Bromley Gloss - London Borough of Bromley - Current, Upcoming, Historic

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Bromley Gloss - London Borough of Bromley - Current, Upcoming, Historic

LONDON BOROUGH OF BROMLEY! PLUS occasional pieces on ANYTHING from ANYWHERE. You Can Share EVERYTHING Local Bromley Borough & there Abouts to This Page.

This Page: facebook.com/BromleyGloss Featuring LONDON BOROUGH OF BROMLEY plus occasionals about ANYTHING from ANYWHERE. Photos, Videos, Gems, Legends, Info, History, Nostalgia, Topical, News, Muses, Music, People, Artists; Places, Facts, Memories, Long Lost, Alternative; Surprises, Stores, Stories, Sport, Fashion; Events, Comedy, Nightlife, Nightclubs; Pubs, Peculiarities, Pick'n'Mix! All the Bes

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Debz: facebook.com/dzadewalsh
Page Founder/Manager/Editor/Narrator, Researcher - Historical/Topical, Post Creator, Administrator, Videographer/Photographer. Bjorn: Page Researcher, Videographer, Photographer
Dave: Page Researcher; Historical Detail, Current Affairs. Lucas: Page Researcher; Historical Detail, Current Affairs.

17/07/2026

🏠 TOWER HOUSE, TWEEDY ROAD, BROMLEY Lost to the Highway.

Then and now. The first photo shows Tower House (nameplate is on the building) which stood on the corner where College Road meets Tweedy Road, in Bromley North.

It was plaster-coated Victorian detached property with prominent hexagonal corner bay windows with a cone shaped "witch's hat" turret tower.

The house was demolished shortly after this photo was taken, in the late 1980s or early 1990s. It was cleared by Bromley council to facilitate the road-widening project that expanded Tweedy Road into the modern multi-lane layout leading straight into Kentish Way. That section of College Road was, back then, a two way street, but later made into a one-way system.

🌳Then/Now - One photo taken in winter and one in summer, but interesting to note how much greener that part of College Road is now.

The exact footprint of Tower House was never built over. Instead, it remains an open space, forming the wide pedestrian pavement and the grassy corner island.

The photograph was taken in 1989 by photographer Nigel Sims.

17/07/2026

⛪️ The original Parish Church of St Peter and St Paul on Church Road, Bromley BR1, and a newspaper cutting regarding the post WW2 rebuild.

Dating back to medieval times, the church was extensively enlarged in 1830 to accommodate a rapidly growing Victorian-era Bromley population.

Tragically, during the Blitz on the night of 16 April 1941, the building sustained a direct hit from a German Luftwaffe bomb. A devastating blast that completely gutted the main structure, leaving only the 14th-century flint stone tower, remarkably still standing amidst the rubble.

After the war the community rallied to rebuild, choosing a design by architect J. Harold Gibbons that honored the site's rich heritage. To retain a tangible connection to their history, builders extensively recycled salvaged flints and building stones from the ruins of the bombed church.

On 13 October 1949, Princess Elizabeth (the future Queen Elizabeth II) visited the the town to cheering crowds, to personally lay the new foundation stone.

17/07/2026

🏢 CHANGING FACE OF WIDMORE ROAD and the grand estate sacrificed to build the Co-op Department Store.

* BROMLEY LODGE Photos show Widmore Road in the late Victorian era near Market Square. The low walled structure to the left is the gateway to the historic Bromley Lodge Estate—occupied at the time by the Bromley Constitutional Club (a members-only political and social hub)—sitting alongside the towering Gothic spires of Bromley Congregational Church. This landscape was totally transformed FIRST by demolition of Bromley Lodge for the 1930s Co-op department store development and later by destruction of the church in the 1941 Blitz of WW2.

* WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUND - The landmarks we treasure today were built on the footprints of places that meant equally as much to the generations before us. What we consider most historic now is a reflection of the town we encountered growing up. But what is broadly unacknowledged and brushed under the carpet is that the buildings we cherish were often built at the expense of former historic landmarks.

* ART DECO CO-OP Many long-term Bromley residents will warmly recall the grand Art Deco Co-op Department Store, and it is completely understandable that they view its loss as a significant shift in the town’s heritage. Yet, before the Co-op became a familiar icon, it was the new kid on the block, the johnny come lately, much like the Glades was in the early 1990s, Co-op was constructed right bang on top of an entirely different history. In the early 1930s in order to erect the new Co-op, builders cleared well over a century of history: Bromley Lodge, grand stately 1792 Georgian villa.

* COOP WAS EMBRACED 🖤 Interestingly at the time replacing the prominent almost 140-year-old ancestral estate with a Department Store wasn't recorded as a matter of local dispute; it appears to have been seen as the next natural step for a growing commercial centre, and like the Glades, upon opening it was immediately embraced by the local and wider community.

