The Life and Death of London's Crystal Palace (2021)
7 comments
·August 15, 2025andybak
Back in my school days it was on my route home and I used to break into the site (it was fenced off at the time).
It felt so mysterious and strange. Headless statues, vast empty terraces - the old high level station ticket hall passed under a main road and come out the other side with a view of a huge railway tunnel blocked with an old wrought iron fence.
It's been cleaned up and opened to the public since then - which is almost a shame.
walthamstow
Looking at the badge of Crystal Palace FC, I guess those towers either side are the water towers mentioned in the piece?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crystal_Palace_F.C.#/media/Fil...
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ggm
My Dad had a lump of fused glass scavenged from the fire site, which he lost in the blitz when the family home in Stepney was bombed out. I bet a lot of London kids had souvenirs like this.
kitd
Remains are visible here:
https://www.google.com/maps/@51.4226201,-0.0739698,953m/data...
jemmyw
I visited the site many times with my dad. I wonder why the building seemed to susceptible to fire, given that it was a metal and glass construction? Was is it the nature of the exhibits?
It's a shame they didn't rebuild it in the 60s.
exasperaited
It was thought to likely be an electrical fire in the offices at one end of the building, but it had lots of flammable things inside it, but also no real fire breaks/containment like you'd have in a modern building. Wooden floors, wooden furniture, lacquered surfaces, lots of potted trees, cluttered exhibits and low budget concessions. The fire became unmanageable really quickly and presumably once glass is falling from a great height, it becomes unsafe to tackle any individual aspect.
But it was also really a neglected building by then; it was not the glamorous event space it was designed for when it was on the Hyde Park site. The money was running out for the company running it at Sydenham.
alas it no longer exists, all that remains is a steep hill and a park. within that park are some plastic dinosaur, where I found out for the first time my gf from arizona didnt believe in evoluion. Not that I had a problem with it, its just my only memory of what must have been an amazing place.