St Mary Cray has the largest settled Romani groups and Irish Traveller community in the UK. In the past, hop and soft fruit farms in the area employed large numbers of itinerant workers.

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Orpington and the surrounding area was rural, with many farms. Kent had many hop and fruit farms, so Orpington became, along with other areas such as Erith, a stopping area or atchin tan. One of the stopping areas was Corkes meadow or 'Corkes Pit', and Ruxley Pit another. Corkes Pit no longer exists, having been built on, but was near to the gas works in Sevenoaks Way. The other area, Ruxley Pit, was located at the top of Chalk Pit.

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Many Romany families from all over the UK, not just the Greater London Travellers, stopped at Corkes Pit in the 1960s. The hop farms started to use machinery to pick the hops and didn't require the labour from the travellers, and they started to use labour from abroad. It was now becoming hard to find stopping places, and the council made it hard for travellers to stop. The council had to provide permanent stopping areas for these travellers. One such area is the Star Lane site, which is one of the largest in the UK, and St Mary Cray has the largest group of Romany travellers. The lucky families got plots on these sites and others took houses (kenners), resulting in a great upset around the Corkes Pit area (Leesons Hill). Others moved from Greater London, and continued to struggle to get work and find kushti atchin tans. After the farm work dried up and the travellers could not follow the seasons for picking fruit such as apples (pobble), cherries (gulos), potatoes and hops, and when it became demeaning for the women and men to 'hawk', the men started to look for local labouring work and many families settled. Many of the young travellers are very far detached from the old nomadic life of the Romany people who left India over 1000 years ago, and some are worried that the Romany jib or language will be lost as time goes by. Even travellers in their forties cannot speak (roker) full Romany.

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The travelling life is now really over for the travellers, but they still stay in touch with some of their past. Along with fruit picking, the women would make and sell pegs and flowers door to door, which is called 'hawking', and would take things to sell in baskets called kels. This way of selling is now illegal, and has been lost. The Brazil family in Marden, along with others throughout Kent, are trying to show young travellers the past.

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Some of the families from Greater London who would have stopped at Corkes Pit are: Clarke,Rutherford, Baker, Buckley, Jeeves, James, Vincent, Chambers, Rye, Friend, Saunders, Scamp, Lee, Love, Jackson, Chapman, Arnold, French, Ripley, Stanley, Crittenden, Price, Webb, Marley, Smith, Roberts, Jones, Philips, Renolds, Verrall, Brazil, Ball, Elliot, Taylor, Tracey, Driscol, Mead, Pateman, Bignell and many more. Most of the families still live in Orpington, and others live in Kent or London.

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Famous Romanies from Orpington include: Rose Lee, Gilderoy Scamp, Darren Leigh, Mark Ripley, Johnny Love, Private Pateman.