* TODAY this stretch of road features the modern United Reformed Church and a major entrance to The Glades Shopping Centre via Boots. Evidence suggests that the current church sits on the footprint of the old Co-op Department Store. Meanwhile, the shopping centre's main Widmore Road entrance occupies the site of the former Congregational Church.

💬 What are your fondest memories of the old Art Deco Co-op? Do you have stories passed down from parents or grandparents who remember the town as it was in the 1920s, or during the pre-war years?

13/07/2026

🏛️ THE CRYSTAL PALACE TERRACES - RESTORATION UPDATE

SCALE: We finally got a proper look at the Italian Terraces today and snapped a few photos. Standing back and looking across the entire length of beautiful stonework, you really get a proper sense of the sheer scale and how it must have felt when the Crystal Palace was actually there. It is amazing to think this is the actual masonry that survived the 1936 fire, plus having the massive Joseph Paxton bust back at the top is fantastic.

WORK IN PROGRESS: That said, it is still a work in progress. Structurally it’s almost there, but there remains a massive amount of landscaping left to do. They still need to lay down all the fresh turf, plant the wildflower meadows, and sort out the new lighting and drainage.

STEP FREE ACCESS: If you are looking at this wondering how on earth you are supposed to get up and down there without using the giant stone stairs, two brand-new step-free footpaths and ramps are being woven directly into the landscaping to make the whole area fully accessible.

FOUNTAINS: For anyone wondering about the original water basins and fountains—they won't be restored to action unfortunately. Rebuilding Paxton's legendary high-pressure fountain system from scratch would dwarf the park's current restoration budget and be economically impossible today. The focus right now is on preserving the historic stone and keeping it dry with new underground drainage.

The whole makeover runs until late this year, so it is going to look a bit raw for a while longer. Still, it is already a massive step forward for the park.

13/07/2026

⛲️CLEANING THE CRYSTAL PALACE: WORLD'S BIGGEST GLASSHOUSE! Window cleaners of the Crystal Palace had a terrifying, dizzying job, which they handled magnificently. They were responsible for washing 293,000 panes of glass held together by cast iron. Because the Palace relied entirely on natural daylight to illuminate the exhibitions inside, keeping the glass clear of London’s thick, coal-fired smog was a functional necessity — if the windows got dirty, the interior literally went dark. This forced a permanent, full-time crew to risk their lives daily.

* NO SAFETY GEAR: Workers scaled the 100-foot-tall glass arches predominantly without ropes, harnesses, or safety nets.

* GUTTER SLIDERS: Cleaners sat in custom wooden carts that rolled directly along the iron gutters between the glass ridges.

* CLEANING TECHNIQUE: They used simple water, vinegar, and rags to scrub away thick layers of pigeon droppings, grease, grim and coal soot.

* INFINITE LOOP: The building was over 1,800 feet long. It was a relentless Forth Bridge type of task—by the time the crew finished cleaning the last window at one end, the first one was already dirty.

* CONQUERING THE INNER WALLS: While working on the roof was treacherous, the interior presented its own problems. Millions of visitors, gas lamps, steam engines, animals and more filled the air inside with dust and condensation. To clean the inside windows, crews used interior scaffolding to wipe down the lower vertical walls and gallery partitions. Armed with extended brushes and cloths, they cleared away the soot that drifted upward from the exhibition floor.

* SELF-CLEANING CEILING: The towering, 108-foot central roof was too high for internal scaffolding. To solve this, Sir Joseph Paxton pitched the glass at a precise angle so that internal condensation naturally slid down into hidden gutters, minimising the need to ever clean the massive ceiling from the inside.

* ULTIMATE JOB SECURITY: This never-ending cycle was the ultimate employment stability. In that harsh economic climate, this perpetual loop of grime was actually a jackpot. While other labourers faced brutal seasonal layoffs and unpredictable day rates, the Palace crew had guaranteed, permanent employment and a steady paycheck.

* UP IN SMOKE: The security they enjoyed for decades vanished in a single night. When the building tragically burned down on 30 November 1936, it was an absolute catastrophe for the workforce. News broadcasters of the day sombrely noted that the fire was a tragedy to the insurance companies, and above all, "a tragedy to the window cleaning profession" as palace employees were instantly thrown out of work, watching their livelihoods go up in flames.

11/07/2026

➰THE BROMLEY DRAMA LOOP - 150 YEARS OF COMPLAINING ABOUT BUILDINGS. This top snapshot from the late 1980s captures the massive construction site of The Glades Shopping Centre right before it changed Bromley Town Centre forever. It turns out human nature never alters: we always fight against change, fall in love with it, and then find something else to complain about.

* VICTORIAN PROGRESS: When an army of Victorian builders first showed up with their bricks and mortar, many 19th-century locals were devastated to lose their beautiful, beloved green fields and wonderful views. It was all "green belt" once, but that didn't stop the town from expanding right over it.

