A potted history of Penge

"There was an old person of Anerley,
Whose conduct was strange and unmannerly;
He rushed down the Strand,
With a pig in each hand,
But returned in the evening to Anerley."

With that limerick master of nonsense Edward Lear in 1846 revealed what many would have thought of a district only just coming to the notice of other Londoners. Anerley, as a name, is a newcomer. Penge, however, is ancient.

The name Penge is a rare Celtic survival in London, and it means the top or the end of the wood, a reference to the area's position in the Great North Wood. Anerley has a far more quixotic origin.

Early in the 19th century a solitary building plot was bought by Scottish silk manufacturer William Sanderson (1801 - 1871) who named his new house Anerley because, to a lowland Scot, it was just that - the annerley, or only, house in the vicinity.

Penge makes an appearance in Domesday as "a wood for fifty hogs' pannage". Penge remained a tiny hamlet and Anerley a part of Penge Common until the ill-fated Croydon Canal came through here in 1809.

The canal's attempt to deal with the hilly terrain brought about a financially unacceptable number of locks and by 1836 the land would be ceded to the Croydon & London Railway, and much of the rail line today runs along its course. Old canal cuttings can still be seen in Betts Park.

But the canal had the effect of bringing to the area its first building schemes. In 1827 Anerley and Croydon Roads were laid out, building plots established and Penge Common enclosed.

Eleven years later came the railway, and Penge and Anerley stations opened. Enter Mr. Sanderson, who gave land for Anerley station and for whom it was largely built, providing him with access to the City.

Around 1840 the impressive almshouses of Penge made their appearances. The Watermen and Lightermen's Almshouses opened in 1841 when 76 candidates were approved, consisting of 34 couples, 10 single men and 32 widows.

Their construction reflects a time when bridges were being thrown across the Thames and ferrymen and barge workers were falling on hard times.

Next door ex-Queen Adelaide sought to memorialise her late husband, William IV, with almshouses for 12 widows of commissioned naval officers. This is the Naval Asylum, with its extravagant Tudoresque chimney stacks.

In the 1860s, further north, the Metropolitan Association for Improving the Dwellings of the Industrious Classes built rows of cottages on the site of Porcupine Farm, complete with sculleries, for those "serving the great houses of Beckenham."

Penge and Anerley were being discovered by city folk and they were liking what they saw. Anerley Tea Gardens opened in 1841 close to the station. This new reputation was seemingly sealed with the coming of the mighty Crystal Palace in 1851 and the future could only be bright for new, up-and-coming Penge and Anerley.

From a population of 270 in 1841 the number of people living in Penge rose to 13,200 by 1871. The following year Penge Police Station was built, and it remains the oldest working station anywhere in London.

And then disaster struck. It is hard to recreate the national shock of the Penge Murder of 1877 but it reverberated throughout the land and in a stroke the seemingly unstoppable rise to gentility of the district was rudely broken off.

Harriet Staunton, considered a retard by her new family, was slowly starved to death by her husband, brother-in-law and sisters-in-law. Harriet was not so retarded as to not know what was going on and when her own knowledge of her impending doom was revealed it only added to the shock Victorian society felt for this poor defenceless girl.

The authorities pulled out all the stops, renaming the street (from Forbes Road to Mosslea Road) and even claiming that the thoroughfare was over the border in Beckenham. No-one was fooled, and in a stroke a genteel air was reduced to that of a "low neighbourhood".

The population kept on rising but at a steadier pace. The Second World War brought great changes to the district. Penge and Anerley were on the flight path back from London for the Luftwaffe and many unexpended bombs would find their home here. Dropping these unused armaments quickly increased the aircrafts' chances of making it back to base.

Later in the war some seventeen V-1 flying bombs came down in the district.

Local heroes in the vicinity have included H.G. Wells, Walter De La Mare, Rupert Brooke and everybody's friend Thomas Crapper.