional short circular trails and some public art. There’s a website but it hasn’t been updated recently.
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| Source of the Grove Park Ditch in Lower Marvels Wood, Mottingham. |
Entering the first woodland patch, Lower Marvels Wood, you’ll likely soon hear running water to your right. Follow the sound a few steps off the trail and you’ll find a brick water outlet in a trench. This is the source of another tributary of the Quaggy, the unprepossessingly named Grove Park Ditch, which joins the main stream just northwest of here, where Ring 2 and Green Chain 8 follow the Quaggy out of the Old Elthamians rugby ground. The flow is usually remarkably vigorous, indicating some subterranean engineering that collects water from a little further up the hillside, where several now-vanished ponds appear on old maps.
Lower Marvels Wood continues across Dunkery Road, followed
by a brief urban interlude as a finger of the 1930s LCC Court Farm Estate
extends between the woodlands. Pleasingly, a green strip, Calcott Walk, was
retained as part of the design, and we’re soon in Marvels Wood, also once part
of Crown Wood. You’ll encounter the shorter of the circular trails here, the
600 m Mottingham Wild Walkabout, which shares some of its route with the Green
Chain. It’s designed to be wheelchair accessible, with hard but not sealed
surfaces.
This area also boasts some interesting public art: a chainsaw wood sculpture of a bizarre face is just to the right along the Wild Walkabout route, one of several by Will Lee which have dotted the wood since 2010. If you followed the Wild Walkabout, which soon rejoins the Green Chain without much additional walking, you’d walk the entire 100 m length of the Marvels Wood Mural, created with the help of schoolchildren in the early 2000s and depicting local people and wildlife.
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| Marvels Wood Mural: plenty of bees. |
Back on the main trial is a minor natural curiosity: a tree branch has grown in curious directions to form an almost perfect letter D. The particularly broad crossing path at the next junction runs along the old parish boundary between Eltham, later Mottingham, and Bromley. It also divided two Kentish hundreds: Eltham was in Blackheath hundred, while Bromley was in Bromley and Beckenham hundred. The woodland to the south is Elmstead Wood, a place name first recorded in 1320, which suggests there were more elm trees in those days than the oaks we see today. You meet the second, longer, circular walk here, the 1.9 km Mottingham Butterfly Trail, its points of interest highlighted on the onsite maps. Turning left at the junction on the Butterfly Trail connects with the Green Chain link to Elmstead Woods station, though we’ll deal with that on a later walk.
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| Twisted tree, Lower Marvels Wood. |
There’s another tree sculpture, this one partly painted, at the next junction, approaching the cemetery fence, but the best one is just beyond it: a spectacular depiction of the face of the Green Man, with an owl nesting in his hair and a falcon taking flight from his head. You can also sample the mural here, running along the fence a little further right. Grove Park Cemetery was opened by the former Metropolitan Borough of Lewisham in 1935. It’s since been listed as a landscape of historic interest by Historic England and includes 56 Commonwealth War Graves. Although much of the cemetery was originally in Bromley, the boundary was reconfigured in 1994 and it’s now entirely within Lewisham, with the boundary running along the fence.
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| Will Lee's vision of the Green Man in Marvels Wood. |
Our trail turns decisively south into Elmstead Wood, soon meeting another Green Chain branch which heads off left at a fingerpost: this is Section 9a to Chislehurst, and we’ll cover it as part of D5. Then, approaching the edge of the woodland with a fence ahead, the Butterfly Trail reconnects from the left: there’s a patch of sweet chestnuts here and more tree carvings. Beyond the fence is the South Eastern Main Line, built by the South Eastern Railway (SER) in 1865. The SER had connected London to Ashford, Folkestone and Dover since 1844 but originally via a roundabout route that first followed the London and Brighton Railway south from London Bridge to Redhill then turned east via Tonbridge to Ashford. The new line was opened as a much more direct route to Tonbridge, branching off at New Cross to run via Lewisham, Hither Green, Orpington and Sevenoaks.
