Little Adventures

*

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 went downstairs to eat Continental breakfasts in a vast dining room that 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 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. Wedgwood, 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 away 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 the hole and spent an hour walking the grounds and 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 decorative pressed glass, frosted glass, and ruby flash glass.

As it got on toward dusk, we strolled back on down the hill, well satisfied with the doings and discoveries of the day.