This area can perhaps be described as being on the frontier of London – to the north lies the High Street that divides it and the rest of West Wickham, but to the south lies Sparrows Den Playing Fields, Well Wood (an ancient semi- natural woodland), Beccehamian Rugby Football Club’s training grounds, Heartsease Girlguiding House (secluded woodland grounds), Hayes Common (a natural Site of Special Scientific Interest) and so on. The point being, this slice of London holds on to the city by a tether, but its true heart lies in the countryside. Shirley traces its history back far – all the way before William the Conqueror; but it really makes an appearance in Tudor times, with several buildings in the area having been built in the 15th century. Like all of West Wickham, its streets are lined with trees and lush greenery is everywhere. The area is about a half an hour’s bus ride or drive to Croydon via Wickham Road (A232). Alternately, the London LOOP walking path passes this area as well, and you can walk to Croydon via a nature path, which roughly traces the old Roman road through Spring Wood and Three half penny Wood.

Wickham Court, today an independent co-educational day school, was the ancestral home of the Heydon and Boleyn families (the latter being the family of Anne Boleyn). The manor house dates back to the 15th century – and was allegedly where King Henry VIII proposed to Anne Boleyn (but there is little substance to this claim). The area around the manor was popular for deer hunting (indeed the area today is surrounded by fields). The house was renovated following the Civil War, during which it was a Royalist stronghold; it would serve a military function again during the Second World War.

Michael Carberry, a famous cricketer, studied at St. John Rigby College. He has represented England from the U-15 level to the Ashes.

William Burnside was a mathematician, lecturing in Cambridge for a decade before becoming a professor at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. He passed away in West Wickham in 1927, having pioneered research in finite group theory, formulated the Burnside problem, Burnside theorem, Burnside’s lemma, Burnside ring and many other things that, even 90 years on, we can only pretend to understand.

Theatre 62 in Wickham Theatre Centre is a community theatre club, which has been producing a multitude of plays for the last 50 years (and do a good job of it too, having won awards in the past).

Biggin Hill Airport is about five kilometres away, and though not as frequent as the other London airports (and no passenger airlines), planes fly over the area occasionally. Biggin Hill Airport nearby is to open a new academic facility in partnership with local colleges, aiming to teach aeronautical engineering skills, which are lacking worldwide.