The Green Chain continues to track the Lewisham boundary in
something of a green tunnel between the railway and the cemetery to reach
another path junction by a footbridge with a derelict but still unmistakably
Lewisham-style sign just to the right. Yet another Green Chain branch, Section
8a, starts here, continuing ahead through Chinbrook Meadows to Grove Park where
it connects with Section 8 and the Capital Ring. I’ll cover this as Green Chain
D5, but for the moment our route is across the railway, leaving Mottingham
Woods for the old Bromley manor of Sundridge.
Sundridge Park
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| Halls Farm, Sundridge Park. |
Though Bromley, as previously mentioned, was associated with the Bishops of Rochester, this part of it was long a separately recognised manor known as Sundridge. A form of the name, which likely means ‘detached arable field’, was first recorded in 987, and there’s another village with the same name elsewhere in Kent, near Ide Hill. In the mid-13th century, it was held by Peter de Blund, a member of an old Norman family and Constable of the Tower of London. Its transformation into a grand country estate began in 1679 when the manor house and its surroundings became Sundridge Park, the country seat of Thomas Washers of Lincoln’s Inn Fields in central London. Its old local name, Washers in the Woods, suggests how heavily wooded the area once was.
Between 1792 and 1800, under two different owners, the
estate was remodelled to a master plan drawn up by renowned landscape designer Humphry Repton (1752-1818), and the house demolished and rebuilt in
spectacular style to designs partly by John Nash (1752-1835), inspired by Classical
temples and incorporating a distinctive dome. The parkland later met the same
fate as Eltham Lodge, converted to Sundridge Park Golf Course in 1903, though
it’s still on the Register of Historic Park and Gardens. The house, now Grade I
listed, became a luxury hotel, before being converted to upmarket flats in 2019.
Sadly, it’s not visible from the trail: all you can see to the left from New
Street Hill, which the Green Chain now follows for some distance, is a golf
course that could be anywhere.
New Street Hill is nonetheless a quiet and pleasant leafy
street with substantial interwar houses lining the opposite side, and it’s soon
obvious you’re descending into a valley. At the bottom, we finally cross the
river Quaggy, which runs under the road in a pipe roughly outside no 39 before
emerging on the surface through the golf course. The river rises in Locksbottom
to the south as the Kyd Brook and flows roughly northwest 17 km through Petts
Wood (Loop 2) and Sundridge Park, through Chinbrook Meadows, the western parts
of Mottingham and Eltham and through Kidbrooke to join the river Ravensbourne
by Lewisham station. We’ll encounter it on several later walks. Its curiously
comical name is likely from an old adjective meaning muddy or marshy, related
to the word ‘quagmire’.
Eventually a pleasantly rural path branches off left, between the golf course and allotments, soon crossing quite a vigorous stream, another Quaggy tributary known as Milk Street Ditch. This originates underground just a short distance west on Milk Street, but doesn’t surface until it reaches the allotments, joining the Quaggy in the golf course. Milk Street is so named as it was originally the drive to a dairy farm, Halls Farm, attached to the estate: the allotments were actively used as fields until the mid-20th century. A big white Victorian house soon looms ahead to the right, the former farmhouse, now used as a children’s nursery: you can take a closer look by dodging a few metres down the path to the right at the end of the allotments. Beyond this is Halls Farm Scrub, all secondary woodland that’s grown up since agricultural use ceased in the 1950s, then a small recreation ground and tennis courts.
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| Milk Street Ditch flowing towards Sundridge Park. |
A footbridge takes you across another railway, the Bromley North branch line. This is one of the more obscure and quirky backwaters of London’s transport network, a legacy of wasteful Victorian competition. As a substantial regional centre just outside London, Bromley was an attractive destination for the railway companies, and its first station, now Bromley South, was opened by the London Chatham and Dover Railway (LC&DR) in 1858. The LC&DR’s arch-rival the South Eastern Railway (SER) was envious, and in 1878 tried to poach some of the LC&DR’s custom with a short 3.2 km branch line from Grove Park, on its main line, to a second station on the other side of the town centre, now Bromley North, with one intermediate stop at Sundridge Park.
