Penge

Your guide to your Penge Town Centre

Penge's History

The history of Penge...


About Penge Penge was once a small town, which was recorded under the name Penceat in a Saxon deed dating from 957.

General Background

Most historians believe the name of the town is derived from the Celtic word "Penceat" which means "edge of wood" and refers to the fact that the surrounding area was once covered in a dense forest. The original Celtic words of which the name was composed referred to "pen", "head", as in the Welsh "pen" (used in Penarth) and "ceat", "wood", similar to the Welsh "coed" (used in Llangoedmor).

Penge formed a part of the parish of Battersea, with the historic county boundary between Kent and Surrey forming its eastern boundary. In 1855 both parts of the parish were included in the area of the Metropolitan Board of Works, with Penge Hamlet Vestry electing six members to the Lewisham District Board of Works. The Local Government Act 1888 abolished the Metropolitan Board, with its area becoming the County of London. However the London Government Act 1899 subsequently made provision for Penge to be removed from the County of London and annexed to either Surrey or Kent. Accordingly, an order in council transferred the hamlet to Kent in 1900, constituting it as Penge Urban District. The urban district was abolished in 1965 by the London Government Act 1963, and its former area merged with that of other districts to form the London Borough of Bromley. With the creation of the Penge Urban District, Penge New Road (formerly the part of Beckenham Road north of Kent House Road) was renamed Penge High Street.

From 1885 the Hamlet of Penge was a ward of the Dulwich parliamentary constituency, which was then in Surrey, and remained in that seat until 1918 when it was transferred to the new Bromley constituency. Since 1950 it has been part of the Beckenham constituency. From the next general election Penge will form part of the new Lewisham West and Penge constituency.

In the Victorian era Penge developed into a fashionable suburb because of its proximity to the relocated Crystal Palace. It became a fashionable day out to visit the Crystal Palace during the day and to take the tram down the hill to one of the 'twenty-five pubs to the square mile' or two Music Halls - The King's Hall and the Empire Theatre (later the Essoldo cinema).

By 1862 Stanford's map of London shows large homes had been constructed along Penge New Road (now Crystal Palace Park Road and Penge High Street), Thick Wood (now Thicket) Road and Anerley Road. This all came to an end with the notorious Penge Murders of 1877.

Historical Building & Structures


* There are many Victorian almshouses in Penge, the oldest being the Royal Watermen's Almshouses,built around 1840 by the Company of Watermen and Lightermen of the City of London for retired company Freemen and their widows. In 1973, the almspeople were moved to a new site in Hastings, and the original buildings were converted into private homes.
* The Queen Adelaide Almshouses were built in 1848 at the request of Adelaide of Saxe-Meiningen, the widow of King William IV, to provide shelter for twelve widows or orphan daughters of naval officers. Again, the almshouses are now in private residences.
* St. John's Cottages on Maple Road were built as almshouses in 1863, designed by the architect Edwin Nash. As with their predecessors, the cottages are now privately owned homes. On New Years Day 1959 No.8 was destroyed by a gas explosion killing one person. The cottage was rebuilt to closely resemble the original.
* The Police Station at the corner of the High Street and Green Lane is believed to be London's oldest working police station
* When completed in 1956 the Crystal Palace Transmitter was the tallest structure in the UK, a record it lost to the Anglia Television transmitter in 1959. It remained the tallest structure in the London area until 1991.
* The London and Croydon Canal was built across Penge Common along what is now the line of the railway through Penge West railway station, deviating to the south before Anerley railway station. There is a remnant at the northern corner of Betts Park, Anerley.
* Following the closure of the London and Croydon Canal, the London and Croydon Railway was built largely along the same course, opening in 1839. Isambard Kingdom Brunel built an atmospheric railway along this course.


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