LEAFY STREETS | CRYSTAL PALACE PARK | DINOSAURS | DULWICH GALLERY |
FARM | HORNIMAN MUSEUM | SYDENHAM HILL WOOD | TRANSPORT | WELLS PARK

Great amenities
The 200 acre park opposite Park Court is a major London public space that boast excellent sports facilities, a traditional hawthorn maze, two artificial lakes, the world's first lifesize models of dinosaurs, a children's farm and the Bowl, where open air summer concerts are performed.

Victorian London was in love with the idea of itself as a beacon of enlightenment. Crystal Palace Park embodied this notion. It was purpose-built to re-house the Crystal Palace, centrepiece of the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park, which was conceived to demonstrate the industrial, military and economic superiority of Great Britain. Seven million gallons of water were pumped through the park every hour, including jets of water higher than Nelson’s Column. After the Crystal Palace burned down in 1936, the park’s popularity dwindled, but it remains full of the ghosts of its glorious past. The remaining original terraces, walls and statues can still be seen, whereas the museum on site keeps the memory alive with photographs, artefacts and rare moving image.

The park is also where the FA Cup finals were played from 1895 to 1914, and where inventor John Logie Baird pioneered TV and built a television complex in the early 1930s -the Transmitter built in the mid 1950s now carries the main terrestrial and digital channels. After the 1950s, the park housed the Crystal Palace Circuit for motorcars -only parts now remain as access roads. This site is now the National Sports Centre, a Grade II* Listed building and classic example of 1960's modernist architecture.