Coulsdon
Coulsdon is a town mainly within the London Borough of Croydon, approximately 13 miles from Charing Cross.

The location forms part of the North Downs. The hills contain chalk and flint. Several dry valleys with natural underground drainage merge and connect to the headwaters of the River Wandle, here named the ’River Bourne’. Although the Bourne river floods periodically, the soil is generally dry and is the watershed which has constituted a natural route way across the Downs for early populations. Fossil records exist from the Pleistocene period (4 million years ago)

There is evidence of human occupation from the Neolithic period, Iron Age, Anglo-Saxon, Bronze Age, Roman and Medieval. It appears as Colesdone in the Domesday Book.

Most housing in Smitham (Bottom/Valley) and the clustered settlement of Old Coulsdon, as well as the narrower valley between them, was built in the 80 years from 1890 to 1970. The area developed mixed suburban and in its centre urban housing.

Old Coulsdon occupies the south-east of the district. Scattered, rather than clustered are six listed buildings, for their national heritage and architectural value, at Grade II. It is the southernmost settlement in all of Greater London.

At the heart of the geographical feature Smitham Bottom (where three dry valleys merge into one) is the central part of the district. Most commerce and industry is here, set beside the Brighton Road, which is since 2006 a town centre arc of the A23 road and on Chipstead Valley Road which terminates half way along the arc, leading directly to Woodmansterne.

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