18 Facts About Beckenham

Beckenham is a town in Greater London, England, within the London Borough of Bromley and the historic county of Kent.

Beckenham was, until the coming of the railway in 1857, a small village, with most of its land being rural and private parkland.

In common with the rest of Bromley, the largest borough of London by area, Beckenham has several pockets of recreational land which are a mixture of sports grounds, fishing ponds and parks.

Place-name 'Beckenham' is first attested in a Saxon charter of 862 as Biohhahema mearc.

Beckenham remained a small village until well into the 19th century.

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In 1876 Beckenham Cemetery opened, located south of the town in Elmers End.

Today Beckenham is an outer London suburb, though it has maintained its own identity and forms a town in its own right.

In 1965, as part of the creation of the Greater London Council, the Borough council was disbanded and Beckenham came under control of the newly constituted London Borough of Bromley.

Original village of Beckenham was a cluster of development in its own fields, surrounded by a series of manorial estates: Beckenham, Foxgrove, Kelsey and Langley Halls and Parks.

Beckenham is the headquarters to Capita Registrars Limited who provide share registration services for more than half of the UK's quoted companies, Proper Records, the UK's biggest independent music distributor, and Vizual a leading HR software developer.

Beckenham Junction provides services into London Bridge every 30 minutes, taking 35 minutes, and to Orpington every 15 minutes, taking 7 minutes to Bromley South and 17 minutes to Orpington.

Beckenham is served by several Transport for London buses that link the town with other areas including Bromley, Catford, Chislehurst, Croydon, Crystal Palace, Eltham, Lewisham, Orpington, Penge, West Wickham and Woolwich.

The Beckenham Concert Band is a community wind band which has, over the last 35 years, raised thousands of pounds for local and national charities.

Principal secondary schools in Beckenham are Harris Academy Beckenham, Harris Academy Bromley, the two Langley Park schools, for boys and for girls, and Eden Park High School.

Beckenham Hospital, now called Beckenham Beacon, following redevelopment in 2009, is a minor treatment centre and an outstation to Princess Royal Hospital in Farnborough for outpatient services.

Beckenham Rugby Football Club is a rugby union club formed originally in 1894.

In Simon Brett's long-running BBC Radio 4 comedy drama, No Commitments, Beckenham is the home of the wildly snobbish, socially aspirational and insecure sister Victoria; the town is frequently mocked by association.

Beckenham is one of the main locations of the novel The Buddha of Suburbia, by Hanif Kureishi.