Though the line was never extended further, it retained regular
direct services to London Bridge, Victoria and other central London terminals
until 1976, when these were reduced to peak hours only. Since 1990, to manage
congestion on the rest of the network, it’s been run entirely as a shuttle
between Grove Park and Bromley North, known to staff as the ‘popper’, though
the through connection is still in place and is sometimes used for trains
diverted by engineering work. Transport planners have considered revitalising
the line by converting it to a branch of the DLR or London Trams but for the
moment it remains a minor appendage, with no Sunday service, rare for a London
railway.
There’s a short street-based link here from where the path
emerges on Minster Road to Sundridge Park station on Plaistow Lane, which is
still much as it was in 1878, while the once-rural lane has become a pleasant
local high street with some attractive cafés. It’s a convenient place to break
the walk – except on a Sunday.
Plaistow
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| Kings Meadow, Plaistow, with wildflower meadow fenced on right. |
Peter Thellusson (1735-97), a City banker born to a Huguenot family in Geneva who was heavily involved in the slave trade and Caribbean sugar, bought the manor in 1777 and built a luxurious mansion, Plaistow Lodge, which we’ll shortly pass. His descendants began developing some of the land, and in 1864 Plaistow became a separate parish in response to complaints from the growing population that this distinction had already been extended to Bromley Common, on the south side of the town. A new church, St Mary’s, was provided south of the green. The railway stimulated further development.
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| Modest David Bowie plaque, Sundridge Park. |
One of the area’s most famous 20th century residents was musician, artist and actor David Bowie (1947-2016). Bowie, or David Jones as he was originally known, was born in Brixton, but moved to the area as a child with his family in 1953, initially to Bickley and then Bromley Common. In 1955, the Jones family moved into a modest terraced house at 4 Plaistow Grove, immediately west of Sundridge Park station, which has since been marked with a small blue plaque. Bowie lived here until 1969 with his parents and older half-brother Terry Burns, a major influence, though a troubled figure who also spent much time in psychiatric hospitals (see Coulsdon on Loop 5). So this was Bowie’s base for much of his early recording career, which began in 1964. His first album, David Bowie (1967), was likely written here, as was ‘The Laughing Gnome’.
Just to the right of where the Green Chain emerges on
Minster Road is Kings Meadow, originally a private pleasure ground provided by housing
developers in the 1920s. It later became a council recreation ground and was
rather a bland grassy space until relatively recently when a Friends
group got to work, creating among other things a wildflower meadow. A fence separates the meadow from Plaistow
Cemetery, opened by the local Burial Board in 1893 and now managed by Bromley
council. Besides 34 Commonwealth War Graves in the southeast corner, it's the
last resting place of Samuel Cawston, whom we’ll encounter when we reach
Bromley Hill.
A council walking and cycling route from Grove Park runs through the meadow, joining the Green Chain link to Sundridge Park station. Our route, though, is ahead along an alley called Nichol Lane, once a country track heading for a curious location known as Hollow Bottom which still has something of a rural flavour.
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| Hollow Bottom Cottage, Plaistow. |
By the junction with Foxbury Road on the left is Hollow Bottom Cottage, a tall, narrow Grade II-listed brick cottage that looks like it’s been sliced from a terrace but was built as a detached house in 1739. By the end of the 19th century, it was used as a gamekeeper’s cottage for Sundridge Park. Just beyond it on the left is the Prince Frederick, originally a weatherboarded alehouse opened in 1723, though the current pub is an 1890 rebuild with a 1930s makeover. Originally the Prince Fredericks Head, it’s the only pub of this name, commemorating the eldest son of George II, who died young in 1751, allegedly after being hit by a cricket ball.
