A brief history of Chislehurst, with some speculation, by Roy Hopper
Chislehurst is an Anglo Saxon descriptive place name, a reference to its appearance, not to a founder. The first element, Chisel or Chesil, indicates a stony or gravelly place; the second element, hurst, indicates woodland. So Chislehurst literally means a stony wood, and this can still be confirmed by taking a walk across the common and amongst the trees, with eyes focused on the ground. The stones are geologically the Blackheath beds, forming a free-draining but rather poor soil. They are widespread in this area of Kent; Hayes Common comes to mind as another example. The original parish was very large, and included in its north-east quarter a substantial portion of what is now Sidcup, and to the south a similarly large part of the urban area now known as Petts Wood.
It is important to realise that although Chislehurst and Scadbury are Anglo Saxon descriptive names they do not necessarily indicate Anglo Saxon settlement at that time before the Norman Conquest. They describe the land as seen from outside, respectively a stony wood and a shady hill. It should be emphasised that it is not all dry stony soil; there are, as we shall see, small watery and more fertile areas suitable for early settlements. Overall it is fundamentally within an area of ancient occupation. The Cray valley settlement began very early, and archaeology has revealed some Palaeolithic traces and occupation from the Neolithic and Iron ages onwards. The website of ODAS, Orpington District Archaeological Society, is worth exploring for details: check www.odas.org.uk Within the Chislehurst area there is some slender evidence of possible Roman or Romano-British use of the chalk, based on the discovery in 1857 (reported in Webb’s History of Chislehurst, and Archaeologia Cantiana) of an ancient chalk pit next to the old quarry at the bottom end of Lubbock Road. Bromley, Mottingham and Eltham were all established before Chislehurst was fully settled. In those days land belonged to the king, and he gave much of it to the church.
We first hear of Chislehurst as a place on the boundary of land in Bromley given by the king to St Andrew’s Priory, Rochester. At that time it is likely that most of what later became Chislehurst parish was entirely rural, typically woodland, with some open spaces, part of the king’s hunting ground and thinly populated. Historical records indicate that Chislehurst was at that time part of the Royal Manor of Dartford. This probably explains why Chislehurst does not appear in William of Normandy’s Domesday Book survey of his lands and other property in 1086. Chislehurst church is first mentioned in 1089 as part of a gift of several churches to the monks at St Andrew’s Priory, by which time it is supposed that there was some settlement in the area.
Any settlements would have been adjacent to water supplies. The woodland, which was of great value as timber for building and for fuel, and pannage for pigs, was probably in the care of a bailiff working on behalf of Dartford manor, and some of this woodland might well have been the present day Petts Wood, adjacent to the Kyd Brook. It is a wet area. In autumn the woodland floor here is smothered in acorns and beechmast, traditional food for pigs. It is very likely that there were a few scattered farms or hamlets on the more fertile soils within and surrounding the widespread dry stony Blackheath beds, which remained as waste or common ground. Tong Farm within the Kyd Brook valley (now the National Trust Hawkwood estate), could be a very early settlement site, and also, farther upstream, the area now occupied by the Petts Wood town area, a very watery district in medieval times, where the ancient moated Manor of Town Court once flourished. Farther north we have the Kemnal Road area, as a likely precursor of the later Kemnal manor, where a small stream still flows north towards Sidcup. The area where Frognal was to develop is another good site. This important settlement was founded on the ‘spring line’ where the stony Blackheath beds terminate over the underlying clay, and springs of fresh water can flow; note that Frognal Avenue becomes ‘Watery Lane’ farther down towards Foots Cray. Scadbury and Town Court were also on the same spring line. Factors determining population growth are many and varied, but the valuable woodland, its manorial status and its probable resident bailiff, the arrival of the church and ultimately the advent of a resident lord at Scadbury, have all to be taken into consideration.
The position of the church is significant. It stands on the highest part of the Common, about 300 feet (100 metres) above sea level, near the junction of the main roads that ran from Eltham to the Cray Valley and Bromley to Bexley. The dedication of the church to St Nicholas, a patron saint of travellers, may be significant. With the advent of the church came the parish, an Anglo Saxon method of ensuring fair division of the land and its produce for the benefit of the church. This in its turn would have led to further settlement, so that by the thirteenth century, when population levels were generally rising, there was a thriving community and Chislehurst village within its parish became established, with a resident lord of the manor at Scadbury. Kemnal manor was also occupied by this time. It must be reiterated that much of the foregoing is speculation, based upon the general trends of population growth in southern England at that time.
There were three manors within the ancient parish: Chislehurst, Kemnal, and Scadbury. Chislehurst is first mentioned in an Anglo Saxon footnote to a Latin Charter of AD 973 as being on the King's boundary. This appears to be a reference to its known status as an appendage of the Royal Manor of Dartford. The charter itself is of interest, as it grants land in Bromley to the monks of St Andrew's Priory in Rochester, which led to the founding of the Bishop's Palace in Bromley. Apart from Chislehurst, other places mentioned around the boundary are Crofton, [West] Wickham, Beckenham, Bellingham and Mottingham. In 1611, Thomas Walsingham IV, Lord of the Manor of Scadbury, purchased Dartford Manor and promptly sold most of it, but retained Chislehurst, and thus became Lord of both Scadbury and Chislehurst Manors.
