45 Squared 20) STATION SQUARE, BR5
Borough of Bromley, 90m×60m
Why this one? I had ten minutes in Petts Wood yesterday between trains and there it was. Why the name? It's a square immediately beside the station. Is it square?Hell no, it's more a trapezium with two long sides and two shorter ones. How old is it? Like the rest of Petts Wood it dates from the late 1920s. Who built it? That'd be Basil Scruby, property developer, who paid local builders to turn 400 acres of fields into desirable avenues. He invested £6000 to get a station added here, then built a smart ring of shops to serve the new population. Which side of the station? East side, which is the better-off side. The money had started running out by the time Basil started building on the west side.
What are the shops like? Lovely, if what you like is full-on herringbone brickwork with half-timbered infill topped with smart chimneys. Basil wanted to make an impression on potential housebuyers. But what are the shops like? Trad butcher, deli, bistro, salon, tapas, flooring specialist, proper greengrocer, two vets (but also Iceland, William Hill and an enormous charity shop). Who would have gone shopping here? David Nobbs, Pat Keysell, Charles De Gaulle, Pixie Lott and Jack Dee. Parking? Hell yes, this is Bromley after all. £1.10 an hour, max 2 hours, limited spaces. What's in the middle? Now you're asking. It's the Daylight Inn, a massive Neo-Tudor Charringtons pub opened in December 1935 and still essentially unaltered, hence Grade II listed. Includes four bars and a former ballroom. It's named after William Willett, the local resident who inspired the introduction of British Summer Time (previouslyblogged). Live jazz with the Green Chain Quartet takes place on the 1st Thursday of the month (ooh that's today).
What else is in the middle? The Cow & Bean sit-down coffee shack (in the former lavatory block) and the Aqua Mediterranean Grill (whose offering perfectly targets respectable retro suburbia). What happened to the Lychgate? According to the plaque on the estate agents it was removed in 1995 and relocated to Memorial Hall Gardens. Any other good plaques? The Walk London panel that marks the start of London Loop section 3 - there aren't many of those left. And the most notable thing? Probably the Petts Wood village sign whose four quarters depict i) Invicta, the emblem of Kent, ii) the coat of arms of the Pett Family, iii) an Elizabethan galleon (built using oak from Petts Wood), iv) day and night as a representation of daylight saving. And what happened to Basil Scruby? He took a speculative gamble on building a seaside resort on the Isle of Grain at Allhallows-on-Sea which failed utterly, but that's anotherstory.