At the bend on Foxbury Road you can also see the cemetery
between the houses on the right. The trail then crosses Burnt Ash Lane, with
Plaistow Green a short detour south and the church a little further along, then
continues along Park Avenue. Just past no 38 is a gate to the Parish Church of
England Primary School, which now occupies Peter Thellusson’s original Plaistow
Lodge, converted to a school in 1896 and now Grade II*-listed. It’s a grand
neo-Classical mansion with a particularly attractive wing featuring a large arched
window, but from the trail the houses completely block it from view, so if you
want a good look, you’ll need to detour along London Lane. Continuing past a
stinkpole on the corner of Kinnaird Avenue, you reach a triangle of grass on
the busy road known as Bromley Hill.
Bromley Hill
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| The Italian Villa on Elstree Hill, a rare reminder of the Bromley Hill estate. |
From the 17th century, proximity and direct
roads inevitably attracted wealthy Londoners seeking their own country estates.
One of these was Bromley Hill, to the northwest of the town, which spilled over
the parish boundary with Lewisham. Its northern access was a lodge on the main
road that was later rebuilt as a pub called the Garden Gate, so-called as it
was close to the boundary with Kent, ‘the garden of England’. Off our route to
the north, it’s since been converted to a McDonalds burger restaurant. From
here the estate filled the land between the Hastings Road, here also known as
Bromley Hill, and the river Ravensbourne south as far as Beckenham Lane.
A farmhouse overlooking the estate was rebuilt as Bromley
Hill House in the 1770s. Charles Long, later Baron Farnborough (1760-1838), a
lawyer, politician and close associate of sometime prime minister William Pitt
the Younger, bought it as a family home after marrying in 1793, and he and his
wife Amelia (1772-1837), developed house and grounds to their own designs.
Amelia, a watercolour artist of some note, created woodland gardens with water
features powered by various springs on the hillside. These were much admired by
celebrity visitors including George IV as well as the public, as the gardens
were opened weekly in summer.
The Longs’ descendants sold the estate in 1880 to a
wealthy local stockbroker, Samuel Cawston, mentioned earlier when we passed Plaistow
Cemetery. He soon began parcelling it out for development, initially for
upmarket villas aimed at middle class commuters. The big house still stands,
much altered and expanded and now used as a hotel, but there are few other
remnants of the estate, and Amelia’s gardens have been entirely obliterated.
The area retains a distinctive feel, though, and the steep slopes have
inhibited the dense suburban development seen elsewhere in the area. You can
read a bit more on the Ravensbourne Valley Residents website.
The trail reaches Bromley Hill just north of its junction
with the old lane to Plaistow, London Lane. The road forms part of the stretch
between New Cross and Farnborough which was turnpiked in 1719 by the New Cross
Turnpike Trust. It was designated A21 in the 1920s but is no longer classed as
a trunk road until it reaches Locksbottom south of Bromley.
Across the road the Green Chain enters the former Bromley
Hill estate. Oaklands Road was one of the roads laid out by Cawston to
facilitate development, while Coniston Road, which the trail follows north, was
a curvaceous path through open parkland. Note the rough surface: one curiosity
about this and several other estate roads is that by a quirk of land ownership
they’re ‘unadopted’, meaning that they’re owned jointly by the surrounding
properties and not maintainable by the council at public expense, though
highway rights still exist over them.
The Bromley Court Hotel, as it’s now called, is a little further up Coniston Road, but the Georgian mansion at its core is almost unrecognisable. Our trail follows Elstree Hill, once an access drive to its stables and outbuildings. On the rightwards bend you cross onto the Lewisham side of the old parish boundary with Bromley, also crossing from Bromley & Beckenham to Blackheath hundred. Lewisham was once part of the London County Council area, while Bromley remained in Kent, so until 1965 you’d once again been entering London here. The boundary was initially retained when Greater London was created but tweaking in 1994 moved Elstree Hill entirely into Bromley.
