Buying or selling a house in
West Wickham
West Wickham is a suburb in the London Borough of Bromley, in Greater London since 1965 and before that in Kent. It is predominantly a 1920s and 1930s suburb around an older nucleus at the High Street and Layhams Road, with Coney Hall to the south-east built by the Morrell Brothers in the 1930s. Its station runs direct to London Charing Cross. Vine Estates handles a small number of sales here personally.
What it’s actually like
West Wickham is a comfortable, well-established place with a Grade I house at the top of it — Wickham Court, built in the fifteenth century, standing beside a fine old church. Four trains an hour to Charing Cross, good schools, and Coney Hall's thirties houses with their bay windows and gables. Easy, friendly and well connected. St David's Prep and several strong primary schools make it popular with families.
“A fifteenth-century Grade I house and four trains an hour to Charing Cross. West Wickham quietly has both.”
David Johnston
The houses
Predominantly a 1920s and 1930s suburb built out after the railway, around an older nucleus at the High Street and Layhams Road. Coney Hall, to the south-east, was built in the 1930s by the Morrell Brothers on former farmland — two-storey houses with polygonal bay windows and half-timbered gables, along Glebe Road, Addington Road, Kingsway and Layhams Road. Listed stock is scattered: 18 High Street, 25 Corkscrew Hill, 77 Addington Road, and Wickham Court with the parish church.
Getting to London
West Wickham station is on the Hayes line, opened in 1882 and rebuilt after wartime bomb damage. Southeastern run four direct trains an hour off-peak to London Charing Cross, fastest about 39 minutes, calling at London Bridge and Waterloo East.
Schools
Hawes Down, Oak Lodge, Pickhurst Infant Academy, Pickhurst Academy and Wickham Common serve the primary sector. St David's Prep is the independent school. There is no mainstream state secondary in West Wickham; the nearest are at Beckenham and Bromley.
Common questions
Does West Wickham have a conservation area?
No. There is no conservation area in West Wickham. The nearest is Hayes Village, designated in 1982, about two kilometres away. There is a same-named West Wickham in Cambridgeshire with two conservation areas of its own, which is a common source of confusion.
What is Wickham Court?
A Grade I listed semi-fortified red-brick house of the late fifteenth century on Layhams Road, three storeys with octagonal five-storey turrets at each angle and castellated parapets. Originally it had almost no external windows — everything looked into a central courtyard. The Lennard family occupied it from the sixteenth century to 1833.
Is there an Anne Boleyn connection at Wickham Court?
To the Boleyn family, but not to the queen. The builder, Sir Henry Heydon, married Anne Boleyn, a daughter of Sir Geoffrey Boleyn — and Sir Geoffrey was the great-grandfather of Henry VIII's queen. Heydon's wife was a different, earlier Anne Boleyn: the queen's great-aunt.
Thinking of moving from West Wickham
If you're weighing up a move here, a short conversation now costs nothing and commits you to nothing. I can tell you honestly what's realistic and when.