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Sydenham
 July
19, 1977 ---- We woke up this morning to the sound of trains. Throwing
open the one window in our hotel room and looking out, I could see the
hubbub of the Tuesday morning rush hour below and the great glass roof
of Victoria Station high up above. The sounds of the traveling public
filtered up to me and I grinned. It was great to hear English again
after three weeks of incomprehensible French, Italian and German. Pam
and I got ourselves set for the day, and then went downstairs where we
ate our Continental breakfasts in a vast dining room. This establishment
caters not only to guests of the Grosvenor Hotel, but also to the
general press of humanity that choose this as a place to await their
trains.
After some consulting of guide books and studying of maps, we found our
way into the London Underground, where we bought tickets for South
Kensington and boarded the train. A few stops before ours, we were
joined by a large group of school children who were obviously on some
sort of an educational outing. When we left the train, this group
followed us, and as we wandered through the many tunnels and corridors
of South Kensington station, the crowd of chattering children followed
us still ---- as if we knew where we were going! We walked faster and
faster, until they, with their short little legs, had nearly to run to
keep up. Finally we saw a sign for the museums, and hurriedly climbed
the stairs to the street. There the kids abandoned us, and mobbed off to
see the Natural History Museum. We turned up another path, and strolled
toward the place known locally as the V&A.
As we entered the Victoria and Albert Museum, Pam was offended that
security searched her purse for bombs. They didn't find any, and we
suspect that Pam had just picked the wrong day to wear her Irish
sweater. Admission was free, and we had a strange and interesting time
exploring this marvelous attic of British history. There were hundreds
of exhibits and few labels, but I kept thinking that I had seen a lot of
this stuff somewhere before. Then it struck me ---- I was looking at
exhibits left over from the Great Exhibition of 1851! A little reading
proved it was true; much of the original V&A collection had been
purchased from the Crystal Palace, and here it still remains. I saw
displays of what the proper Victorian woman wore to the exhibition. I
was fascinated by cases containing dozens of intricate locks. I had a
look at the early productions of Mr. Wedgewood, and I smiled at the
erotic statuary that once graced the transept arch of the Crystal
Palace. Everything that I had ever read of that place came into focus,
and the exhibits transported me back to a bygone era of Victorian
greatness.
Around 2:30 we left the V&A, made our way back to Victoria station, and
inquired about trains to Sydenham. As we click-clacked out into the
suburbs of London, we came to a station called Crystal Palace, and there
we got off the train. Making our way out of the station and up a large
hill, we both wondered what we would find at the top. You see the
Crystal Palace had wooden slats for floors, and the long dresses of
uncounted ladies swept dust and litter between the cracks for eighty
years. Early in the evening on November 30, 1936, a small fire started
in the ladies lavatory and spread to engulf the entire magnificent
structure. The Crystal Palace Fire was the largest blaze seen in London
since the Great Fire of 1666. The flames were visible as far away as the
middle of the English Channel. We wondered what might remain here, at
the site of that awful spectacle, 40 years later.
As we made our way up the hill, the stairs and terraces which had once
surrounded the palace came into view. We passed a swampy area filled
with statues of very curious looking dinosaurs, and continued up toward
a group of large sphinxes. Well short of the top, we came to a fence
with notices that said "Keep Out" and a guard who paced back and forth
and looked as if he meant business. I had not come this far only to be
turned back with my goal in sight, and so I approached the guard and
told him of my great interest in what lay at the top of the hill. He
kindly showed us to a hole in the fence, turned his back, and walked
away. Pam and I scrambled through and spent an hour walking the grounds
---- it was wonderful! Then we noticed a glint of light coming from a
pile of rubble off to one side of the middle terrace. Walking over, we
found a very thick chunk of broken window glass embedded in a lump of
melted metal ---- a piece of one of the many panes that covered the
Crystal Palace! We poked around with sticks, and soon found dozens of
shards of symmetrically decorated pressed glass, frosted glass, and ruby
flash glass. As it got on toward dusk, we gathered up the treasures we
had unearthed, and strolled down the hill ---- well satisfied with the
doings and discoveries of the day.
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