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| Former Bromley Hill stables on Elstree Hill, Bromley. |
The lane holds numerous intriguing features, not least of them the delightful strip of community garden tended by residents on the left just past the bend. Opposite this, the terrace of cottages with integral garages at nos 21-23 is a remnant of the Bromley Hill stables, and there’s another surviving structure set back from the street at no 13, the Grade II-listed Italian Villa. This began as a single storey summer house built for Amelia Long sometime after 1801, overlooking her Italian garden. It was rebuilt and much expanded in 1930 by R Alexander Young, the Lewisham district surveyor, an enthusiast for architectural salvage who incorporated various elements from demolished Victorian buildings.
The most obvious of these is the rather incongruous 1874 gateway arch fronting onto the street, rescued from the London School Board offices on Victoria Embankment near Somerset House, which had been pulled down the previous year. The gateway now seems disconnected to the villa thanks to the similarly noteworthy yellow buildings immediately behind it.
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| Elstree Hill, Bromley: displaced London School Board gateway (left) and Walter Segal self-build house. |
These are a pair of self-build houses designed by German-born architect Walter Segal (1907-85), who in the mid-1970s persuaded Lewisham council to support an experimental scheme where he worked with council tenants to build their own homes from his kits on sites unsuitable for large-scale development. The site here, still in Lewisham back then, was an outlier: there are more Segal houses at Walters Way in Honor Oak and Segal Close in Brockley. Segal’s work also inspired Britain’s first black housing coop to build Nubia Way, just off the Downham Woodland Walk on Ring 3. The history of self-build schemes since has been a patchy one: they don’t sit well either with the traditional social housing ethos or with today’s developer-led private-public model, but the largest such scheme yet is currently underway at Church Grove in Ladywell, also in Lewisham.
Madeira Avenue, on the left at the next junction, was
another estate drive. It’s worth detouring a few paces along it to note the
prominent wall separating the first house on the right from its neighbour: this
was the north wall of the Longs’ walled kitchen garden. The wall straddles the
Prime Meridian: the unofficial Greenwich Meridian Trail follows Madeira Avenue
and joins our walk for a while at the junction. You cross from the eastern to
the western hemisphere as you pass the first of the two garages next to 2
Elstree Hill on the left. Another short detour left on Warren Avenue reveals
the other end of the wall, even more prominent between nos 66 and 64.
A footpath now takes the trail across the flat floodplain at the bottom of the Ravensbourne valley, with the current boundary between Bromley and Lewisham running just to the right of the path. As often with urban rivers, the margins have been left undeveloped to avoid flood risk, but too many private playing fields block a continuous riverside trail. Until just after World War II, this was a more natural wetland, but was then drained, filled with rubble cleared from the Blitz and levelled to create the current grassy space. On the right (north) is Millwall FC’s training ground, while Warren Avenue Playing Fields on the left, though now in Bromley, is still managed by Lewisham.
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| River Ravensbourne, Warren Avenue Playing Fields, Bromley. |
The Ravensbourne marked the western boundary of the Bromley Hill estate. The river rises at Keston Ponds south of Bromley, beside Loop 3, and I’ve said more about its name and its spurious connection to Julius Caesar on my post about that walk. It flows for 17 km northwards via Bromley, Catford and Lewisham, where it’s joined by the Quaggy, to reach the Thames as tidal Deptford Creek between Greenwich and Deptford. It’s an important Thames tributary, and the closest one to central London that still runs entirely on the surface.
Historically, the west bank here was part of the separate,
but equally extensive, country estate of Beckenham Place. The patch of this
between the river and the railway was developed for housing in the interwar
period, despite the watery surroundings. Today, the buildings are quite a mix:
1930s Moderne-style semis mixed with more conventional houses of the period along
Ravensmead Road, plenty of 1960s flats and houses, and a late 2010s block to
the right where the path emerges onto the road. A few planters and patches of
earth alongside the path and on the corner of the driveway constitute the tiny
Ravensmead Community Garden, which when I last passed could have done with some
tender loving care.
