Grove Park is a quiet district taking its name from Grove Farm, an area of land which
was located immediately opposite the front of Grove Park Library. The train station was
the catalyst of the area's birth in the 1870s.
St Augustine's Church is a Church of England. Archbishop Desmond Tutu was a Grove Park resident
and ministered here in the first half of the seventies.
Baring Road (formerly Bromley Road) is the spine of Grove Park from which everything
branches off. The set-up of the GPCG or Grove Park Community Group there in 1972 is a big
reason why the district still exists in its current form today.
Railway Children Walk is a 200-metre heritage trail commemorating the world famous 1906
children's novel 'The Railway Children' by E.Nesbit. The back of Edith Nesbit's house
on Baring Road overlooked the railway line and is partially referenced by name in the
story. Part of her old garden now forms the Grove Park Nature Reserve established in 1984.
The area was mostly woodland before they cut down and burned the trees for charcoal in
the 18th century. This accounts for the section name Burnt Ash.
Brick maker and Victorian builder John Pound was born in Blackheath in 1827 and was responsible
for much of the late 19th century development of Grove Park including The Baring Hall Hotel
& Pub previously threatened by demolition after a fire inside it in 2000.
Desmond Tutu lived in Chinbrook Road from 1972-
1975 before he was later elevated to the world stage during the 1980s as a South African
activist and opponent of apartheid. Lewisham Council made him an Honorary Freeman of the
Borough in 1990.
When an opera singer discovered Desmond Tutu used to live in her house, she invited him
back in 2016 to create a peace garden in Chinbrook Meadows 150 yards away in honour of his work
in peace and reconciliation.
Chinbrook Meadows was a dairy farm before it became a public park in 1937. It hosts
the annual Grove Park Carnival & Chinbrook Dog Show.
Sixty years ago the River Quaggy here was channelized into ugly concrete culverts just
to alleviate flooding. They pulled all of this up at the turn of the century to give
it a more open and naturally meandering appearance with wooden bridges going across it; a lot
more pleasant to attract wildlife and the public back to the area. Shortly afterwards,
Chinbrook Meadows won the Green Flag Award for best UK park, two years in a row.