Borough in London, England
Bromley
Bromley is London's biggest borough by area, and it launched a Martian-minded novelist, a glam-rock Starman, a punk movement and a theory of evolution.
Key information
- County
- Greater London (formerly Kent)
- Nation
- England
- Population
- about 330,000 (2021 Census)
- Area
- about 150 sq km, the largest of London's boroughs
- Known for
- H.G. Wells, David Bowie's early years, the Bromley Contingent, Biggin Hill, Darwin's Down House
- Famous people
- H.G. Wells, David Bowie, Siouxsie Sioux, Charles Darwin
- Football clubs
- Bromley FC (the Ravens)
About Bromley
The town where a china shop produced a prophet
H.G. Wells was born in Bromley in 1866, above his parents' struggling china shop on the High Street. The business never prospered, and young Bertie Wells grew up knowing exactly how precarious lower-middle-class life in Victorian England could be. He turned that experience into novels such as Kipps and Tono-Bungay, and the Bromley of his childhood is never far from the surface. Its market-town mix of shopkeepers, social climbers and sharp class lines shaped the man who went on to invent modern science fiction. Bromley itself is much older than the Wells family. The Bishops of Rochester held a palace here, and the town received a market charter in 1205. For centuries it was a Kent market town on the road to the coast, before London's suburbs spread out to meet it.
Ziggy, the Kon-rads and a punch that changed a pupil's eye
David Bowie was born in Brixton but grew up in Bromley, and the borough claims a large share of his story. He went to Bromley Technical High School, where a fight with his friend George Underwood left Bowie with a permanently dilated left pupil. Underwood later designed some of Bowie's early record sleeves. Bowie's first band, the Kon-rads, formed in the area in 1962. In 1969 he ran the Beckenham Arts Lab from a pub function room, helping to turn a suburban Sunday night into a launchpad for his early career. Then came the next explosion. In 1976 a gang of devoted Sex Pistols fans, nicknamed the Bromley Contingent, turned up at gigs in outrageous, home-made outfits. Siouxsie Sioux, from Chislehurst, and Steve Severin were part of it, and soon after they formed Siouxsie and the Banshees. Billy Idol, who went to school in Bromley, was part of the circle too. Few suburbs can claim to have supplied both glam and punk.
Spitfires over the Downs
Biggin Hill, on the borough's southern edge, was one of the RAF's most important fighter stations in the Battle of Britain in 1940. Its pilots flew from a hilltop airfield south of London, and the station was bombed repeatedly while it kept operating. Today Biggin Hill is a busy airport for business and private aviation. It once hosted the International Air Fair and later the Festival of Flight, and historic aircraft still operate from the airfield. The nearby Biggin Hill Memorial Chapel remembers those who flew from the station.
Darwin's quiet village and a hole in the ground
Charles Darwin moved to Down House, in the village of Downe, in 1842 and lived there for the rest of his life. He wrote On the Origin of Species there, published in 1859, and tested ideas in the garden on pigeons, bees, orchids and worms. He walked daily along his own gravel Sandwalk, thinking aloud. The house is now a museum. Chislehurst offers a different sort of underground story. Chislehurst Caves are about 22 miles of man-made tunnels, dug over centuries to mine chalk and flint. In the Second World War thousands of Londoners sheltered there during the Blitz. Above ground, the borough keeps a lot of green: Hayes Common, Keston Ponds and farmland that gives the south of Bromley a countryside feel while still being in London.
The Ravens climb the pyramid
Bromley FC were founded in 1892 and are nicknamed the Ravens. They won the FA Amateur Cup three times, in 1911, 1938 and 1949, in the days when it was one of the biggest amateur prizes in English football. Then, in 2024, they reached the Football League for the first time in their history. They beat Solihull Moors 4-3 on penalties after a 2-2 draw in the National League play-off final at Wembley Stadium, ending a very long wait for the club that plays at Hayes Lane. In town, the Glades shopping centre and the Churchill Theatre anchor the High Street. Just a short walk from the old Wells family shop, the market charter that King John granted more than 800 years ago still sets the tone for the town centre.
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Charles Darwin once dropped out of medical school, ate his way through an odd menu of animals, and still rewrote the story of life from a quiet Kent village.