History and background
In early times, Crystal Palace Park, known in the Domesday Book as the Great North Wood, was covered in such dense woodland that even the Romans chose to bypass it when building roads into Londinium. It was so difficult to clear the land of trees that few people lived here for generations.
As the centuries passed, trees were cut down and sold as timber. In 1775, the north-eastern corner of the park was sold and developed as an estate named Penge Place. In 1852, Sir Joseph Paxton bought the land to find a permanent home for 'The Crystal Palace'.
The Crystal Palace
The Crystal Palace had been the centrepiece of the Great Exhibition of 1851 in Hyde Park: an international wonder and a triumph of technology and the ingenuity of its designer, Joseph Paxton. The Palace's relocation from Hyde Park made this area London's major cultural and entertainment centre.
This sparked a flurry of development, with new transport connections, jobs, housing and churches. The vast new Palace dominated the tree-lined ridge and was visible from all over London and beyond. It contained arts and architecture from Ancient Egypt to the Renaissance, and exhibits from industry and the natural world. It also hosted concerts and circuses. The Park spread downhill with gravity powered water fountains and flowerbeds stocked from the greenhouses. The dinosaurs were placed in an educational landscape. For more than 80 years, the Crystal Palace and its park provided a focus and identity for the area that took its name.
In 1936, most of the Crystal Palace was destroyed in the country's biggest peacetime fire of the 20th century. During World War II, the 20-acre hilltop site was used as a dump for bombsite rubble. Historically, the park has been used for a range of social events, leisure pursuits and sports, including balloon launches, cricket, cycling, football, speedway, motor racing, concerts and athletics. This continued with the building of the National Sports Centre in the 1960s.
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