Crystal Palace, London

Crystal Palace Park is a Victorian pleasure ground located in the South London suburb of Crystal Palace which surrounds the site of the former Crystal Palace Exhibition building. The Palace had been relocated from Hyde Park, London after the 1851 Great Exhibition and rebuilt with some modifications and enlargements to form the centrepiece of the pleasure ground, before being destroyed by fire in 1936. The park features full-scale models of dinosaurs in a landscape, a maze, lakes, and a concert bowl.This site contains the National Sports Centre, previously a football stadium that hosted the FA Cup Final from 1895 to 1914 as well as Crystal Palace F.C.'s matches from their formation in 1905 until the club was forced to relocate during the First World War. The London County Cricket Club also played matches at Crystal Palace Park Cricket Ground from 1900 to 1908, when they folded, and the cricket ground staged a number of other first-class cricket matches and had first been used by Kent County Cricket Club as a first-class venue in 1864. The park is situated halfway along the Norwood Ridge at one of its highest points. This ridge offers views northward to central London, eastward to the Queen Elizabeth II Bridge and Greenwich, and southward to Croydon and the North Downs. The park remains a major London public park; maintained by the LCC and then the GLC, but with the abolition of the GLC in 1986 the park and its management were moved into the London Borough of Bromley. The park has one of the largest weekly outdoor Farmers' Markets in London. In recent years the park has also played host to organised music events such as Wireless Festival and the South Facing Festival. The park is Grade II* listed on the Register of Historic Parks and Gardens.

Crystal Palace circuit is a former motor racing circuit in Crystal Palace Park in the Crystal Palace area of south London, England. The route of the track is still largely extant but the roads are now mainly used for access to the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre located in the park, and to events within the upper parts of Crystal Palace Park. Some parts of the track are closed off but part is used for an annual Sprint Meeting held on the Spring Bank Holiday weekend, until 2017, when it was held on the August holiday weekend.

The 1911 Festival of Empire was the biggest single event held at The Crystal Palace in London since its opening. It opened on 12 May and was one of the events to celebrate the coronation of King George V. The original intention had been that Edward VII would open it in 1910, however, this was postponed after his death shortly before the planned opening day. The Festival contained a display of landscapes and exhibits from the British Empire, mainly the dominion countries, to encourage emigration to those nations; and it contained a large scale pageant dramatising British history. It was described at the time as ‘a social gathering of the British family’ encouraging the ‘firmer welding of those invisible bonds which hold together the greatest empire the world has ever known’. It has since been described as the ‘ultimate imperialist propaganda showcase’.

The National Sports Centre at Crystal Palace in south London, England is a large sports centre and outdoor athletics stadium. It was opened in 1964 in Crystal Palace Park, close to the site of the former Crystal Palace Exhibition building which had been destroyed by fire in 1936, and is on the same site as the former FA Cup Final venue which was used here between 1895 and 1914. It was one of the five National Sports Centres, run on behalf of Sport England, but responsibility was transferred to the London Development Agency (now GLA Land and Property) and is managed by Greenwich Leisure Limited, under their Better brand logo. The athletics stadium has a capacity of 15,500, which can be increased to 24,000 with temporary seating. It hosts international athletics meetings. As well as sporting events, the stadium has played host to a number of live open air concerts, by artists such as Coldplay, Bruce Springsteen, Sex Pistols and Depeche Mode.

Crystal Palace railway station is a Network Rail and London Overground station in the London Borough of Bromley in south London. It is located in the Anerley area between the town centres of Crystal Palace and Penge, 8 miles 56 chains (14.0 km) from London Victoria. It is one of two stations built to serve the site of the 1851 exhibition building, the Crystal Palace, when it was moved from Hyde Park to Sydenham Hill after 1851. The station was opened on 10 June 1854 by the West End of London and Crystal Palace Railway (WEL&CPR) to take the crowds to the relocated Palace. It was formerly known as Crystal Palace (Low Level) to differentiate it from the nearby and now largely demolished Crystal Palace (High Level) railway station. The station serves trains running between London Bridge and London Victoria in addition to services terminating at Beckenham Junction and Sutton. Since 23 May 2010, the station has also been a terminus of the East London Line of the London Overground. This has been the catalyst for plans for a substantial redevelopment of the station.

