Glassmill Pond

This mill pond is one of the stops in our heritage and biodiversity trail , the entry is here.

There were a number of mills recorded in the Doomsday Book along the River Ravensbourne in Bromley, but the only one that survived until the modern era is this one.

In the early medieval era the mill ground corn, it was later used for fulling (making wool into felt) and after that, to make paper.

When Thomas Wilson visited the town in 1797, the disused paper mill had recently been converted to run glass grinding machinery, “for the last two years it has been employed in grinding and polifhing concave and convex mirrors, from one to five feet diameter : the prefent occupier is Mr. Thomas Ribright, an ingenious artist, formerly an eminent optician, in the Poultry, London.” (excuse the ‘long s’s’ that were used then) The mill also ground lenses for opticians glasses and optical instruments.

But the part that really charmed Thomas Wilson was the house and gardens (just upstream from the Mill, also covered by Glassmill Close) , he enthused “I am able to fay the fituation of this mill is extremely pleafant ; and the delightful, rural, and romantic profpects it affords, are well worthy the obfervation of visitors : a large sheet of water, with a pleafure boat upon it, give the friends of Mr. Ribright an opportunity of enjoying, on that element, one of the moft pleafing profpects I ever beheld.”

Mr. Ribright is also famous for electrocuting a nuisance-neighbour at his London house, in the days where that required you to build your own ‘electric-pile’ (or voltaic pile), somewhat hazardous for the subject of the experiment.

The pond was remodelled in 2023 by Thames 21 which included recreating the pond, separated from the river by a bank, over which the river can wash when the water levels are high.