A suburb with no centre, framed by one designation
Bromley's Urban Design Guide describes Bickley as a predominantly residential suburb of mainly detached houses which, unlike other parts of the borough, has no clearly defined centre. This guide takes its study area from the one conservation area carrying the Bickley name, Bickley Park, about 22.4 hectares designated by the London Borough of Bromley. The same guide points to good examples of building from the Arts and Crafts Movement and says the style has been mirrored in modern housing throughout Bickley, which is why a house's appearance is a weak clue to its age here.
The Mavelstone Road conservation area, mentioned in the same section of the guide, lies outside this study area. The south-east London guide gives the wider district.
Records for the Bickley Park designation
Every statement below links to the public record it comes from; sources were re-checked on .
One designation and two descriptions of it
Bickley Park, Bromley's reference CA6, was designated on 28 October 1986 and covers about 22.4 hectares according to planning.data.gov.uk.
Bromley's Urban Design Guide SPD describes a Bickley conservation area of around 90 mainly residential properties, tending to be large dwellings on spacious plots, and including St George's Church.
That guide never uses the Bickley Park name, so it is safer to check an address against the mapped line in the conservation-area dataset than to assume both descriptions cover the same ground.
Trees are singled out for added protection among the extra controls that Bromley lists on its conservation areas page, so felling or heavy pruning in one of these large gardens is raised with the council beforehand.
Bromley's guidance page counts green and open spaces, significant views and natural elements such as trees among the features that can give an area its character, and says the documents for each area are available on request.
The guide's account of Bickley
Bickley Station and Chislehurst Station are widely used by commuters, the SPD records, and on the NaPTAN dataset they stand about 210 and 240 metres beyond the conservation area.
The same section notes a significant Area of Special Residential Character, or ASRC, of spacious interwar housing, and the guide states that development proposals in ASRCs are required to respect, enhance and strengthen their special and distinctive qualities.
Whether that ASRC, the conservation area or neither applies to an address is put to Bromley before an extension is designed, asking for the conservation area's own guidance as well, since the guide says specific SPD guidance has been produced for individual conservation areas.
Public open space in Bickley is limited, the SPD observes, but large gardens go with the well-spaced properties, so boundary walls, garden buildings and drainage across the plot are part of the picture at any sale.
Five Grade II entries
Five list entries fall inside the boundary in Historic England's NHLE data, each at Grade II; the national records hold nothing at Grade II* or I inside the line, and neither a scheduled monument nor a registered park and garden.
Where an address is not among those entries, its heritage protection comes from the designation instead, which brings controls on demolition and on some external works.
Sand and gravel at every point, and nothing in Flood Zones 2 or 3
Harwich Formation sand and gravel forms the bedrock under every one of the five sample points in BGS mapping at 1:50,000, and nothing superficial is mapped over it at any of them.
With no clay mapped at those points on the BGS viewer, cracking in these houses is weighed first against water escaping from drains or soakaways and against the roots of large garden trees, rather than seasonal clay shrinkage.
A map at that scale samples the ground rather than surveying it, so any site investigation or engineer's report held for an extension is worth more than the map for a single plot.
Flood Map for Planning data from the Environment Agency place none of the 22.4 hectares inside Flood Zones 2 and 3.
Surface water forms no part of those zones and defences are not counted in them, so a property with a basement or a drive that falls towards the house is still entered into the long-term flood risk checker.
Housing figures from two LSOAs
Only two LSOAs touch the designation, E01000645 and E01000649, and neither has a quarter of its area inside it, so both are used under the fallback rule, although both lie mostly outside the 22.4-hectare study area (only 6.8% and 20.1% of each, in that order, is inside it); together they hold about 1,480 dwellings, according to the VOA's 2025 Council Tax property counts, with counts rounded to the nearest 10.
That total is many times the guide's figure of around 90 properties, a reminder that the VOA tables mostly describe the streets around the conservation area rather than the area itself.
