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Local history

A history of Brockley

The first recorded reference to Brockley was in 1182, when it was documented as a “small hamlet”, with the name spelled as ‘Brocele’. The name comes from Old English and may have meant OBroca's Wood or Grove. This is due to the fact that the area was mainly woodland and the only clearing was the area surrounding the brook, the perfect location to found a settlement.

Shortly before his death in 1189, Charles II the Plantagenet King, gave the Manor of Brockley including the common to the Premonstratensian canons. The Premonstratensians, also known as the White Canons (from the colour of their habit), were a Christian religious order of ‘Canons Regular’ founded at Prémontré near Laon,  a city in northern France in 1120 by Saint Norbert, afterwards Archbishop of Magdeburg.

The order built a monastery on the land now occupied by St Peter’s Church, Wickham Rd stretching across to what is now Geoffrey Court; and where during the excavations for the present buildings, the site of the monastery well and fish ponds were found. Between 1205 and 1208 the order moved to Bayham Abbey in Sussex, and the title (ownership) of the estates and properties were all transferred to that abbey.

In 1526 Henry VIII requisitioned Bayham Abbey and the Manor of Brockley prior to the dissolution of the monasteries in 1536. The Manor was later split up and sold to the families of the Wickham’s and Tyrwhitt-Drake’s. The old manor house of Brockley stood to the west of Manor Avenue. However as is common with old manorial estates the manor house was relocated in the 18^th century to be built in the latest style. Its location was to the west of the Brockley Jack just south of Brockley Grove.

The old manor house continued to exist as Brockley Manor Farm up until the 19^th century. During the Monastic ownership of Brockley Manor construction started on a large abbey dedicated to Saint Mary in the area roughly where now the junction of Wickham Road and the railway is. In the 1950’s part of the abbey was rediscovered adjacent to Beverley Court, these were the fishponds of the abbey.

The nearest source of fresh water to the Abbey was a spring that flowed from an area of the common land just to the south of the building called Endwell Court adjacent to the entrance to the John Stainer School. The spring dried up when the cutting for the Brighton railway was put through the common land. A well site replaced it to feed the early steam trains on the Brockley line and the Brockley Lane line that runs through to Victoria Station. In the 15^th century there is a literary reference to a vision of St. Mary being seen at the spring by Brockley Lane (the old road that ran from Deptford to the common). For the last 250 years it has been assumed that the spring was at Ladywell as in the 18^th Century there was a road crossing the River Ravensborne also called Brockley Lane. However in view of the proximity to the old abbey and its dedication, it is possible that the vision occurred at the Common.

The spring flowed into a small stream that ran across common and northwards in the valley between Telegraph Hill and the Brockley Conservation area at the rear of the properties to the east of Malpas Road and around the north side of the old village of Deptford Bridge. At the time of the Doomsday Book this village was known as Merratun, an Anglo-Saxon name meaning the town in the marsh. It is interesting that the boundary of this ancient village adjacent to the Ravensborne and the Roman Road Watling Street was roughly oval and was possibly a Bronze Age or earlier enclosure. The fresh water for the Town came from the stream to the south and the spring at the common. On the 1861 ordinance survey map of Brockley before the platforms of the station were extended adjacent to platform 1 a large horizontal stone possibly four meters long is indicated. Whether this stone was ever a standing stone ritually linking the Bronze Age community to the north to the origin of its water supply is unknown. The stone may still exist in its prone position just south of the shelter under platform 1.

What we do know is that the probable origin of the name Brockley comes from an Anglo-Saxon word implying an inhabited clearing in a wood. A very likely place for this would have been the site of the common with its spring. We know that in the 18^th century the common had a public house just to the south of the Maypole pub it too may have been called the Maypole and could have been the centre of a thriving village farming community.

The last few centuries have not been kind to the common – the annexation of the Manor in the 16^th century, the manor house moving to the south in the 18^th century and the original centre of Brockley being referred to as Deptford Common. In 1806 the London to Croydon Canal cut the common in two. Then in 1836 this cut became wider by having the route of the London Bridge to Brighton railway line put through the centre of it. In 1868 the common was cut into four parts by the Victoria to Dover railway line. A tram terminus was created at the turn of the 19^th Century at Brockley Cross joining the twin rail stations of Brockley and Brockley Lane. Now with the two railway lines cutting the common and our community into four, most of the rest of common is under the tarmac of road and roundabouts. The re-establishment of this small section of common land is a reminder of the history of Brockley.

Des Kirkland