Chinese Garage
Coordinates: 51°23′56.2″N 0°1′7.0″W / 51.398944°N 0.018611°W
The Chinese Garage is a garage and former petrol station situated in Beckenham in the London Borough of Bromley, on a roundabout linking Beckenham, Eden Park and Shortlands. Built in 1928 to a Japanese pagoda style design by Edmund B. Clarke, it was voted the most unusual garage in England in 2001.
The garage was built in 1928 to a design by Edmund B. Clarke in the style of a Japanese pagoda on land adjoining Stone Park Farm which was part of the Langley Court Estate. At that time Stone Park Avenue had not been laid out and the main traffic route was north–south between Beckenham and West Wickham; this accounts for the alignment of forecourt.
Local folklore suggests that the Langley Court's former owners, the Bucknell family, were shipping magnates that underwrote the Titanic. Subsequently when it sank they financially sank too, hence the sale of their estate. It is further reputed that during their travels, the Bucknells regularly visited the Far East and Japan and brought back many exotic plants for the Estate which is said to have inspired Clarke to build the Garage in its distinctly Japanese style. However, no traces of such planting survive today on the Estate to substantiate this claim. It may well be that the design was purely the whim of the architect and his client.
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