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Bromley
Bromley maps
Historic maps of Bromley and the local area, hand-drawn by Ordnance Survey and Samuel Lewis. View all Bromley maps
Bromley Jigsaws
We have just a few copies left of a 1,000 piece Jigsaw of Bromley. The featured photograph is High Street 1957, Bromley.
Why not create your own Jigsaw for Bromley from 4 favourite Frith photos of the area? Available as 520 piece or 1,000 piece Jigsaws, you can choose any four Bromley photos, or choose photos from other places too.
Bromley area books
Displaying 1 of 14 books about Bromley and the local area. View all books for this area
You can read extracts and browse photos from these books.
Memories of Bromley
Displaying a selection of personal
memories of Bromley.
There are 24 shared memories to read.
Add your memory of Bromley
or of a photo of Bromley.
THE BLITZ
My Mother returned from a visit with her Mother to the Odeon Cinema in Petts Wood at 11 pm on Wednesday 16th April 1941, to find my father extinguishing, with sand from a bucket, an incendiary bomb behind our semi-bungalow at 154 Pickhurst Lane, Hayes. They heard more bombs falling and lay down with buckets over their heads. A 500-kg landmine came down though the head of my bed upstairs (decapitating me if I had been there) and into my parents' bedroom just six feet from where I was lying on a mattress at the foot of their bed. If the bomb had exploded, we would all have died - and if we had all been in our own beds, we would also have died. Suction, caused by the fall of the bomb, lifted the built-in fireplace in my parents' bedroom and slammed it onto their bed. It exploded at 1:30 pm on Friday 18th, leaving nothing of... Read more
Wolf And Hollander
There were a few sizeable department stores in Bromley, including Harrison Gibson and Wolf and Hollander (whose flag you can see waving on the left). I am pretty sure it was Wolf and Hollander that suffered an extraordinary fire in the early 1960's - the smoke was visible for miles around. I was in the crowd watching it from the street itself - a significant operation with many firemen struggling to control the blaze, which lasted for hours.
Concert in Blake's Park West Wickham 1964
I was at the concert in Blake's Recreation Ground and I was only 10 years old at the time! I went with my sister, who was a few years older. We were right near the front and I remember being so close to Paul Jones I could have touched him! David (my old class mate!) is right, there was some trouble about it at the time and the bloke who organised it (from the local record shop in the High Street) went bust as a result. What was the record shop called? The problem was that there weren't many people there and a lot of those who were there found it too easy to get in without paying.
Does Anyone Remember...
It is my Dad's 65th birthday soon and when he was younger he was in a band called The Burnettes with Brian Vickers, Colin Fisher and Trevor French. They played at The West Wickham festival in 1964 at Blake Recreation ground amoungst other places around the area. If you remember them or have any old programmes, posters or photos then please get in touch as I would like to make him something special for his birthday this July (2012).
Thanks!
Department Store Fire
I remember the fire very well: I was about seven or eight and shopping in Bromley with my mother that day. For a little while, we stood and watched the fire engines arrive and the firemen rushing about. As we were heading back to the car park in Swan Hill, we heard two elderly ladies excitedly describing to some people what they'd seen and their experience of trying to get through the crowds in the the High Street. One said they'd been been trying to pass but a policemen wouldn't let them ".... and we was all converted". It's gone down in my family's stock of sayings and we still describe any kind of diversion as being 'converted'.
MANFRED MANN/MERSEYBEATS GIG IN WEST WICKHAM
Re Malcolm's question 'does anyone remember the gig?'. I do. I was 10 and had no interest in music at that time and my parents hated pop music. Our house backed onto the tennis courts in Blakes Recreation Ground and I could hear and see proceediongs from the back bedroom. I remember that numerous people complained to the police about the noise and I was reminded recently that the promoter lost a lot of money as people climbed in over the fences and it was very rainy all day too.
I have a copy of the poster here. It was Saturday, August 1st 1964 and featured MANFRED MANN, THE MERSEYBEATS and JOHNNY DANKWORTH ORCHESTRA from 10:30am.
I went to Worthing last night and spoke to one of the original Merseybeat members, Tony Crane. He said he remembered it and that there was a riot.
I said how much I wished I had been interested. It just came 4 years too soon for me.
Regards
David
Seaford
Store Blaze
It was Harrison Gibson, circa 1965. Raised eyebrows. HG had lost their flagship store in Ilford only a year or two before.
Market Square
We used to live above a shop in the market square. I went to Bromley parish primary school. I was a May Queen in 1969, I think, and my brother fell in the boating pond. These picture brought back lots of memorys of my childhood. I now live in Suffolk.
