The Unexpected Beauty of Croydon

Crystal Palace Park is a fascinating place with over 170 years of history, since it was selected as the new home for the building that housed the Great Exhibition of 1851. I have plans for a series of blog posts about this site because there's so much to cover and I have a huge number of photos. While the park sits in the London Borough of Bromley, it's right on the boundary of Croydon, Lambeth, Bromley, Southwark and Lewisham.  To cut a long story very short, Crystal Palace Park opened in 1854, and the Crystal Palace itself sadly burned down in 1936. The park still has a variety of attractions, including lifesize models of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures, an outdoor concert venue, several lakes, a maze and a large sports centre. Last year park management was handed over to the Crystal Palace Park Trust , a charity with big ambitions for the site. They are securing funding to restore parts of the park, including the dinosaurs. Current Crystal Palace train station Curr...

There's no denying that Croydon is extremely well connected, with trams, National Rail, Overground and numerous buses serving the borough. However, if you'd travelled the current Overground route to West Croydon in the early 19th century, you'd have needed a boat, as it was the Croydon Canal. If you'd visited Croydon between the two World Wars, you'd have found the UK's first (and only) international airport. I'm no local history expert and I have limited resources to draw on, so I'm going to focus on the present day sites where it's possible to see bits of the past transport infrastructure. Betts Park, Anerley, May 2020 There are few signs of the Croydon Canal remaining, as it was short-lived, being replaced by a railway line from West Croydon to London Bridge in 1836. The website London's Lost Rivers has more information. A short section of the canal still exists in Betts Park, which is just over the border with Bromley in Anerley. South Norwo...