Croydon Road Recreation Ground

Croydon Road Recreation Ground was established by the Beckenham Local Board and laid out by Reid and Bornemann of Sydenham on an area of open farmland in 1890. The gate lodge and gateway were built as part of the laying out of the park and are shown on the 1896 OS map. The recreation ground was formally opened on 23 September 1891 following a local campaign to secure public open space in Beckenham. The opening was a major local event with a celebration that included flags and bunting in Beckenham, the ringing of the church bells and a special schoolchildren’s medal minted for the occasion. In January 1892 the first park supervisor or ‘Estate Officer’, James George Thomas Baxter, was appointed at a wage of 24 shillings a week plus the use of the lodge. His wife, Lucy, was given permission to serve refreshments to visitors from a window of the lodge. Baxter, formerly a local gardener, held the position of Estate Officer until he retired in the 1920s.

Croydon Road Recreation Ground has good planting and path layout. Notable trees include beeches, horse chestnuts, cedars and ornamental conifers. Shrubs and railings are along the boundary with Croydon Road where the main entrance retains the ornamental gates and pretty lodge on Croydon Road, which were listed in 2021. To the east of a cast iron drinking fountain is an oval area with paths around it. On the south side are tennis courts with a refreshment kiosk and a playing field occupies the eastern part of the site with flowerbeds near the eastern pedestrian entrance. Built features include a cast iron bandstand with surrounding railings of local rarity value, and a modern chinoiserie shelter. 

The bandstand was manufactured by McCallum and Hope, Ruchill Ironworks in Glasgow, one of two bandstands commissioned by Beckenham UDC in 1905, the other, which is no longer in existence, was in Alexandra Recreation Ground (q.v.). Records show that on 30 January 1905 the UDC commissioned a surveyor to obtain designs and prices for two bandstands after examining 25 designs from 16 contractors. On 6 May a sub-committee recommended the award of the tender for the two bandstands costing £135 each to the McCallum and Hope Iron Foundry provided that the work was executed within 10 weeks. The bandstand is now known as the Bowie Bandstand after David Bowie, one of the most influential musicians of the C20th, who had important connections not only with Beckenham but with the bandstand itself, which was listed by Historic England in 2019.  It is now the only bandstand from the McCallum and Hope Iron Foundry known to survive in Britain.

Croydon Road Recreation Ground has hosted numerous celebrations for coronations, jubilees, hospital fetes, Empire days, May Queen festivals, as well as commemoration services to servicemen of WWI and WWII. It formerly hosted a major annual flower show (once rivalling Chelsea). In 1902 Britain’s first public air mail balloon left the park, dropping post at three points in Kent before crossing the Channel and landing near Calais. Three years later, Harold Bride, a radio operator on the Titanic, was carried round the park and spoke from the bandstand after surviving the disaster. In 1935 the Mayor of London presented Beckenham with a Charter of Incorporation as a borough within the grounds.

David Bowie (1947-2016) moved with this family to Bromley at the age of eight and went to school here. In April 1969 he began lodging in Foxgrove Road, Beckenham, co-founding Beckenham Arts Lab with Mary Finnigan, his landlady.  On 16 August 1969, the Arts Lab organised the Growth Summer Festival, a free one-day festival playing from the bandstand in Croydon Road Recreation Ground, which has been described as ‘the first of its kind in the UK’. The festival followed the release of Bowie’s first hit single Space Oddity in July, which is thought to have been one of the songs he performed that day on the bandstand. The Beckenham festival clearly had an impact on Bowie as it inspired him to write a song about “the ecstasy that swept that afternoon” – ‘Memory of a Free Festival’; a long seven-minute closing piece for his second self-titled album recorded in September 1969, which was later released in 1970 as a carefully re-worked two-part single in homage to the festival. It has been suggested that Bowie may also have penned the lyrics to the song Life on Mars from the steps of the bandstand. In 2013, a new commemorative Memory of a Free Festival was held on the bandstand to raise money for its restoration. It was repeated in 2014 before being replaced by a new event called ‘Bowie’s Beckenham Oddity’ since 2016. 

The park is now managed by idverde UK, which in June 2015 was contracted by Bromley Council for the management of the borough's parks, green spaces and countryside service, a relationship that was extended in April 2019 for a further 16 years.