John Cator came to Beckenham in 1773. He purchased the manor of Beckenham from Lord Bolingbroke, disposed of the old manor house
and built Beckenham Place as a new residence. His brother, Joseph, took occupancy of the Clock House and it was Joseph’s family who developed the Cator Estate.

At its height, the Estate once covered practically the whole of the land
on the north side of the main road from Shortlands to New Beckenham and a considerable part beyond the High Street to Penge.

One corner of the Estate contained the prestigious Kent House,
so named because it was the first in the county on leaving London.
The Manor was for generations owned by the family Lethieullier,
the first of whom was Sir John, a Hamburg merchant who had settled
in Beckenham and was, in the early 18th century, elevated to the
office of Sheriff of London. The mansion eventually passed into the hands of the Cators shortly before the turn of the century.

As with so many other centres of settlement in the London area, so in Beckenham the 19th century was a time of reconstruction, and this period saw the transition of Beckenham from a small village to a middle-class residential area. The village had been surrounded by a number of farms, one of which, Elm Farm, contained fields and meadows named Barn Mead, Plaws Field, Reddons and Alders Mead. These are all now remembered in the present roads of these names.

In 1853, a tollgate was erected in the Kent House road, which at that time was simply a rough lane from the County Bridge to Kent House Farm. Thirty years later the then Lord of the Manor, Albermarle Cator, abolished the gate, thus opening the way for future development.

The most important event of the 19th century for Beckenham was the coming of the railway, which gave quick and easy access to the City and so encouraged those engaged in business there to buy a house in pleasant rural surroundings. In 1863, the London Chatham and Dover Railway Company extended a track from Herne Hill along the 2,200-yard tunnel through Penge and into Beckenham.

The Cator Estate subsidised the building of the Beckenham Station on the understanding that there would be no goods depot and that no trains would run on Sundays, except early morning and late afternoon.

The lines were subject to severe constraints in exchange for the sale of Cator Estate land, and it was stipulated that Estate employees would tend the trees and shrubs which had to be planted along the railway embankment as a screen from the “middle-class villas”. During the first sixty years of the century the population of Beckenham had doubled to 2,391 and was over the subsequent years to increase even more rapidly to over 13,000. In order to serve this growth, three new stations were introduced on existing lines in the district and the first of these was Kent House Station in Plawsfield Road, opened in 1884. It was not by chance that the station’s construction coincided with that of the linkways to the Penge-Beckenham Highway, namely Barnmead and Plawsfield Roads.

Beckenham flourished and, by 1891, the population had grown to over 20,000. Open spaces were set aside for outdoor activities and, along with the Alexandra and Croydon Road Recreation Grounds, the 17-acre Cator Park was established as a private recreation ground for residents on that Estate.

From 1894 onwards, land was set aside as allotments, and the Barnmead Road allotments are still in use today, filling the triangle between three railways at the Clock House end. By the close of the century, Beckenham had become an area of desirable residences
only a short journey from “town” but still a pleasant rural environment.

The advent of the 20th century brought many changes including, almost immediately, the introduction of electric street lighting. Sadly, many of the grand mansions of the area disappeared during the first three decades, including the old Clock House whose site was used for the improvement of local amenities, the erection of the swimming baths and adjoining Technical Institute. The historic Kent House, however, was not demolished until 1958, by which time its situation near the junction of Kent House and Lennard Roads had become busy with motor traffic. Thus broken was the final link of over 700 years, as documents accurately trace its origins back to the year 1240, when it was owned
by a hospital known as St. Catherine’s.

Recent decades have seen the demolition of countless mature houses
in Beckenham, as these have been forced to make way for blocks of “luxury” flats. The casualty rate is being slowed down due to the efforts of sympathetic councillors, who often resist planning applications which involve the destruction of good houses which are not beyond repair.
This viewpoint is apparently now shared by officials at the Department
of the Environment who recently considered such a situation in Cator Road and upheld Bromley Council’s decision against a developer’s appeal to destroy yet another house in this road. Significantly, despite much 20th-century development in Cator Road, the authorities considered that enough was enough and in 1983 designated this as
a conservation area, one of only six in the area, the others being: Chancery Lane, St. George’s Church, Kelsey Square, the Penge Alms Houses and Belvedere Road near Crystal Palace.

Barnmead Road’s history appears to be undistinguished by the residence of anyone famous or by the occurrence of any historically significant event. Its importance and value lies in the fact that it has emerged virtually unscathed though a century during which the ravages of war and building booms have heavily contributed to the general trend towards anonymity and uniformity, from which the locality has suffered.

It is rare today to find a road such as Barnmead, which many feel provides a clear glimpse of Victorian suburbia. The houses are a fine example of the architecture of the day and it does not require close inspection to discover that at least ten individual house designs have been utilised.

The road surface remains in its original gravel-like form, as do the footways. In order to preserve these and the general environment, the residents in 1984 purchased the road from the then uninterested agents of the Cator Estate. By consent of Bromley Council – following an official referendum on the road’s future – it was decided that Barnmead Road should not be adopted, but should retain its rather rural nature.

Since that time, various improvements to the road have been agreed and assisted by the Council. The Kent House Road end of Barnmead Road was blocked off to prevent through traffic. More recently the lighting was replaced in period style. The entire road is now a conservation area with an Article 4 directive, which limits the changes which can be made to the houses and their environment. Kerbstones are gradually being replaced to improve drainage and there is a regular, quarterly programme of road maintenance. Ownership of the road and the organisation of its maintenance help to create a community which is fairly unusual. Residents have to meet to make decisions, but beyond that there is a sociable and pleasant atmosphere in a leafy backwater which still recalls the early days of Beckenham’s expansion when it was intended to provide a rural atmosphere only a short journey from central London.