Thames Tributary Ravensbourne - South End

Thames Tributary Ravensbourne
The Ravensbourne continues to flow northwards and curving slightly west.

Post to the west Bellingham
Post to the south Beckenham Place Park

Beckenham Hill Road
The Meadows Estate. An estate built in 1990 with brick terraces and curving roads. It replaced the Flower House Estate of c1950, which was more traditional. Five older blocks have been retained and incorporated in the new estate
Flower House. Big house named for its 18th owners. In the 20th it became a private lunatic asylum and was demolished in 1944, after bomb damage, and replaced by the Flower House estate
Beckenham Hill Station 1st July 1892. Between Ravensbourne and Bellingham on South Eastern Trains. A station on the ‘Catford Loop’ by the Shortlands and Nunhead Railway. It still retains its original red brick gabled building of 1892 on its 'up' side. In 1959 it was still gas lit. It was the quietest station until Bellingham was built.
Lodge for Beckenham Place Park

Bromley Hill
Main road through a farming area. In 1910 there were walls made of local conglomerate pudding stone.
Pillar box. ED VIII, made by Carron ironworks.
The Hall, had stood where Whitefoot Lane joins Bromley Road, since the 18th. It was the home of the Forster family who from c 1800 were amongst the largest landowners in the area. Henry William Forster (1866-1936), later Lord Forster, was the MP for Bromley 1892-1919. The family left the area c1914, though Lord Forster donated land for the new church and rectory, and the land for the Forster Memorial Park. Demolished in 1937.
The Annunciation and St Augustine Church, a circular Roman Catholic church 1964 by Raglan Squires. It is red brick, with zig-zag clerestory windows and a central lantern with copper fins.
School and school house in rural Victorian Gothic

Bromley Road
St.John's Church. The entrance through an iron arch with Art Nouveau detail. Church, of 1928 by Sir Charles Nicholson. It is brick, with Gothic features. It is very big and light with a wooden roof with 150 gilt bosses, each different. The north aisle is a Forster memorial chapel with monuments to John Forster 1834; Elizabeth Forster 1837 by Robert Sievier, and Harriet Forster 1839, all from the old chapel. Memorial with an effigy in military uniform by Cecil Thomas to John and Alfred Forster who died in the 1914-18 War.
St John. An old chapel with Tuscan porch and cupola is used as a parish hall. It is the former chapel for the hamlet of Southend and a proprietary chapel for the Forster family built in 1824.
Rectory. Designed by Charles Nicholson 1921.
Milestone near the Green Man,
355 The Green Man, a large pub, rebuilt c1935 in neo-Georgian and mock-Tudor. There was a pub here in the 18th in a small cottage. It became a popular after the tramway arrived in 1914. The courtyard façade is Grade II listed. Horse trough stood here early 19th. Closed and derelict.
Upper Mill – this stood south of the junction with Beckenham Hill Road on the Ravensbourne. This was a corn mill, and a large millpond. It closed in the 1880s.
Obelisk fountain with four bowls at the junction of Beckenham Hill Road and Bromley Road. To commemorate the diamond jubilee of Queen Victoria and given by residents of Southend Village and their friends.
Homebase Store. Designed by Harold Hamilton 1984. It is reminiscent of the old Crystal Palace with a glazed barrel-vaulted roof over a central nave is linked to a glazed entrance. There are figures of flying birds flying above, The Garden Centre is separate but also glazed conservatory and overhangs the pond.
Millpond - Peter Pan's pool. Part of the Sainsbury's Homebase DIY store, was once used for watering the horses from the pub. Now called the Homebase Pond. It has fountains and an island in the middle containing a sculpture -The Whisper by Andre Wallace 1984 - of a couple sitting on a fence. This was the millpond of the Lower Mill
Lower Mill. On the corner of Southend Lane. The first mill on the site was a corn-mill, but by 1709 it was used by Ephraim and John How, pioneers in British cutlery manufacture. By 1810 it was a mustard mill, before becoming a corn-mill later in the 19th. The mill had two storeys, dated 1865. In the middle ages it was called Knapenmill, Livingsmill, or Strathotesmill. Remains there until very recently.
350 Tiger's Head. The How family occupied a house on the site, but the pub here been called, ‘Radd's House’, ‘Miller's House’, ‘Green Man’ and ‘King's Arms. It had a collection of wooden shoe inserts. It was refurbished in 1974; but has since become Closed and derelict.
Toilets between the church and the Green Man, underground and demolished 1988,
Toilets at the bottom of Oakridge Road, demolished.
Green area at the bottom end of Downham Way was set aside as a memorial to the people of Downham in the Second World War. Toilets were put here and following protests the memorial was moved.

Downderry Road
Houses - London County Council experimental steel frame houses. Were built and also some concrete cottages four 'Prefacto' houses, built using a system of 'factocrete' units - by the London and Eastern Prefacto Company.

Dunfield Road
St. Augustine’s Catholic Primary School. The school opened in September 1928 worshippers came under the Parish of St Philip Neri Sydenham, and mass was celebrated in the school hall.

Old Bromley Road
Garden Gate pub. Closed.
Horse trough in concrete., Design brought in the 1930s. Since used for flower displays. Two other more modern troughs at either end of the road in pink concrete.

Ravensbourne
Greens on either side of the river, with banks of a natural appearance
The river runs in an underground culvert from west of the Homebase pond.
Tributary from a pond in a meadow in Plaistow. In 1910 this went under the road in a pipe to Mr. Perry at the Upper Mill.
A second tributary. In the spring of 1910 these two springs had more water than the main stream

Sedgehill Road
Sedgehill School. Status Quo all went there

Southend Lane
241 Bonnies. Pub closed and burnt down

Southend Village
Victorian cottage Gothic school, school house London County Council estate 1920s/30s

Waterbank Road

Watermead Road

Whitefoot Lane,
The slope in the road is the east bank of the old Ravensbourne.
Pond in recreation ground

Comments

kate said…
I discovered your blog in trying to find some info about that Homebase store that looks like the Crystal Palace ... remarkable! Thanks for providing all this info.

Popular posts from this blog

Bromley by Bow

South Norwood

River Lea/Bow Creek Canning Town