Bromley Town Centre Park Trail – Stop 4/2 (A pond for fish, model boats, people and now sand)

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Church House Gardens – From Fishpond to Yachting Pond to Paddling Pool to Delux Sandpit

Welcome to Church House Gardens and it’s historic features! This location is the second stop in this park for heritage and biodiversity trail around the green spaces in Bromley Town Centre.

There has been a terrace on the hillside here for 100s of years, and on the old tithe maps there was one of four fish ponds that stepped down the hill, on this level site (with 2 above and one below).

Fishponds, and their fish, were an important food source in the Medieval era.  This was especially true of religious households, and these ponds belonged to the Lord of the Manor, the Bishop of Rochester. Meat was not eaten in observant Christian households for over 150 days a year, so fish was important – see the entry for the Moat in Bromley Palace Park (here). 

In the late Victorian times the pond was converted to an octagonal pool for sailing model yachts. This became a popular pastime with the Model Yacht Sailing Association being formed in 1876 and the London Model Yacht Club (using the Round Pond in Kensington Gardens) being founded in 1884.  This pool was built in the 1930s as a work scheme. It was a popular venue for local children to sail the boats they had built, with various companies also providing boats and yachts in model kits.  There is one surviving boat-sailing-pond on the River Cray at Fordcroft (the bottom of Poverest Road) in Orpington (BR5 4BQ). It is drained every winter and the fallen leaves removed. There are still model-boat sailing clubs to be found, for instance in Leonardslee, Sussex.

In 1968 there was a cloudburst over Bromley and Lewisham (and the surrounding area) and the resulting floods are still remembered as The Great Flood of Lewisham and the Lewisham Underwater project. The ponds above this terrace flooded and overflowed, washing the bank down.

When the repairs were carried out the Yachting Pool was reborn as a Paddling Pool, with a bubbles-shaped outline and ceramic tiles with pictures of various ports around (mostly) the North Sea.  The paddling pool was very popular in sunny summer weather, and to keep good water quality, it was empty over winter.

Then, the terrace had another make-over and became a large and delux sandpit – it is probably the most popular incarnation it has had yet, it is rarely ever unused.

All the stops in the Bromley Town Centre Parks Heritage & Biodiversity trail can be found on the page about it here.

There is more information on Church House Gardens at the entry on this park in the Bromley Civic Society site, here.