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
Walsingham Priory shrine dismantled, and the priory destroyed, its site was sold by order of Henry VIII to one Thomas Sidney for 90 pounds, and a private mansion was subsequently erected on the spot. The Elizabethan ballad, "A Lament for Walsingham," expresses something of what the faithful felt at the loss of their glorious shrine of Our Lady of Walsingham. On the other hand, the ballad literature suggests that some pilgrims sought non-religious encounters: Ophelia in "Hamlet" quotes from lyrics about Walsingham in which a woman asks about her pilgrim lover. Walsingham Priory Walsingham Priory was a monastery of Augustinian Canons regular