* PRE-GLADES PANIC: Fast forward to the 1980s, and many fiercely resisted losing those exact same Victorian streets. Campaigners formed the Heart of Bromley Residents Association, writing angry letters to local papers to protest the planned "Elmwood Shopping Centre" (working title for The Glades) and the demolition of Lownds Avenue and The Chase etc for what they feared would be an ugly concrete monolith. The ultimate punchline? Lownds Avenue had already been partialy ruined at one end by ugly 1960s block structures anyway.

* 1991 HONEYMOON: Yet, the second The Glades opened on Tuesday 22 October 1991, the entire town changed its tune and became obsessed with it. Instead of the dark, brutalist concrete block everyone feared, it turned out to be the exact opposite—a bright, airy, glass-roofed palace. Almost everyone genuinely loved it from day one, making it an instant, massively popular mega-hit.

* MODERN PIVOT: It is only in recent years that some locals, and particularly ex-locals, have regularly started treating The Glades to classic online rants😴, as if they didn't spend the 1990s loving every bit of it.

* THE ULTIMATE IRONY: A resident originally chose the title "The Glades" in a naming contest to honour the town's wooded past — the very trees their ancestors in the 1800s complained about losing!

* MORE DRAMA: Peeking out in the upper right corner is the Churchill Theatre, the current epicenter of local hand-wringing. The central library inside it has officially closed its doors to move into the old Topshop building on the High Street — keeping Bromley’s infinite loop of architectural musical chairs, and the inevitable public outrage, beautifully alive.

10/07/2026

London/Midlands-based mariachi band Beato Burrito bringing vibes to the Bromley Motor Show last Sunday 5 July 2026. This cover of Hotel California is great, but their later jaunty version of The Smiths ‘Girlfriend in a Coma’ was the mashup we never knew we needed😄. Genius🎸

10/07/2026

HAYES STATION APPROACH 1974. This June 1974 photo shows the classic sweeping curve of Station Approach, which grew into the main shopping hub for Hayes after the railway line was electrified in 1925. On the right is a great look at the mismatched architecture of the parade. The mock-Tudor gabled shops went up first in 1931, while the plainer brick units further down were finished just before the war in 1939. The tree-filled central reservation dividing the road was a design choice by the old Bromley Rural District Council, featuring the 1960s modernist geometric street lighting that replaced the traditional, shorter ornate cast-iron street lamps of the 1930s. At the time of this photo, the bustling row was lined with familiar high street names, including local branches of Boots and Woolworth's.

10/07/2026

1974 BROMLEY HIGH STREET: DEPARTURES MID-1980s – EARLY 1990s. This June 1974 snapshot captures a slice of ordinary, everyday high street life along a bustling Bromley High Street, long before its modern pedestrianisation. Dominating the foreground is London Transport’s red RT-type double-decker bus on route 94, navigating traffic on its way toward Petts Wood Station. A hint of the summer heat is on display on the bus, where practically every top deck window has been cranked wide open to catch a nice breeze. It's a shame you can't open top deck front windows like that on modern buses, given how hit-and-miss today's onboard air conditioning can be.

The photo captures 1970s suburban life, showing ordinary residents navigating narrow pavements amid the era's signature haircuts, flared trousers, and prominent street signage. To the right, the street is lined with the decade's typical retail staples, including the Dixons electrical outlet, Barratts shoe store, and Martin Ford ladies' clothing boutique. These familiar household names left Bromley High Street decades in the past. The trendy Martin Ford storefront closed down in the mid-1980s, while Dixons closed this traditional high street branch around the late 1980s before the wider chain transitioned into modern, out-of-town retail formats. Barratts outlasted the others but eventually left Bromley High Street when its unit closed down in the late 1980s or early 1990s—meaning the local closure happened long before the national corporate collapse finally hit the brand in the 2000s.

Credit: Antony Milne

10/07/2026

EDWARDIAN BROMLEY. These two postcards are roughly dated to the mid-to-late Edwardian era, between 1905 and 1912. They capture everyday life in East Street Bromley Town Centre, showing the practical realities of a bustling early 20th-century road. The scenes illustrate a noisy, transitional era featuring horse-drawn carts, early bicycles, and pedestrians all sharing the same stone-surfaced road, backdropped in the top photo by a hand-painted brick advertisement for the Daily Mail. While the long coats, heavy wool skirts, and formal hats worn by the residents might look dressed up to modern eyes, this was simply the functional attire of the period, worn by ordinary working people to handle the chilly weather and muddy street conditions. It shows residents going about their daily chores, perhaps on their way to browse local shops and market stalls. It includes a nice shot of Hinton Confectioner with its large awning, while the prominent old municipal building seen at the top of West Street is now home to the Alan de Maid estate agency.

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