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The largely level site was the garden of former rectory, now Hayes Public Library, and retains little of its pre-municipal character: specimen conifers including Wellingtonia and yews. Other specimen trees include three acacias and a group of three limes to the front. It was laid out as a public park in 1906 and forms a compact garden with rose garden and tennis courts around the library. The garden has flower, rose and shrub beds, with laurel hedges on the boundaries. The walls on the street side are topped with iron railings and there are matching ornamental iron gates.
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Landscaping and communal lawns to Hayesford Park, a modernist housing development built in the 1960s, with echoes of Garden City and Garden Suburb ideals. The first phase was built in 1960-63, laid out with generous planting. A good example is the hidden square between the larger flats of Fairacre, which were built in the last phase of the development in 1965; the central garden has mature trees and an ornamental pond at one end.
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High Broom Wood is a linear area of ancient woodland with the River Beck running north/south at the bottom of steep sided banks. Most of the trees are semi-mature having a scrub and bramble understorey. Paths, which in places have traces of metaling, meander through the woods. Occasional open spaces are largely overgrown. There is rich plant life here with a number of rare wetland plants growing. Trees on the higher land include sweet chestnut, oak coppice and birch with alder lower down.
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From early days the land changed hands repeatedly until the early C19th when High Elms became the country estate of the Lubbock family. The 3rd Baronet lived here from 1840 and built a mansion and ornamental gardens. In the 1880s the estate was largely open farmland with 16-hectare apple orchard and an area of ancient woodland known as Cuckoo Wood. In 1938 High Elms was sold to Kent County Council, transferring in 1965 to LB Bromley as Green Belt Open Space. In 1967 the mansion was destroyed by fire but the formal gardens, stable block, surviving remains of an Eton Fives court and the ice well remained.
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The park is formed from the former grounds of Hollydale, an C18th house built for the Kirkpatrick family who lived here for four generations. It was extended considerably to east and west, and the small parkland and lakes were created, with a lodge and entrance drive with an avenue of lime trees, some of which remain. The house had a sizeable stable and a walled kitchen garden, part of its walls surviving. The estate appears to have changed little until 1933, when the local council bought some of the land and mansion, which was demolished. By 1936, the northern and eastern parkland had been extensively developed. However the lake and some woodland around it survived as a Recreation Ground, which remains as the public park today.
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* on The National Heritage List for England, Parks & Gardens
Holwood Park is an C18th Pleasure Ground and landscape park at one time owned by William Pitt the Younger who in 1792 commissioned Humphry Repton to advise on improvements to the landscape. His main work was in advising on views and planting, some of which remains south of the house. Holwood Mansion was designed by Sir John Soane but when this burnt down it was rebuilt in 1823-6 for John Ward to designs of Decimus Burton, replacing the earlier house.
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Enclosure of Bromley Common took place between 1764 and 1821, shortly after which villas began to be built along the Hastings Road. Holy Trinity Church was built to serve the spiritual needs of the growing population, after it was agreed to establish a separate parish independent of Bromley. The church was built in 1839-42, designed by Thomas Hopper. A driving force behind the project was George Warde Norman of The Rookery, Bromley Common, and the church and churchyard have memorials to the Norman family. The original boundary was a flint wall; the churchyard was extended to the north in 1883 and again in 1914, and the northern boundary is formed by a holly hedge. The churchyard has mature trees, including two yews.
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Both Husseywell Open Space and The Knoll were formerly part of the estate of Hayes Place, and probably established as parkland c.1755; by 1767 what is now Husseywell Open Space and pond were well established. The 1st edition OS Map of 1871 shows the area as farmland. When the Hayes Place Estate began to be developed for housing in the 1930s, local Cllr Percy Jones argued for some land to remain public open space, which eventually resulted in the creation of Husseywell Recreation Ground and The Knoll.
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The land here is referred to in the Domesday Book of 1086 in the ownership of the Bishop of Rochester; the Bishops had the right to fell timber in Thornet Wood up until 1845. It was farmed as part of the Bickley Park estate from the late C18th. In 1916 the site became a golf course, managed as West Kent Golf Club until WWII. The land was purchased by Bromley Council in 1977 and named to mark the occasion of the Silver Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, opening as Jubilee Country Park in 1981.
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A municipal park that opened in 1913, featuring lakes and watercourses, Kelsey Park has much earlier origins. Elaborate formal gardens including a lake are recorded on John Roque’s plan of 1741-45. The park is named after the Kelsey family who owned the estate in the C15th. The last house to occupy the site was built in the late C18th at which time the estate belonged to the Burrell family. In the C19th the estate was held by the Hoare banking family until 1908.
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Keston Common had three fishponds constructed in early C19th to provide water to Holwood House. Two of the lakes are now used for fishing. The land was previously owned by Lord Stanley who in 1926 donated the ponds and an area of the common to the parish. Near the junction of Fishponds Road and Heathfield Road is Keston War Memorial commemorating local people who died in WWI and WWII.
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There has probably been a religious site here since at least the Roman period and a wooden Saxon church and burial ground serving two nearby manors. The floor plan of Keston Church remained almost unchanged from Norman times until the adjoining Church Halls were built in 1992, which necessitated 66 graves being re-located elsewhere in the churchyard. The churchyard was significantly extended to the east in 1885-6, with smaller extensions to the south by 1896, 1909 and 1933, where the boundary remains. It is largely grass, with numerous tombs and gravestones and has a very large yew tree, under which is the family vault of Maria, Countess of Dysart (d. 1869).