A Walk Down Anerley Road

 

 A detail of the former New Swedenborgian Church in Anerley

After spending 4 hours in Crystal Palace Park, to explore its geology, the building stones on the terraces, the ‘dinosaurs’ and the Geological Illustrations, I left by the entrance at Crystal Palace railway station – noting the dressings in Bath stone, which was very familiar to me when working in the building restoration industry in London.

 

Crystal Palace railway station

Making my way down Anerley Road, my eye was immediately caught by a large church building on Waldegrave Road - now the residential New Church Court - which I initially thought must be built in red brick but soon discovered is actually a very early example of the use of mass concrete.

 

 

Completed in 1883 to the design of W.J.E. Henley, the manager of the Concrete Building Company, this was originally built for the New Swedenborgian Church but it was sold in 1987 and has been since been converted into flats.

 

A few views of the former New Swedenborgian Church

 

The walls are two feet thick and, although I didn’t look at the fabric closely, these appear to be made with a coarse aggregate that looks more like crushed brick, with a pink tinted Portland cement binder, than the typical sub-angular ballast that it is typical used for concrete

Shafts and Corinthian capitals

The shafts and Corinthian capitals to the south door, however, are made with a much finer grade of aggregate, which allowed these much finer decorative elements to be cast separately and then incorporated into the structure.

The former Anerley Town Hall

Continuing down Anerley Road, I encountered Anerley Town Hall, which was built in 1878 as a vestry hall and became the Town Hall when Penge Urban District Council was formed in 1900 and was then considerably enlarged in 1911.

 

A detail of the former Anerley Town Hall

 

It is built with pale yellow Gault bricks, which are quite different from the ubiquitous London yellow stock bricks, with the quoins and dressings again being built in Bath stone – including the carved ‘sea god’, which is a very common motif used for keystones.

 

The keystone at the former Anerley Town Hall

Further down Anerley Road, I had a quick look at Betts Park, where I was very interested to see a remnant of the Croydon Canal and another example of Lewisian gneiss – one of several Millennium Rocks in the London Borough of Bromley.

 

A Lewisian gneiss Millennium Rock

My last stop for the day was at Beckenham Cemetery (1877), by George Truefitt, where the chapel and the piers to the gates and boundary railings are built with Kentish Rag walling, with Bath stone dressings – a combination of materials that is very commonly seen in the Victorian churches of South London.

 

The chapel at Beckenham Cemetery

 

I only spent 15 minutes in the area around the chapel and I was most interested in the artificial rock in the Garden of Remembrance, which I thought might be built with Pulhamite – a material used extensively for large scale landscaping in the second half of the C19.

 

Artificial rock landscaping at the Garden of Remembrance

Having undertaken a brief internet search, however, I can find no reference to its use at Beckenham Cemetery. Also, my understanding is that the craftsmen took made a great effort to make their work look very realistic and, looking closely at the artificial stone here, the finish is very crude and very inferior to examples of Pulhamite that I have seen online.

 

A detail of the finish to the artificial rock