Chelsfield, Worlds End Lane And Warren Road

A Memory of Chelsfield.

The picture of Windsor Drive is so evocative for me. I spent the first 5 years of my life living with my parents in my grandmother's council house in Sandpit Road on the Downham Estate at the bottom of Bromley Hill. We moved to World's End Lane in 1953. My grandfather, a railwayman who lived at Grove Park, had bought a plot of land in the Lane just after the war intending to build a retirement home there. Instead, he gave the plot to my father who built a bungalow (Whiteoaks). It was a marvellous place to live - half the plot was a bluebell wood with big oaks and beech trees and views across to the South Downs (across the A21 and Pratts Bottom.) I went to Warren Road School from 1953 to 1959 when I went to Bromley Grammar, so I used to walk through Windsor Drive every day on the way to and from school with my friend John. I remember buying sweets in Forbuoys and toys and fireworks in Bon Marche. I also remember my mother sending me to Hoddinott's the butchers, as well as sometimes the Coop Butcher (the cashier lady sat in a booth - she used to frighen the life out of me, she looked so stern). There was a police box (a la Dr Who) opposite the big pub (the Railway?), I seem to recall. I finally left Worlds End Lane in about 1974. I think our bungalow has been pulled down and a big, plusher house built on the site. It makes me feel very sad to look back on it and think how much everything there and in Chelsfield must have changed since then. But I have many happy memories, nontheless.