Here is a typical photo showing the War Memorial end of Beckenham High Street:
Reading the principle postcard book on Beckenham and West Wickham, one may be totally unaware of an earlier photo and previous wave of buildings as seen in this photo from the Beckenham History website:
From this valuable photo, which we are lucky to have, we get an idea of how this part of the high street once had weatherboarded cottages. Just to the right of this photo would have been the Post Office and local Smithy!
As for Penge, the photographic record is extremely poor! Here's the problem: how do we go from this...
...to this!
The earliest photos of Beckenham Road (Penge High Street) are from the early 1900s (1890s at a push). With Beckenham, Catford, Lewisham and Sydenham we have photos from the 1860s--or at least illustrations of Sydenham that show demolished buildings, side-by-side, in context with survivors (or buildings that survived long enough to be photographed).
The reason for Penge's lack of historic visibility is due to the lack of an early photographer, but also due to the Crystal Palace, whose success marked the eradication of Penge's early heritage. The earliest photo of Penge High Street shows the predecessor to the Central Exchange (see above photo), but this building was only built since post-enclosure times:
It would have helped if this photographer was pointing his camera 100 degrees to the left! He would have seen Penge Lodge, which was the biggest and probably the most important building in Penge before the Palace and before the enclosure.
Penge needs somebody like John Coulter to research it. It's certainly proving very difficult for an amateur historian like myself--especially without the (missing) Tithe map/apportionment. It seems old farm buildings and Waterman Arm's stables were in existence during the postcard age, but were hidden behind Victorian parades on the northern side:
What are you writing about BTW?
