Bromley Gloss - London Borough of Bromley - Current, Upcoming, Historic

26/06/2026

On a recent visit to Crystal Palace Park it was great to see the restoration of the dinosaurs, Dino Island, and the surrounding moat which are showing seriously impressive progress. The team deserves true credit for the massive effort going into them. That momentum shows across the rest of the grounds, with newly laid paths, new landscaping, the nearby Dinosaur Playground which was packed with families; complete with climbing skeletons and sandpit, and much more. There is still a ways to go across the park but it looks set to be a fantastic upgrade when complete, that respects the original park layout. £130 million upgrade to the National Sports Centre is set to start later this year.

26/06/2026

🚙 Bromley Motor Show Sunday 5 July 2026 Bromley Town Centre.

In a free to attend event, come and see a sensational selection of marvellous motors on display in the pedestrianised area of Bromley Town Centre. 🚙✨

From 10am – 3pm on Sunday 5th July, the high street will once again be transformed to showcase a range of classic, vintage, and collectible vehicles, accompanied by a roaming jazz band playing popular hits New Orleans style plus a wandering mariachi band for a festival atmosphere. 🎶🎺

20/06/2026

🔴 GALLA BINGO HALL Church Road, Crystal Palace, London Borough of Bromley, undated. The bingo hall closed on 21st July 2009.

This Art-Deco building first opened as the Rialto Cinema on 6 October 1928. . It was a massive single-screen venue boasting over 1300 seats. To provide a complete entertainment experience, it was equipped with an on-site cafe and a stage to support live variety acts alongside silent and early sound films.

It operated as a cinema/theatre for 40 years before becoming a full-time bingo hall in 1968 after a steep decline in cinema attendance.

The Bingo Hall. The cavernous, 1,300-seat auditorium was adapted for long rows of bingo tables, utilising the original balcony seating and stage area under bright neon lighting. The bingo hall permanently closed on 21 July 2009. Following closure the building was bought by a church but left unused for years after planning issues.

Everyman Cinema. After a stalwart local campaign to save it, the venue was sold in 2018 to the Everyman Group, which restored the site, fully honouring the 1920s cinematic glamour. The historic space was cleverly subdivided into four luxury screens. The largest main screen occupies the original front stalls and preserves the grand architectural scale, while other screens occupy the converted rear stalls and the upstairs circle balcony. The building opened as Everyman Cinema on 16 November 2018.

🎦 Photos in the comments show the 1920s style after restoration by Everyman.

19/06/2026

🏠 1930: When Estate Agents used mortality stats to sell Bromley houses.

Advert for four-bedroom semi-detached house in Bromley for £1,100. This is a 1933 property extract from London and the Suburbs Old and New. A dream price today but back then a fortune out of reach for about 95% of the UK population.

The estate agent's ultimate selling point? Health benefits. The advert, citing local death reports, states that Bromley is "one of the healthiest towns in the whole country" at 200 feet above sea level. Imagine an estate agent today using that hook: "Beautiful open-plan kitchen, great transport links, plus the local death reports say you'll live longer!!😃”

To be fair to the 1930s agents, it made sense at the time. In an era before the NHS or antibiotics, early deaths were common. Pitching the health benefits of Bromley’s good clean hilltop air was the ultimate way to close the deal.

13/06/2026

Quick Question💡 This photo is from Cator Park School for Girls Beckenham in 1975 (now Harris Academy). At that time, 1970s, and long after the school had form groups named after famous historical and literary women. If you went to the school you might be able to answer. ❓️Is this list of the form group names correct, and were there any more form groups? Also, are these form group names still in use today at that school? Any help to fill in the gaps appreciated💚.

Austen (Jane Austen)
Bronte (The Bronte sisters)
Eliot?
Fry (Elizabeth Fry)
Nightingale (Florence Nightingale)

13/06/2026

🚞 DEMOLITION BROWN’S FARM BRIDGE MOTTINGHAM. On 12 December 1971, the century-old Brown's Farm bridge near Mottingham Station was demolished. The 35-foot-high, 22-foot-wide three-arch brick bridge spanning the Dartford Loop line was blown up by British Rail Southern Region. Before the demolition, local residents put up a notable public fight to preserve the bridge. They valued it as a prominent neighborhood landmark, though British Rail ultimately moved forward with the destruction due to mounting maintenance costs and disuse.

