This neighbourhood is southeast of the high street – being enclosed by Bromley Road to the north, the Beck (from which Beckenham gets its name), Kelsey Park to the west, and Langley Park to the south; it is also intersected and partially bounded to the east by Hayes Lane. All of this makes it is a convenient drive away to Bromley town centre, Hayes, and Penge. Langley Park is home to Langley Park Golf Club, of which the legendary golfer, John Henry Taylor, part of the Great Triumvirate of golfers said “lends itself very well to the game. I have no hesitation in saying that the course will afford an excellent test of golf”; but of course he would – he designed it himself.

A big part of the area, which somewhat overlaps with Langley Park Estate, was developed in the 1900s as part of the garden city movement – indeed Wickham Way, Elwill Way and Hayes Way, the first roads to be laid and designed, are still at the centre of the locality, and the garden city influence shows. These main roads curve north-south towards the bottom bit of the area – a grand planned section with detached houses. To add to the garden city theme, Kelsey Park is a beautiful public park, formerly part of the Kelsey Manor Estate, teeming full of birds and other such wildlife, crazy golf as well as being available for events.

Kelsey Park, as mentioned, was formerly part of Kelsey Estate, which has experienced many functions in its 600-year lifetime – starting out with a mansion being built by one William Kelshulle, and later a chapel.

Buildings were torn down and rebuilt throughout the 18th and 19th century, being used as residences, chapels and convents. Kelsey Park opened just before the war in 1913, with the main mansion used for military purposes during the war, and torn down after. Harking back to ancient times, the London to Lewes Way (starting from Peckham and ending in Lewes), a road built by the Romans in the late 1st or 2nd century, runs through Beckenham – though the exact alignment is unknown today.

Charles Hoare lived here for a while in the late-1800s. He was also the last member of the Hoare family to stay in Kelsey. He was quite a well-rounded person – first a Kentish batsman, he played first-class cricket before becoming a Senior Partner at C. Hoare and Co. (the oldest privately-owned bank in the United Kingdom) after his father’s death. He would later go on to found the TS (Training Ship) Mercury, a static training ship providing boy recruits for the Royal Navy.

The area has quite the ancient history. South Hill Wood, for instance, still contains some ancient woodland, as well as Kingswood Glen (with its origins of an Iron Age hill-fort and Roman connections). For a long time up until recently, traces of a Roman Camp could be seen on Toots Wood Road, adjacent to the neighbourhood. It was most probably a Roman outpost (the word ‘toot’ is connected with ‘Tumuli’, meaning a look-out hill).
More contemporarily, Beckenham Festival runs October-November every year with one of the locations being Langley Park School, one of the largest amateur competitive performing arts festivals in the region, with music, dancing, speech and drama all on play.

The area itself does not have a train station; depending on where you are, you might be anywhere from a 5- to 35-minute walk from Beckenham High Street (and Beckenham Junction station). However, there are fairly frequent buses to the High Street and Bromley centre, both of which are 15 minutes away from the furthermost point of the neighbourhood, with a Southeastern service running from Bromley North, South and Beckenham Junction (the latter of which also has Southern and Thameslink services).

The Bakerloo line extension is proposed to reach up to Lewisham, after which there is a follow-up proposal to extend it down to New Beckenham, Beckenham Junction and other stations in the area. That said, the project has been on hold for several years now and, while TfL has recently awarded the engineering consultancies Dr. Sauer & Partners and Arup contracts to prepare feasibility studies related to the extension, the project’s future is still uncertain. In 2021, Cala Homes launched its first development in Beckenham, Langley Court, which offers 112 two- to five-bedroom houses, as well as 24 one- and two-bedroom apartments.