Shortlands 3.89

Shortlands is a suburban village in the London Borough of Bromley, Greater London, England.HistoryHistorically, Shortlands was known as Clay Hill. It became known as Shortlands around 1800, after the fields which, at this point of the Ravensbourne river, ran at right angles up the slopes on either side.The earliest known settlement was an Iron Age hillfort at Toots Wood, where traces of a Roman Camp and pottery has also been found.A medieval field pattern here was of sets of long and short fields, called Longelonds and Shortelonds, and the latter gave name to Shortlands house built (now a part of Bishop Challoner School) at the start of the 18th century. The house with its extensive farmland was acquired in 1848 by a railway magnate William Wilkinson, who also built several cottages for his farm labourers.Suburban development began in 1863 with the sale of the Shortlands House estate, making full advantage of the railway station opened in May 1858.In 1921, a war memorial, designed by W. D. Caroe in the form of a Celtic cross, was unveiled in the village, in the middle of a road junction. On 8 July 2016, a Mini car collided with the memorial, breaking it into pieces.