Church House Gardens – The Church House
Welcome to Bromley Palace Park and it’s historic features! This location is the fourth stop in this park, on the heritage and biodiversity trail around the historic parks in Bromley Town Centre.
On this site there was a fine gothic house, with a tower, large conservatory, and large terraced Garden. Looking out towards the Church, you can see the former Carriage Drive – with the circular end for horse-drawn carriages to drop their passengers at the door. You can also see the walls of the former walled kitchen garden (currently a depot, though there’s proposals to build flats there).
In the first world war, from 1914 until 1919, the house was used as a Red Cross VAD (Voluntary Aid Detachment) hospital for wounded soldiers. The VAD scheme predated the war, but with the high level of casualties on the Western Front, there were 2.5K of these hospitals in the UK. Recently some photographs have been found from this time, and they are available on the borough Local History society site, here. One of the patients wrote home to Shetland from Church House.
On the night of the 16th April, 1941, in WW2, a German bombing raid dropped an incendiary bomb on the house and it burnt to the ground. All the churches in central Bromley were also bombed that night, and a large store in Market Square. The rubble from the parish church blocked access to the house, so firecrews could not reach it and fight the fire.
In recent years the flowerbed in front has won awards.
All the stops in the Bromley Town Centre Parks Heritage & Biodiversity trail can be found on the page about it here.
To continue the Heritage Trail, follow the little path (on the right hand side of the Carriage Drive) and on your right there is a rocky cliff – this is the fernery.
Browse our old photos, in 
from being dominated by tower blocks: Look here and email our ward councillors about:
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