Detached houses make up 57.4% of those dwellings in the type table, flats and maisonettes 18.2%, terraced houses 13.5%, bungalows 6.1% and semi-detached houses 3.4%.
By age the build-period counts give 41.2% to 1945-1972, 20.9% to 2000 or later and 16.2% to 1973-1999, against 6.1% for 1919-1939, 5.4% before 1900, 4.1% for 1900-1918 and 4.1% undated.
Band G alone holds 46.6% of the dwellings and bands F to H together 73.6% in the VOA band figures.
Because the guide says Arts and Crafts design has been copied in modern Bickley housing and most dwellings in the VOA build periods postdate 1945, a period-looking house is dated from its planning history and construction, not its elevations.
Local and practice-wide guides
The first list gives this area's guides, one for each kind of instruction on houses in and around the conservation area; the second gives the firm's service pages, which explain each instruction in general terms.
Other guides nearby
Neighbouring guides start from their own records: Bromley, Chislehurst, Beckenham and Hayes, Bromley. The south-east London guide gives the wider picture, and elsewhere in the borough a separate guide covers Penge.
Questions on the conservation area and its large plots
Is Bickley Park the same as the conservation area in Bromley's design guide?
The national record names the designation Bickley Park, reference CA6, while Bromley's Urban Design Guide SPD writes of a Bickley conservation area of around 90 mainly residential properties. Check the address on the mapped boundary rather than assuming the two descriptions match exactly.
Do the large gardens bring extra controls?
Trees are the clearest case: Bromley's conservation areas page notes additional protection for them. Planning.data.gov.uk's Article 4 dataset has no direction for the area, although an empty result is not proof that none exists, so ask the council before relying on permitted development.
Does a house that looks Arts and Crafts date from before the war?
Not necessarily. Bromley's guide says the style has been mirrored in modern housing throughout Bickley, and the VOA build-period tables for the surrounding LSOAs date 20.9% of dwellings to 2000 or later. Planning history and the construction found on site settle the age.
What does the geology map show under these houses?
Harwich Formation sand and gravel at all five sample points, with nothing recorded above it, on the BGS map. That lowers the weight given to clay shrinkage but not to leaking drains, soakaways or big trees, and the map cannot show conditions under one plot.
How many list entries fall inside the boundary?
The NHLE query returns five list entries, all Grade II. One entry can take in more than one structure, so the entry text, not the count, shows what is protected at an address.
What helps before an inspection of a large detached house here?
A site plan showing every building on the plot, planning and building-control papers for extensions, drainage records including any soakaway, and tree reports for large specimens. On plots this size, knowing where the drains run and which wings were added later saves time on the day.
How we work on an instruction
Hampstead Chartered Surveyors is a RICS-regulated firm (RICS Regulated Firm No. 923064) working from its registered Hampstead NW3 office. The firm does not claim premises, staff or completed instructions in an individual locality, and it does not treat a neighbourhood name as evidence about a particular building.
An instruction starts with the full address, the decision the client faces and the documents already available, such as leases, drawings, notices or earlier reports. The scope, fee and inspection date are confirmed in writing only after that review, and access to roofs, lofts, basements or common parts is agreed before the visit.
Reports include RICS Level 2 and Level 3 home surveys, building and defect investigations, party wall appointments, reinstatement cost assessments, contract administration and schedules of condition. Each report records what was inspected, what could not be seen and what further investigation the evidence supports.
Public datasets such as the conservation-area register, the National Heritage List for England, British Geological Survey mapping, the Environment Agency flood map and Valuation Office Agency housing statistics describe areas rather than individual properties. They frame questions before an inspection; they never replace it.
Reviewed by Savas Bulduk BSc (Hons) MRICS, Director & Chartered Building Surveyor at Hampstead Chartered Surveyors & Building Consultancy. Last reviewed: . Our people · RICS firm record