🚞 BRIDGE TO NOWHERE: While the structure was built to connect agricultural fields split by the 1865 tracks, by 1971 the surrounding farmland had long vanished under sprawling suburbia. It is very sad that it had to go, but the corporate view was that this multi-ton brick monument was quite literally a bridge to nowhere, servicing only a forgotten farm path that no longer existed.

🚞 DEMOLITION: The demolition blast brought the brick arches crashing straight down into the cutting, requiring immediate, heavy track-clearing crews to restore the active line. Because it was a Victorian bridge constructed primarily of solid brick rather than reinforced concrete, the explosion shattered the mortar instantly. Clearing the line was described as shifting a giant, loose jigsaw puzzle, as thousands of intact 19th-century bricks showered onto the Dartford Loop tracks.

🚞 SOUVENIR HUNTERS READ: The vast majority of the intact Victorian bricks were crushed on-site and buried right into the railway cutting to help stabilise the ground, while the remaining debris was hauled away as hard rubble. However, local residents and railway enthusiasts reportedly scavenged the accessible edges of the site. A small number of the century-old bricks ended up as quirky souvenirs in the back gardens of Mottingham residents.

🚞 1970S NEWSPAPER ARTICLE READ: ‘Old Railway Bridge Goes Up With A Bang At Mottingham Station. Near Mottingham Station this morning an explosion sent a three-arch railway bridge crashing to the ground. The brick bridge-35 feet high, 22feet wide and over a century old -spans 160feet of the Dart ford Loop line in a cutting about 600 yards from Mottingham station. The bridge was built in 1865 to give access to farmland on either side of the railway line. Known locally as Brown’s Farm bridge, it has not been used for many years and because of the high cost of maintenance, Southern Region decided to demolish it. The job was done by Mr Neville Baber, a demolition expert from Bexhill, Sussex.’

12/06/2026

🫖 TALES FROM THE ODD SPOT CAFE East Street Bromley North. Can you spot it to the right of this photo? The Odd Spot Cafe is a legendary, nostalgic fixture of Bromley’s past. Operating from the 1950s through the 1970s, it served as a bustling local haunt.

🫖 CREW LOUNGE: It was the unofficial canteen for off-duty London Transport drivers, conductors, and local postmen and post boys. “You’d practically always find a crowd of them chatting and fueling up on tea.” It is said postmen would often congregate on the pavement outside with their bikes.

🫖 NICKNAME: The cafe is said to have also been known by its nickname "BICS", which stood for Beans-In-Creamy-Sauce😋.

🫖 THE ODDEST SPOT: The lively cafe perfectly lived up to its name as an unassuming but very quirky hole-in-the-wall.

🫖 WAS IT MR ALI OR KEN? Decades after the cafe closed, regulars still debate whether the beloved owner was named Ken or Mr Ali. Or were they the same person known as both names? You tell us. Remembered for his warmth, even opening up on Christmas Day just to serve his older, regular customers.

🫖 MARKET DAY RUSH: They say Thursday mornings were busy busy busy at the Odd Spot🥪. Locals would wake up early to hit the historic weekly Bromley Market in Station Road Car Park across the way, popping into the cafe for one of their famous cheese rolls and a fresh cuppa before hitting the market stalls to grab a bargain.

MYTHS AND LEGENDS

☕️ FLAKEY CEILING: It is said the cafe had an affectionate secondary local nickname “Tea & Ceiling”. The building was so worn out that the ceiling plaster used to flake off, occasionally drifting right down into people's hot mugs of tea. Regulars just brushed it off as extra seasoning😊.

☕️ SECRETARY UPRISING: Is it true that at one stage female office workers from nearby Tweedy Road staged a lighthearted "tea sit-in" to demand an upstairs dining room, winning a dedicated space upstairs to gossip, away from the rowdy shenanigans downstairs?

☕️ MIDNIGHT BUS MYSTERY👻: Because of its popularity with transit workers, a long-standing legend claimed that on foggy nights, you can still hear the faint clatter of tea mugs and the chime of a bus bell ringing from the alleyway next to the cafe, even though the Odd Spot itself ceased operations decades ago.

Got any more Odd Spot quirks or folklore?