Crayford

The walk from Crayford to Bexley is also part of the London LOOP.  On leaving the Waterside Gardens in Crayford, it is not possible to walk further along the River Cray due to industrial development.  Crossing the road we pass through the small Tannery Garden (there used to be a tannery and brickworks in Crayford) and onto London Road (Watling Street), forking left at the junction with Bourne Road until a garage is reached; the two posts either side of this are all that remains of Crayford Cinema and on the other side of the road is Shenstone Park.  Here there is a sculpture of cows (Cows about Crayford?) illustrating another aspect of Crayford’s industrial history; cow dung and the roots of the Madder plant were used to create red dyes for silk (there used to be a silkworks in Crayford too).  We walk down the edge of a playing field to reach the River Cray; it is a pleasant walk along the river bank and after a while we reach Hall Place; this is a beautiful Tudor house on the outskirts of Crayford and on the banks of the River Cray - we divert from the London LOOP route to explore the award-winning gardens,   .  

Hall Place is a stately home; building started in 1537 for a wealthy merchant using, in part, stone recycled from nearby former monastery, Lesnes Abbey (in what is now nearby Abbey Wood).  In 1649, the house was sold to another wealthy City merchant who added a second wing built of red bricks, doubling the size of the house, but in highly contrasting architectural styles. Today Hall Place is restored to its original Tudor and later 17th-century designs and is managed by the charity Bexley Heritage Trust. There are 65 hectares of landscaped gardens and grounds, a topiary lawn, herb garden, tropical garden and long herbaceous cottage garden-styled borders.  It was lovely to walk round some of these.

We head back to our route and have to skirt the outside of Hall Place gardens to the railway line and cross under the A2 (aka the East Rochester Way) via an underpass where the local graffiti artists have been busy.  From here we walk along the edge of Churchfield Wood to Bexley (aka Old Bexley or Bexley Village).  Walking along the High Street into Bexley we cross the River Cray at The Old Mill; this was destroyed by fire in 1966, rebuilt in replica form and is now converted to residential use.Read more