Tuesday 3 April 2012

Crystal Palace: An exercise in elevation...


Crystal Palace is a great example of an area being ‘rebranded’.
Penge and Anerley both retain their original names, one ancient and one modern, but both are still the only names those districts have had.
The area we now call ‘Crystal Palace’ was for the majority of its history known as ‘Sydenham Hill’ and was, as many of these parts of South London were, smack bang in the middle of the Great North Wood.
The Wood was largely a dangerous, forbidding place that was a popular haunt of robbers and home mainly to bands of Gypsies, who were tough and numerous enough to ward off any but the most foolhardy bandits and were unwilling to live (and probably would have been unwelcome) in more conventional residential areas.
One legacy of this is ‘Gypsy Hill’ a small part of Crystal Palace that has retained the name of some its historical residents.
The Wood itself literally defined the region with The Vicar’s Oak that stood on the crossroads where today Church Road, Anerley Hill and Westow Hill meet the Parade and was a hugely important local landmark.
Traditionally it marked the Parish boundaries and went on to indicate the border of five London Boroughs ; Bromley, Croydon, Southwark, Lambeth and Lewisham. The area also contained the division between Kent and Surrey and for a long time lay on the very edge of the County of London.
With the emergence of Britain as a dominant Naval force the demand for timber for ship construction rapidly increased. The Great North Wood became decimated and the region became viable for large scale residential use for the first time.
The 19th Century saw the development of the area as a suburb, with the large wooded tracts of land being irresistible to the emergent Middle Classes seeking to escape the hubbub of London.
However, it wasn’t long before the hubbub came to find them…
With the end of the Great Exhibition of 1851 it was decided that the Pavilion designed by Joseph Paxton was far too glorious a creation to simply be dismantled and a new home was looked for.
Standing 128 feet high , 1,851 feet long and constructed mainly from glass, using a new method
of casting, the Palace itself was a magnificent edifice that astonished those who saw it.
The elevation of Sydenham Hill and the space cleared by lumber for ship-building meant that the top of the hill was an ideal location for such a huge, impressive edifice.

Incredibly, by the time the new building opened in 1854 it had actually expanded from the original dimensions and struck an imposing figure on the top of Sydenham Hill.
With the development came the railways and The Crystal Palace became a hugely popular leisure spot.
The residents that had moved to the area for the tranquility saw it transformed into a sea of tea houses, pubs and inns.
Thousands of people descended on the area , which soon became known as ‘Crystal Palace’.
The Palace itself was home to many different attractions.
Charles Spurgeon would preach to crowds of up to 23,000 people, it hosted the World’s first Cat Show and there were a number of Royal visits.
By the 1890’s the whole enterprise had become a bit more downmarket and the fortunes of the Palace dwindled. The Festival of Britain in 1911 marked the coronation of George V and saw the Palace get one last hurrah but after that closed the finances of the project collapsed.
In truth the building had never been able to pay for its own construction and relocation.
Bankruptcy was declared in 1911 and the building fell into disrepair.
It was used as a training camp during the First World War and after the war it was home to the first incarnation of the Imperial War Museum, but was never successful.
In the 1920’s a group of investors who held great affection for the Palace bought it and redeveloped it.
While it never regained the visitor numbers of old it began to show a profit and looked to be a viable venue once more.
However disaster struck in 1936 with a fire that destroyed the legendary building.
89 fire engines and 400 firefighters couldn’t stop the blaze and the fire, visible across eight counties, drew the last great crowd to the Palace as 100,000 people came down to watch the building’s end.
Among them was Winston Churchill who declared the destruction of the Palace as:

‘The end of an era…’

One of the few surviving features are the famous Crystal Palace Dinosaurs.
Unveiled in 1854 they were the first sculptures of dinosaurs in the world and were designed and sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins and Richard Owen.
To celebrate their unveiling Hawkins hosted a dinner party on New Year’s Eve 1853 in the body of one of the Iguanodons.
As time passed and Paleontology developed it became increasing obvious that most of the sculptures were highly inaccurate. A lack of funds and embarrassment over the inaccuracies meant that the sculptures were allowed to fall into disrepair.
However the sculptures always retained a strong affection from the general public, gaining Grade II listed status in 1973, were extensively restored in 2002 and achieved a Grade I listing in 2007.
With the collapse of the Palace itself the sports ground within the Park became the focal point of the area.
The ground hosted the F.A. Cup Final from 1895 to 1914 and was also home to the short-lived London County Cricket Club which was founded by, among others, local resident W.G. Grace in 1898.
Crystal Palace F.C. were formed here in 1905 and played their home matches at the ground from their inception up until the First World War when the ground was commandeered for military use.
The site is now home to The National Sports Centre which is most famous for its use as an Athletics venue but has also been the home of the London Towers basketball team and the London Monarchs American Football team.
Today the most famous landmark is probably the Transmitter Tower that sits on the top of the hill.
Looking remarkably like the Eiffel Tower, it’s the main television transmitter for the London region and, despite being built in 1956 it remains the fourth largest structure in London.
Crystal Palace, despite its location in the very South of South London, has always been a focal point for projects and plans.
From marking boundaries to housing enormous structures, its elevated position has meant that the area has always demanded, and received, more attention than a hill in the middle of a wood could ever really expect…