Living in Bromley

Bromley is London's largest borough by area, and much of it does not feel like London at all. More than half of the borough is green belt, and its southern parts are rolling countryside, farmland, woods and villages, including Downe, where Charles Darwin lived and worked at Down House. Biggin Hill airport, famous for its role in the Battle of Britain, is also within the borough.

The northern half is suburban and affluent. Bromley town centre is a large shopping destination, and Beckenham, Chislehurst, Orpington, Petts Wood and West Wickham are sought-after suburbs of Edwardian and interwar houses with gardens. Chislehurst has an old village centre, a large common and the Chislehurst Caves, a network of tunnels once used as air raid shelters.

Crystal Palace Park, with its Victorian dinosaur sculptures and sports centre, lies in the borough's north-western corner, where Bromley meets four other boroughs. The Crystal Palace neighbourhood around it is covered in detail here, and it is more urban, creative and lively than most of the borough.

There is no Underground in Bromley. Southeastern and Southern trains serve Bromley South, Beckenham Junction, Orpington and many smaller stations, reaching Victoria, London Bridge, Cannon Street and Charing Cross in around twenty to thirty-five minutes, and the Overground and trams serve the north-west. Many residents drive. Many households arrive in Bromley when a second child makes a flat impossible, and stay for the combination of big gardens, woods within a short drive and a train to Victoria that takes little longer than a tube ride from Zone 3.