Place Name
Named after the Danson Estate, which was first mentioned as Densynton and Dansington in the late 13thCentury, the name refers to a farmstead belonging to a man called Denesige. By the late 19thCentury, the estate was in the hands of a large landowner in the Welling area, Alfred Bean. It was bought by property speculators from his son Alfred William Thomas Bean in 1922. The sale was part of a long-term plan that had been dreamt up by his engineer father more than 40 years before. From 1881 he had began promoting the idea of a new train track to the area but when the railway companies rejected the scheme, he and other local landowners formed their own. Predictably the track lost money but by then Bean was already working on the second phase of his plan. He had been quick to realise that the introduction of refrigeration meant that cheap food could be transported from America and across the world. This depressed the prices of home grown products causing farmland values to fall. Bean senior, who became Chairman of Bexley Local Board, bought up large tracts of land. He died in 1890 leaving plans for squares, crescents with gardens, streets, roads and main sewers. It was only when his son inherited the estate that it was sold for development with most of the houses built from the 1930s.