The trail passes Ravensbourne station on the Catford Loop Line, opened by the London, Chatham and Dover Railway in 1892 as a relief for its Chatham Main Line from London Victoria. This used part of the 1865 Crystal Palace High Level line, which left the main line at Brixton, then branched off at Nunhead to run via Catford, Beckenham Hill and Ravensbourne, rejoining the main line just to the south of our route at Shortlands.
The rest of the Crystal
Palace line south from Nunhead has since closed and much of its trackbed is now
a footpath which we’ll follow on Green Chain D6. But the Catford Loop remains
open, now largely used by Thameslink trains linking London Blackfriars and
Elephant & Castle with Orpington and Sevenoaks. The original booking hall
at Ravensbourne burnt down in 1988 so the current one is modern, but the rest
of the station retains something of the rural Victorian feel it had when it
first served the commuters of Bromley Hill.
Beckenham Place Park
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| Beckenham Place Park's recently restored lake. |
Like Bromley Hill, it originated as a Georgian estate. Unlike
Bromley Hill, significant parts of it have survived as a coherent green space, though
parts of it were developed just as rapaciously. It was patched together between
1757 and the 1780s from land in both Lewisham and Beckenham parishes by John Cator (1728-1806), an immensely wealthy merchant and property investor from a
Quaker family. A keen amateur botanist, Cator introduced numerous exotic
species and supervised the landscaping himself. Cator’s successors developed the
southern and western tranches from the 1820s, but retained the mansion and its
immediate grounds, renting these out to tenants.
In 1905 most of the remaining park was remodelled as a golf course. In 1927 the London County Council bought the estate to protect it as green space for residents of the large social housing estate of Downham nearby (Ring 3), then under construction. The golf course was retained, becoming the first such facility in England under municipal management. When the LCC’s successor the Greater London Council was dissolved in 1986 the estate narrowly avoided privatisation and was eventually passed to the London Borough of Lewisham, who decided in 2016 that the golf course was no longer financially viable.
Since then, with the help of
lottery funding and a Friends group (sadly dissolved in 2023 but retaining a web presence), the entire park has been remodelled for
conservation and informal recreation in a gold standard example of how to regenerate
a neglected green space. Except in one respect: besides the Green Chain and the
Capital Ring, various shorter trails have been created, but no-one seems to
have devised a consistent signing plan. There are waymarkers in a confusing
variety of designs around every corner, but not always a Green Chain one when
you need it.
Just after the railway and before the park gate, the Green
Chain crosses the former boundary between Lewisham and Beckenham parishes, the
latter also in Blackheath and Beckenham hundred. Prior to 1965 you’d once again
be leaving London for Kent here, and until 1994 this was still the boundary
between Lewisham and Bromley. The realignment that year sensibly placed all the
park into Lewisham, a borough I introduced under Ring 2.
Inside the park, the path first runs through a strip of woodland between two fields. Crab Hill Field on the left (southeast), now the largest area of grassland in the park, was the site of an Italian prisoner of war camp during World War II. It was once known as Thistle Down but appears to have been renamed after the road we just followed, Crab Hill. This in turn was named after Crab Tree Field on Foxgrove Farm, one of the components of the estate to the southwest. On the other side is the former Lewisham Hills Field, so-called as it was always on the Lewisham side of the parish boundary, though after the Catford Loop was built through the park it became known as Railway Field.
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| Puddingstone, Beckenham Place Park. |
A few metres beyond the entrance on the right is a geological curiosity, a deposit of ‘puddingstone’ consisting of flint pebbles bonded in what appears to be cement. Although reminiscent of modern construction materials, it was formed 55 million years ago when the area was under a shallow sea and the calcareous remains of marine creatures glued the pebbles together, creating a geological layer known as the Blackheath Beds. There aren’t many places in London where the beds are so clearly exposed, but we’ll pass an even better example on Plumstead Common on walks D2.1 and D3.
