Chislehurst its earlier format corresponded to the letters IMP (for "imperial"). The Chislehurst civil parish formed an urban district of Kent from 1894 to 1934. In 1934 it became part of the Chislehurst and Sidcup Urban District, which was split in 1965 between the London boroughs of Bromley and Bexley. The Walsingham family, including Christopher Marlowe's patron, Sir Thomas Walsingham and Queen Elizabeth I's spymaster, Francis Walsingham, had a home in Scadbury Park, now a nature reserve in which the ruins of the house can still be seen. A water tower used to straddle the road from Chislehurst to Bromley until
Francis Walsingham expansionist and nationalist English Renaissance. Spenser included a dedicatory sonnet to Walsingham in the "Faerie Queene", likening him to Maecenas who introduced Virgil to the Emperor Augustus. After Walsingham's death, Sir John Davies composed an acrostic poem in his memory and Watson wrote an elegy, "Meliboeus", in Latin. On the other hand, Jesuit Robert Persons thought Walsingham "cruel and inhumane" in his persecution of Catholics. Catholic sources portray a ruthless, devious man driven by religious intolerance and an excessive love for intrigue. Walsingham attracts controversy still. Although he was ruthless, his opponents on the Catholic side were no less so;