LONDON A-Z For my second alphabetical visit to unsung suburbs we're off to Bexley, appropriately enough, where three Bs are strung out along two miles of road beyond Eltham. Blackfen, Blendon and Bridgen were still hamlets 100 years ago, then the building of Rochester Way and railway electrification triggered substantial residential growth. The A2 now hugs all three close, hence a local reliance on car culture, but I buzzed from one B to the next on foot instead.
B is for Blackfen
Blackfen is the largest of the three, inasmuch as its possible to divide up the amorphous suburban sprawl hereabouts. The name means ‘dark-coloured marshy district’, which is hardly a ringing endorsement but originally all this was woodland and farmland rather than real estate to flog. A few cottages existed near what's now the main crossroads and also a pub, The Woodman, which opened to serve rural drinkers in 1845. It'd be plausible to believe the current building was the original were it not for the date on the front, 1931 being the year development ignited locally. So keen were the owners to maintain trade that they built the new pub behind the old one before demolishing it, which has proved fortuitous because there's now room for an enormous beer terrace out front plus a row of timber sheds sponsored by Beavertown. The pub's owners have renamed it George Staples Sidcup, this because George Staples was the original publican in 1845 and because nobody's heard of Blackfen.
Blackfen has a lengthy run of shops, one end a proper redbrick parade circa 1938 and the other a more motley assortment of independent businesses. The motor trade features heavily should you need a used white van or alloy wheels, also haircare and schoolwear should your littl'un need togging out. The busiest cafe appears to be inside the Community Library, which is as it should be. Shops which provide an insight into the local population include a pie and mash shop, two funeral directors and Tonics!, a self-professed retro menswear shop for former mods, scooterists, skins, casuals or rudeboys. My favourite throwback is 1950s bakery J Ayre, not just because they display an 01 telephone number on the exterior but because they still bake gypsy tarts, and if BestMate ever needs a lift I drop in and buy him some from his childhood local. He also remembers when the Co-op was a Safeway, indeed Bexley's first large superstore, but not when it was the Odeon cinema before that. So quickly was Wellington Parade erected that they didn't wait to demolish all of Mr Gwillim's cottage, which is why you can still see its roof perched atop Bulldog Windows and Oscar's chippy.
If it still feels relatively quiet round here that's because urban planners chose not to add a junction to the A2 when the dual carriageway was upgraded in 1969. This calms the local streets somewhat, of which Days Lane is a repurposed country lane and Wellington Avenue one of the first new roads. It's a very Bexley thing that most houses have a garage round the back accessed via a lowly communal drive, the lack of garages up front allowing the developers to fit more houses in. At the heart of all this is The Oval, an eye-shaped green faced on one side by a lengthy Mock Tudor shopping parade. It's one of my favourite outer suburban foci, a genuinely attractive retail curve providing a desirable focus for the surrounding neighbourhood. It's also great for local branding, hence includes the Oval Cafe, Oval Brasserie, Oval Fish Bar, Oval Pet Centre and Oval Village convenience store. A road behind The Oval is called The Triangle, should I ever be looking for a series of geometric streets to review.
Blackfen's such a 1930s construct that it contains only four locally-listed buildings, and just one of these is over 100 years old. My favourite is the small concrete block behind the bus stop at the foot of Wellington Avenue which has a periscope-like metal vent protruding from its roof. It's actually an air raid shelter, and I'd hope there's a much larger space beneath the verge because you'd barely get two bunkbeds inside what's visible. Note the brief brick wall erected just in front of the entrance, a simple insurance policy that would have helped shield those inside from direct blast damage. Also locally-listed is the rare Edward VIII pillar box at the eastern end of Tyrell Avenue, accessed via a thin concrete footbridge across the tarmac chasm of East Rochester Way. The folk whose semis face the A2 direct have deliberately chosen Blackfen's shortest straw. If you're local (or just interested), Blackfen Past and Present is an excellent online resource that puts most London suburbs to shame.
B is for Blendon
Heading east Blackfen blends invisibly into Blendon, Bexley not being a borough that erects neighbourhood signs. The name originally means “the farm of the people who live by the dark water”, again suggesting there's something a bit gloomy about the groundwater round here. Blendon does have a junction onto the A2 so is inherently more car-focused, including two roundabouts, a Shell garage and a large Audi showroom. Most conspicuous is what looks like an abandoned chapel but is actually a small cottage with a spire on top, a folly first plonked here in the 1760s on the edge of Danson Park. It was designed by Capability Brown to cap the view across the lake from the big house, but that line of sight's now blocked off by three rows of houses and a dual carriageway leaving Chapel House looking somewhat forlorn. The dry cleaner at number 266 retired last year and her son is reopening the premises as a micropub called The Dog House in the spring.
The other out-of-place building by the roundabout is a turrety cottage, recently sold. This used to be the West Lodge for a large crenelated villa, Blendon Hall, built in 1763 as a country retreat set in extensive landscaped grounds. In 1929 the estate was inevitably sold off for housing, and because nobody wanted to buy the mansion in the middle it was demolished four years later. Walking the 88 acres today you'd never guess these upmarket avenues were once a rich man's parkland, although the twin lines of linden trees at the foot of The Avenue are actually a leftover from a path linking the Boat House to the Bath House. As for the lakes, formed by damming a local stream, they've since been filled in and replaced by two dippy cul-de-sacs called Beechway and The Sanctuary. Whilst virtually all of the houses here are big semis the estate also includes a few art moderne anomalies, one pair curved and the other not, and why on earth did they not build more than four of these architectural beauties? In 2007 a small hole opened up in a garden on Beechway, and when an archaeological team went down they found a narrow waterproof chamber that once ran the full length of the Hall.
B is for Bridgen
The last of the trio, and least well-known, is Bridgen. Like Blackfen and Blendon it was originally a smallhamlet, and it must still exist because TfL once produced a bus spider map for it. In its day it would have been a brief run of cottages where the road climbs a sudden rise, and still forms a noticeable break in the continuum of 1930s semis. One building looks like it was formerly a shop, one cottage displays a plaque dated 1827 and the flinty hall at the top of the hill is Bridgen's old infant school. Again there used to be a Georgian mansion here (a "handsome and spacious" pile called Bridgen Place) and again no trace remains because the estate's been turned over to housing. As for the pub on the corner, this started out in the 17th century as the Anchor and Cable, became the Blue Anchor in the 18th and is now just The Anchor. Alas in 1928 it was completely rebuilt because the Dartford Brewery realised a yokel-hole was totally inappropriate for hundreds of suburban incomers, so these days they serve smothered steak and spirits rather than a slice of Stuart history. One particular inn sign once led locals to nickname the pub The Snake and Pickaxe.
There is a bridge in Bridgen where the road to Bexley Village crosses the River Shuttle, a brief span originally called Gad Bridge. You can still slip off the road here and follow the river into what's left of Bexley Park Woods, passing what I consider to be southeast London's finest earthy meanders. Amid the trees on the north bank, best approached in sensible footwear, is a slab-topped concrete culvert out of which flows the half-mile Bridgen Stream. That's the buried river which once fed the lakes back at Blendon Hall, and here's where it joins the Shuttle which earlier drained the lower slopes of Blackfen. These three Bs really are connected and not just by road, by water too. The 132 bus also passes through Blackfen, Blendon and Bridgen, should you want to experience all of this in seven minutes flat.
