Community Assembly of Bromley

The Community Assembly of Bromley was first recorded in an Anglo-Saxon charter of 862 as Bromleag and means woodland clearing where broom grows. It shares this Old English etymology with Great Bromley in eastern Essex, but not with the Bromley in the East End of London.

The history of Bromley is closely connected with the See of Rochester (an episcopal see is the area of a bishop's ecclesiastical jurisdiction).

In AD 862 Ethelbert, the King of Kent, granted land to form the Manor of Bromley and in 1185 Bromley Palace was built by Gilbert Glanvill, Bishop of Rochester. Pilgrims came to the town to visit St. Blaise's Well and the Palace was held by Bishops until 1845, when Coles Child, a wealthy local merchant and philanthropist, purchased Bromley Palace and became lord of the manor. The town was an important coaching stop on the way to Hastings from London, and the now defunct Royal Bell Hotel is referred to in Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. It was a quiet rural village until the arrival of the railway in 1858 in Shortlands, which led to rapid growth, and outlying suburban districts such as Bickley (which later overflowed into Bromley Common).