Crystal Palace School of Art, Science, and Literature, also known as Crystal Palace Company's School of Art, (1854–1936) was opened in 1854 by the Crystal Palace Company as a new enterprise, to occupy part of its buildings when it re-erected the Crystal Palace in suburban Sydenham in 1853. The civil engineer and later first director of the Royal College of Music, George Grove, was appointed secretary. It was a part of the great movements for educational and social reform in nineteenth century Britain. The main buildings were destroyed by fire in 1936.

The Crystal Palace Park Concert Platform, formerly the Crystal Palace Bowl, is an outdoor stage and performance venue in Crystal Palace Park in the London Borough of Bromley.

The Crystal Palace Dinosaurs are a series of sculptures of dinosaurs and other extinct animals, incorrect by modern standards, in the London borough of Bromley's Crystal Palace Park. Commissioned in 1852 to accompany the Crystal Palace after its move from the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, they were unveiled in 1854 as the first dinosaur sculptures in the world. The models were designed and sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the scientific direction of Sir Richard Owen, representing the latest scientific knowledge at the time. The models, also known as Dinosaur Court, were classed as Grade II listed buildings from 1973, extensively restored in 2002, and upgraded to Grade I listed in 2007. The models represent 15 genera of extinct animals, only three of which are true dinosaurs. They are from a wide range of geological ages, and include true dinosaurs, ichthyosaurs, and plesiosaurs mainly from the Mesozoic era, and some mammals from the more recent Cenozoic era. Today, the models are notable for representing the scientific inaccuracies of early paleontology, the result of improperly reconstructed fossils and the nascent nature of the science in the 19th century, with the Iguanodon and Megalosaurus models being particularly singled out.

Penge was a civil parish and a local government district located to the southeast of London, England. It included the settlements of Penge, Anerley and part of Crystal Palace. It was part of the London postal district, Metropolitan Police District and, from 1933, the London Passenger Transport Area. In 1965 the urban district was abolished by the London Government Act 1963 and it became part of Greater London, being combined with other districts to form the London Borough of Bromley.

The Crystal Palace was a cast iron and plate glass structure, originally built in Hyde Park, London, to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. The exhibition took place from 1 May to 15 October 1851, and more than 14,000 exhibitors from around the world gathered in its 990,000 square feet (92,000 m2) exhibition space to display examples of technology developed in the Industrial Revolution. Designed by Joseph Paxton, the Great Exhibition building was 1,851 feet (564 m) long, with an interior height of 128 feet (39 m), and was three times the size of St Paul's Cathedral.The introduction of the sheet glass method into Britain by Chance Brothers in 1832 made possible the production of large sheets of cheap but strong glass, and its use in the Crystal Palace created a structure with the greatest area of glass ever seen in a building. It astonished visitors with its clear walls and ceilings that did not require interior lights. It has been suggested that the name of the building resulted from a piece penned by the playwright Douglas Jerrold, who in July 1850 wrote in the satirical magazine Punch about the forthcoming Great Exhibition, referring to a "palace of very crystal".After the exhibition, the Palace was relocated to an area of South London known as Penge Place which had been excised from Penge Common. It was rebuilt at the top of Penge Peak next to Sydenham Hill, an affluent suburb of large villas. It stood there from June 1854 until its destruction by fire in November 1936. The nearby residential area was renamed Crystal Palace after the landmark. This included the Crystal Palace Park that surrounds the site, home of the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre, which had previously been a football stadium that hosted the FA Cup Final between 1895 and 1914. Crystal Palace F.C. were founded at the site and played at the Cup Final venue in their early years. The park still contains Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins's Crystal Palace Dinosaurs which date back to 1854.

The Norwood Ridge is a 10-square-mile (26 km2) rectangular upland which occupies the geographical centre of south London, centred 5 miles (8 km) south of London Bridge. Beneath its topsoil it is a ridge of London Clay that is capped on all sides (including as isolated knolls in the north) with remaining natural gravel deposits mixed with some sandy soil, which in the South Thames basin is a material known as the Claygate Beds.

The Crystal Palace transmitting station, officially known as Arqiva Crystal Palace, is a broadcasting and telecommunications site in the Crystal Palace area of the London Borough of Bromley, England (grid reference TQ339712). It is located on the site of the former television station and transmitter operated by John Logie Baird from 1933.The station is the eighth-tallest structure in London, and is best known as the main television transmitter for the London area. As such, it is the most important transmitter in the UK in terms of population covered. The transmitter is owned and operated by Arqiva.