Department Store Fire

A Memory of Bromley.

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'.