Scanned print taken sometime in the 1980s. Crystal Place (Low Level) opened in 1854, although the exterior was rebuilt in 1875. This view shows the glazed booking hall added in the 1980s and built broadly in the style, if not the scale, of the centre section of the Crystal Palace. At one time the main building included a Roman Catholic Chapel.
Tags: Crystal Palce (Low Level) Station
Taken 21/03/14: Opened in 1854, the year the Crystal Palace was re-sited at Sydenham, this is the station my parents would always refer to as the Low Level station; despite the High Level station closing in 1952 and being demolished in 1961. The High Level station was the more impressive of the two staitons, but the Low Level was still built on a grand scale. As Samuel Laing M.P., Chairman of the Crystal Palace Company said in 1851, "... if the Palace be made worthy of the people of England, the people of England would flock to it in millions". Which as Alan R. Warwick wrote in the Phoenix Suburb "... is the nub of it ..." as the L&BSCR could look forward to "... unending profitable excursions." Hence the two Crystal Palace stations were constructed according to such expectations.
Tags: crystal palace station
Taken 21/03/14: : To quote Geoffrey Body again (see the PSL Field Guide to Railways of the Southern Region); "... although the Roman Catholic chapel room is no longer used the station still has a cathedral-like atmosphere as one passes from the period booking hall to the vault-like station and the stairs down to the original station area".
If you are finding this trawl around south London at all interesting, I'd recomend taking a look at Looper's photo stream, inter alia he covers Wimbledon to Crystal Palace in some detail:
www.flickr.com/photos/98587546@N00/
Tags: Crystal Palace Station
Taken 21/03/14: Colour schemes come and go. This is the building Geoffrey Body refers to in The Railways of the Southern Region (1989) as a "... bilious green wooden building". I'd say it currently looks quite neat.
Tags: Gipsy Hill Station
Taken 21/03/14: Gipsy Hill Station opened in 1856 on the Wandsworth Common to Crystal Palace line. Of course, I cannot find my copy of The Phoenix Suburb when I need it, but the station is named after the road that runs outside the station, which in turn takes its name from the Gipsy encampment that was once situated nearby. It is often assumed that the reference in Samuel Pepys' diary to visiting "gypsies at Lambeth" refers to this area of south London. Be that as it may, my mum used to recount seeing cows herded at the bottom of Gipsy Hill before the Second World War. Not the only family tale linked to Gipsy Hill. as my mum had a story about my Aunt Doris (who coincidentally worshipped at Christ Church in Highland Drive, just off of Gipsy Hill) being chased up Gipsy Hill by a doodlebug. Oh, and my dad insisted that the fenced off grassed area at the bottom of Gipsy Hill was a plague pit ... and he wasn't alone, as no jumped that fence back in the day!
Tags: Gipsy Hill Station