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A former village, now lost in north Sidcup, with a recent history dominated by facilities for young people. Lamorbey was originally
spelt Lamienby, which briefly became corrupted to Lamb Abbey (hence Abbeyhill Park) before settling down to its current form.
The name derives from a local family, also known as the Sparrows, which lived here from the late Middle Ages. On the death
of Thomas Sparrow in 1513 the estate passed to James Goldwell, who built himself a house called Lamienby Goldwell. The house
was rebuilt in 1744 and its grounds were laid out as a park. To its west lay the sixteenth century Marrowbone Hall, which
was demolished sometime before 1850. With the proximity of Sidcup station the village began to grow in the latter decades
of nineteenth century and the parish of Holy Trinity was created in 1878. Lamorbey’s population almost doubled in 1902
when the Greenwich and Deptford children’s homes opened on the site of Marrowbone Hall with accommodation for 587 children
and over 60 staff. A school was built for the children, on Burnt Oak Lane. After the First World War the surrounding orchards,
market gardens and nurseries began to disappear beneath streets of suburban housing and Lamorbey absorbed the neighbouring
hamlet of Halfway Street. Some plots of land were sold to disabled ex-servicemen for £80 each. A new home for the Sidcup county
school for girls (now Chislehurst and Sidcup grammar school) was built on the south side of Lamorbey Park in 1931. The Hollies
children’s home closed in 1983 and the site was laid out with housing in the early 1990s. Some of the home’s ancillary
structures survive, notably Thomas Dinwiddy’s clock-faced water tower. Holy Trinity primary school is the largest voluntary-aided
primary school in the diocese of Rochester.
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