Our trail follows the edge of Crab Hill Field then turns into the main wooded area, Summerhouse Hill Wood, a remnant of semi-natural woodland with oak, ash and beech that predates the estate’s creation. The Greenwich Meridian Trail, meanwhile, continues around the edge of the wood on an alternative route. Just inside the trees, close to a small pond, are two slim late 19th century bollards marking the parish boundaries of Beckenham and Lewisham indicating that you once would have been leaving the former and re-entering the latter here, returning to London as it was prior to 1965.
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| Parish boundary markers, Beckenham Place Park. |
Further on, a Green Chain fingerpost and information board marks the end of Section 9, with Section 8 and the Capital Ring approaching along the right-hand fork. To complete the walk satisfactorily at a station, we’ll need to duplicate Section 8 and the Ring here by forking left, but I’ve suggested a couple of diversions exploring some features not officially on either trail. The next 400 m or so are covered on Ring 3, but since I wrote that post, the lake, a decorative feature of the old park which was progressively drained during golfing days, has been magnificently restored as a swimming lake. The Meridian Trail rejoins where the Green Chain passes the southern tip of the lake, and just past this there’s a fine view of the mansion dominating the left-hand slope.
Just after the squirrel sculpture described on Ring 3 and a fine black mulberry tree likely dating from the early 19th century and once part of an orchard, I recommend a detour. First thread uphill through the Sensory Garden, created in 2010 with the help of a lottery grant and using plants that stimulate the various senses. It’s laid out in four sections around a central circle: scent on the left, with hearing behind it, and touch on the right with sight behind it, though as the online description points out, ‘some plants have attributes for more than one sense’.
This was once a rose garden which formed part of a larger complex of walled gardens stretching out to the right. The rest was restored and replanted as the Pleasure Gardens in 2019 and is worth an off-piste wander. Though today’s gardens are doubtless very different from anything John Cator would have created, they do at least nod to his botanical interests in incorporating a wide range of plants.
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| The Homestead, Beckenham Place Park, complete with mirrorball. |
Above the gardens is the Homestead, a Grade II-listed cluster of 1780s former stables and other utility buildings around a courtyard. The site was badly damaged in a fire in 2011 then restored and repurposed recently as an excellent café, bar and events venue, with an education centre, retail outlets and toilets. The main stable block, now housing the café and classrooms, has an attractive canopy and a cupola with clock. On the right (north) is the Garden Cottage with its projecting gable end and bay window, while the more modest buildings opposite once housed a brewhouse and ‘horse hospital’.
Following my suggested route, you won’t pass the mansion
itself, but you can detour a short distance left for a closer look once you’ve
left the Homestead. Now Grade II*-listed, it’s an imposing sight with its
massive portico. It’s still privately leased and isn’t in the best state of
repair, so is still regarded as ‘at risk’ by Historic England. On Sundays, a
street food and farmers’ market trades on the drive leading to the house.
New Beckenham
My alternative route and the Green Chain, Ring and
Meridian trails rejoin just before leaving the park as you pass another patch
of woodland, Scrumpshill Wood, on the right to emerge on Southend Road. Green
Chain Section 8 ends, and Section 10 begins, at the junction with Stumps Hill
Lane. Once again, I’ll refer you to Ring 3 for more information about
New Beckenham and its connection to the Cators, but if you didn’t detour to the
Edward VIII pillar box on the corner of Brackley Road while following the Ring,
here’s your opportunity. With this option, you’ll also bid an early farewell to
the Greenwich Meridian Trail, which follows Section 10 for a short distance
along Stump Hill Lane before heading north on Worsley Bridge Road.
From the pillar box, you can either stay on the main road to finish at Beckenham Junction station, or as I’ve suggested follow Brackley Road to rejoin the main route of the Ring and Section 10 at the junction with Worsley Bridge Road, continuing past St Paul’s Church and through the Copers Cope Road Conservation Area to New Beckenham station on the Hayes branch line.
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