Local History.

12:00am Saturday 1st January 2000

DANSON HOUSE RESTORED.

Danson Park conjures up wonderful childhood memories. The park was a favourite place to visit on Saturday afternoons and school holidays and is still popular with families today.

I remember the old house because there was a tea room on the ground floor where mum and dad would buy you a glass of lemonade and a sticky bun for a treat.

Originally called Danson Hill, the house was built by Sir Robert Taylor and completed in 1766. London merchant John Boyd had gradually acquired the Danson lands after the death of its previous owner Mary Styleman in 1750 and her tenant John Selwyn the following year.

Boyd considered the old house unfashionable for a man of his wealth and social aspirations, so he commissioned Taylor to draw up plans.

Andrews, Dury and Herbert's map published in 1769 shows the completed Danson Hill and the Chapel House with its little spire, which still stands on the roundabout where Blackfen Road and Danson Road meet.

By 1773 there were new farm buildings, a Palladian bridge linking Middle Park with South Park and a "Doric temple" summerhouse.

Sir John's fortunes changed somewhat during the wars with France when he found it necessary to arrange a mortgage on Danson. Some of his slaves on his West Indian plantation died of starvation and William Wilberforce was pressing for the abolition of slavery.

When the French declared war on Britain in 1793 Sir John feared he would never be able to pay off the mortgage. He died in January 1800 and was buried in the family vault in St Mary's churchyard, Lewisham. The estate went to his son John, who sold it just seven years later to John Johnston, a retired army captain, for £50,000.

Johnston died in 1829 and his son Hugh kept things going until 1862 when he sold the property to railway engineer Alfred Bean.

The North Kent Railway was already operating when Bean bought Danson. He became the driving force behind the Bexleyheath Line which opened in 1895, five years after he died Bean Road, which runs from Danson Road to Red House Lane, was named after him.

In accordance with Alfred Bean's will, outlying areas of the Danson estate were sold off for housing following plans he had personally laid out. The estate was thus reduced to what it was before John Boyd began buying up land over 100 years earlier. Bean's widow Anna kept the mansion, the park and the home farm going as a private estate for another 30 years, despite heavy taxation and labour shortages in the First World War.

By the time she died in 192,1 Welling was fast becoming a London suburb thanks to the railway, and houses were encroaching on Danson. In 1924 Bexley Urban District Council acquired what remained of the estate for just £16,000.

Two hundred acres including the mansion, coach house, three lodges, the Doric temple and the Palladian bridge were opened to the public by Princess Mary, daughter of King George V, in 1925. The temple was subsequently moved to St Paul's, Waldenbury in Hertfordshire and the Boat House Café stands on the site.

During the Second World War the mansion was home for the civil defence control centre of Bexley. In 1995 Bexley Council sold the property to English Heritage which has been carefully restoring it to its former glory with a view to opening it to the public. Susan Deane

Further reading

The History of Danson by Ruth Hutcherson. Bexley Libraries and Museums Department 1985.

Converted for the new archive on 30 June 2000.Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.