Apart from this ancient Manor of Chislehurst, there were two others that appear to have developed from it, Kemnal and Scadbury. Kemnal Manor began as a land grant by Henry II to Monks at Havering in Essex about 1159; they gradually increased their holdings of land in the area and used the produce and income to support their priory at Hornchurch. In 1391 the Manor was purchased by William of Wykeham, and used to endow his New College at Oxford. There is no adequate explanation of the name, which it is thought may be of Celtic origin. Neither Kemnal nor Chislehurst ever had a resident Lord of the Manor; Kemnal was held by New College until the 1870s, and Chislehurst, until its purchase in 1611, was one of many 'grace and favour' manors bestowed by a grateful sovereign upon a deserving favourite, who 'held' it, with many others, at a distance. Neither manor ever had a true manor house as such; 'The Manor House' in Chislehurst is an example of Victorian prestige naming of a genuinely old timber framed house, and although there was a bailiff's house at Kemnal, it was also not a true manor house; a late Victorian house built there was named 'Kemnal Manor' by its owner. This has gone, but Foxbury, built nearby for Henry Tiarks in 1875, remains as one of many splendid Victorian houses to be seen in Chislehurst.
Scadbury Manor is somewhat different. It is the one and only true home of the local Lord of the Manor. It lies on the eastern boundary of Chislehurst Parish, on the top of the slope overlooking the Cray Valley. Its name is also descriptive Anglo Saxon, and was first thought to indicate some kind of early fortification on a boundary. A theory about an Anglo Saxon thane was put forward. More reasonably, in the light of recent archaeology, it could equally be taken to mean a shady hill, which is how it would have been seen from the Cray Valley. The elements that make up the name, Scead and burgh, are both capable of several fine shades of meaning.
Archaeological evidence points towards settlement there some time in the early to mid thirteenth century, by which time there is plentiful evidence of considerable general settlement in the parish. The de Scathebury family were the first recorded settlers at Scadbury; their name simply suggests that they took it from the place where they settled. It is possible that they were granted an amount of land, perhaps by the King, or by the church and made additional acquisitions by purchase or leasehold from Kemnal Manor; much later documentary evidence indicates that Scadbury was 'held of the Manor of Kemnal' for a long time. They were either made, or became, resident Lords of the Manor, and appear to have been quite wealthy. A lay subsidy (a tax on goods and property) in 1301 indicates that John de Scathebury was by far the richest man in the Parish, his goods being valued at £22 3s. The owners of Kemnal were the next wealthiest, their valuation being £6 10s 2d.
The de Scathebury family faded away in the later fourteenth century, and the Walsingham family moved to Scadbury in 1424, expanding their property with further local purchases. They were succeeded by the Bettenson family about 1657, the Selwyns in 1733, and the Townshends in 1751, by which time Scadbury moated manor had been demolished. Frognal, the estate on the northern boundary of Scadbury, became the home of successive Lords, until the death in 1914 of Robert Marsham-Townshend. Frognal then became a hospital for wounded servicemen, and later was the nucleus of Queen Mary's Hospital. After the Great War the Marsham-Townshend family moved back to Scadbury and lived in a Victorian house near the moated site. In the 1920s the building of the A20 Sidcup Bypass road cut the old parish into two unequal parts and created an increasingly effective barrier between them. The creation of Chislehurst & Sidcup Urban District Council in 1934 did little to reunite the area. In 1965 the A20 became the boundary between the new London Boroughs of Bexley and Bromley. Following the death in 1975 of John Marsham-Townshend, the last resident Lord of the Manor, the estate was bought in 1983 by the London Borough of Bromley and became a public park, and is now also managed as a farm and nature conservation area. Since 1986 Orpington District Archaeological Society (ODAS) has been excavating the moated site, and the immediately surrounding 'mainland.'
The need to protect the Commons
Chislehurst remained a quiet rural parish until the advent of the railway in the 1860s. Then, with the added influence in the 1870s of the French Imperial family in exile at Camden Place, growth was very rapid. This growth lasted well into the twentieth century, with considerable housing estates being erected on farmland to the north of the High Street before and after the Second World War. In all this, the Commons remained inviolate. Concern about encroachment by Lord Camden on the Commons was first vigorously expressed and then opposed by the public in the eighteenth century. Further and more serious threats to the Commons from building activities arose in the mid nineteenth century, and in 1886 and 1888, thanks to more vigorous local action, Acts of Parliament were passed to secure the Commons against further encroachment and damage. Later, in the 1920s, again thanks to spirited public support, the first steps were taken to secure from development the ancient woodland known as Petts Wood. Later still, in the 1950s, the neighbouring Hawkwood estate was also secured and both properties are now managed by the National Trust. Together with the Commons and Scadbury Park, they form a wide green wedge between Chislehurst, of which they are a part, and the urban area of Orpington to the south. Click here to see the website of the Trustees of the Commons
Thus, although suburbia and South East London press hard on Chislehurst's northern flanks, and though much of Chislehurst itself is very suburbanised, it still manages to retain a great deal of its once rural character. For well over 100 years there has existed locally a great sense of pride that Chislehurst is just that bit different from its neighbouring parishes and towns. Architectural historian Niklaus Pevsner said that 'Chislehurst is no ordinary suburb.' This impression is enhanced by the widely varied housing to be found, ranging from timber framed buildings of sixteenth and seventeenth century date to large Victorian mansions such as Foxbury, and Camden Place, a Victorian enlargement of an eighteenth-century house. The housing boom that followed the arrival of the railway left a legacy that includes some fine examples of Victorian and Edwardian architect-designed houses in Arts and Crafts and Neo-vernacular style, including some by Ernest Newton, Sir Aston Webb, Sir Ernest George, and E J May. There are some 50 listed buildings in the area, and a further 85 or more that are locally listed because they add so much character to the area. In the 1970s much of Chislehurst became a Conservation Area, and this has been extended in more recent years.
Here, then, is the legacy that the Chislehurst Society strives to preserve and enhance.
Roy Hopper