Bromley Museum

Bromley Museum

Bromley Museum
The Priory
Church Hill
Orpington
Bromley
Greater London
BR6 0HH

Tel: 01689 873 826
E-Mail: bromley.museum@bromley.gov.uk

Web: Bromley Museum

About Bromley Museum

Bromley Museum houses a considerable collection of archaeologically excavated finds from across the London Borough of Bromley, with many of the finest items on display. These range in date from the Roman period to the 19th and 20th centuries and include both pottery and glass, with excavated finds supplemented by acquisitions and gifts to the museum.

Among the archaeological assemblages are those from Crofton Road Roman villa, in Orpington, which was excavated in the 1950s and 1980s; the cemetery site for the Roman villa at Keston, with a number of complete pots, including samian ware; and the small Roman cemetery site at Northfield Avenue, St Mary Cray. There is also pottery from a Roman ditch (with an Anglo-Saxon sunken-floored structure) at Kent Road, St. Mary Cray.

Excavation of the Anglo-Saxon cemetery, close to the Roman bathhouse at Poverest Road, St. Mary Cray, uncovered about 80 mixed inhumations and cremations dating to the 5th to 6th centuries, with several complete Buckelurnen and other vessels amongst the grave goods, many of them now on display. Some medieval pottery was found during excavations by Orpington and District Archaeological Society at Scadbury, as well as post-medieval wares, including a number of 18th-century Dutch tin-glazed tiles.

The museum also houses various small field collections from across the Cray Valley, mostly Roman, alongside collections of 18th- and 19th-century glass bottles, a wide variety of stoneware bottles of different kinds; pharmaceutical bottles and other vessels in pottery and glass; and assorted post-medieval ceramics, amongst which is a soup plate from a Sevres service with the monogram of Napoleon III.