High Elms Country Park

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, a wealthy London banker and Member of Parliament, John William Lubbock (2nd Baronet), bought the 260 acres now known as the High Elms Estate as a country residence. who built a grand new mansion in the Italian style. His son, also called John Lubbock, had been born in 1834. Young John befriended Darwin, and was a frequent visitor to Down House. In 1865 John became the fourth baronet, and in 1900 Baron Avebury. 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. ==Listed buildings==

There are the following Grade II Listed Buildings in and around the park: :Eighteenth-century gate piers and wrought iron railings :Cuckoo Lodge :Eton fives court, built about 1840 :Grotto, constructed between 1885 and 1896 :Ice well, constructed about 1850 :Old Lodge, early nineteenth-century cottage :Outhouse at the Clock House, probably a granary with a horse gin, early nineteenth century :Stone garden shelter, circa 1913 :The Clock House, early nineteenth-century stables of High Elms converted to a house ==BEECHE==

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. ==See also==