The idverde Countryside Team, who manage Bromley owned parks, are based at High Elms.[4]
There is access from High Elms Road and Shire Lane.
Historyedit
The history of the High Elms estate can be traced back to the Norman Conquest, when it was given by William the Conqueror to his half-brother, Odo, bishop of Bayeux. For successive generations afterwards the land occupied now by the golf course was given over to farming. In 1809[5] a wealthy London banker and Member of Parliament, John William Lubbock,[6] bought the 260 acres that we now know as the High Elms Estate as a country residence,[7] and in 1840 the astronomer and banker Sir John Lubbock, 3rd Baronet[8] inherited it.[9] He built a grand new mansion in the Italian style.[7] After Charles Darwin moved in 1842 into the nearby Down House on the other side of the village of Downe,[10]Lubbock's son, also called John Lubbock, the fourth baronet and later Baron Avebury, befriended him, being a frequent visitor to Down House.[11]
In 1938 the estate was sold to Kent County Council and the house became a nurses' training centre. In 1965 the area became part of the London Borough of Bromley, and the estate was transferred to the new borough. The land then became public open space, but in 1967 the mansion burnt down.[7]
Listed buildingsedit
There are the following Grade II Listed Buildings in and around the park:
Eighteenth-century gate piers and wrought iron railings[12]
The Clock House, early nineteenth-century stables of High Elms converted to a house[20]
BEECHEedit
Bromley Council has established the Bromley Environmental Education Centre at High Elms (BEECHE) at the park, with environmental programmes for schools and public events in the school holidays.[21]