Thames Tributary - Cray flowing to Darent. St.Mary Cray

Cray Tributary to Darent, itself a Thames Tributary
The Cray continues to flow northwards, turning slightly to the east. It is joined by small tributaries from springs along its length

Post to the east St.Mary Cray
Post to the south Orpington


Albert Road
Terrace flint and brick. All its entrance doors to the rear
The Rising Sun. 19th pub. Demolished. The site was adapted in 1998 for housing.
23-34 Salvation Army Centre. 19th development.

Anglesea Road
1-19 development plus South Cray Farmhouse
11-13 17th farmhouse
St.Andrew's church. Commissioner’s church outside and a Romanesque interior. Built in 1892-3 by Hide and Newberry, to serve the new area. It is a plain brick building but the planned tower and steeple were never built.
Vicarage


Cray Avenue
Cray disappears under it
Coates Brothers. Founded in the City of London in 1877, Coates Brothers were suppliers to the print trade specialising in printing inks. They moved their factory here in 1936, to a site covering 5 acres. And later took over Johnson Riddle & Co., which became Coates Lorilleux and part of the Sun Chemical Corporation. The original factory is now closed.
Morphy Richards. They bought a barn, in an oast house 1936, to make electric fires and graphic pickups. Eventually, had the largest factory on the site making aircraft components in the war. Donal Morphy and Charles Richards formed the company on July 8th 1936 and in 1947, it merged with Astral. In 1949, it produced its first automatic toaster, in 1953, it produced its first hairdryer and by 1957, it was the UK's leading provider of electric blankets. Morphy did not like the huge expansion of the company, but Richards thought it was too slow. Morphy sold his share of the company to EMI in 1960, and the company was taken over by GEC. In 1966, it became part of British Domestic Appliances (BDA).and, in 1970; the original factory in St Mary Cray was closed. In the 1970s, BDA was the UK's largest manufacturer of domestic appliances and changed its name to Hotpoint in 1975.
Dene hole on the Morphy Richards site. 1964
Tip Top Bakery has become Kingsmill. Began in Sidcup and moved here in 1939. The bakery in Cray Avenue was built in 1939 and was designed by Sir Alexander Gibb and Partners.
Oertloing Ltd. Plant in 1852 making precision equipment. Ludwig Oertloing had come to Bedford Square from Germany in 1840s.
Pilgrim House, Industrial units. Was site of a pub called Pilgrims,

Lagoon Road
Blue Lagoon Olympic size swimming pool. . A private pool, opened in 1933 by E O’Sullivan, as part of the development of a garden city estate, plus leisure facilities. The pool was a destination for London day trippers using combined “rail-swim” train tickets. The pool was huge and there was also a putting and tennis. The pool was closed in 1939, drained and was never reopened. The site was used by the National Time Recorder Company
National Time Recorder Co. built on the site of the pool in 1951. Had been started in 1908 in Blackfriars.

Lower Road
New Town. The southern part of St. Mary Cray, bounded by Lower Road, Albert Road, Anglesea Road and Kent Road is a 19th development. The houses are of stock brick, with slate roofs.
127 Royal Albert pub. This area has a distinctive look, with its consistency of building materials such as stock brick and slate. Typically robust 19th century design. Adjoining it now is the old people's centre which has its main entrance in Wellington Road.
St. Andrew's Church. Plain form of at the end of the allotments. It was designed by Hide and Newberry and built in 1892-3. Although it’s planned tower and steeple were never constructed like a Commissioners but oddly like a Commissioners' church outside. Romanesque interior. Recent matching extension

Poverest Road
Fordcroft a Roman villa with a bath complex. The remains of a building can be seen protected by a shelter. This has been interpreted as a small Romano-British bath- house, probably for local people, and may have belonged to a farmstead complex or settlement which extended south. It had two rooms, hot and warm each with a small alcove containing a plunge bath. A third room was a cold or changing room. It had painted plaster walls inside and a roof of clay tiles. Part of the underfloor heating system can be seen. Wood was burned in the stoke-hole; and up the walls through a cavity system of box-flue tiles. Metal smelting took place nearby and a large quantity of crushed slag was found. The first phase was thought to date to AD100. However excavations suggest that it 6might be AD270.
Saxon Cemetery found, but nothing is visible. This May infer that the village originated in Anglo-Saxon times, perhaps as early as the 5th when invaders were coming from north Germany, entering the Thames Estuary and establishing settlements along tributary streams such as the Darent and Cray.
Poverest Primary School
Baptist Church. Its 1963 main building and 1936 school hall is home to a growing membership of many nationalities

St Mary Cray
St. Mary Cray was once called South Cray and is first mentioned in 1032, when King Canute's Treasurer gave the land to Christ Church Canterbury, who kept it until surrendered the dissolution. It is ‘Sudcrai’ in the Domesday Book, ‘Creye sancte Marie’ in 1257, ‘Seynte Mary Crey’ in 1270 that is 'estate on the River Cray with a church dedicated to St Mary'. The whole centre of St.Mary Cray was blown up by a landmine overnight in 1941 and nothing was left

Wellington Road
Premises of Smith and Milroy, makers of the Orpington Car in the 1920's. The showrooms were at the Orpington Pond Garage. The car was hand built and relatively expensive, although it incorporated components developed for the mass-produced Ford cars of the day. No example of the Orpington car has survived intact.

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