Crystal Palace and Dulwich
London’s Last Toll Road and Other Dulwich Stories
Dulwich Village has a very distinctive look and feel with its wide verges, quaint finger post signs, olde part timbered houses and grand villas. It was a manor bought by a famous Shakepearean actor in the seventeenth century inspiring a set of historic London schools; an area attracting the moneyed classes as an escape from the City; a home to England’s first purpose-built art gallery and a hub for artists; but also an old path through ancient woods and later a route up hill to the Crystal Palace exhibition site.
And there is the oddity of London’s only remaining Toll-gated Road, how come that survives?
Richard’s walk plots a very scenic way from the centre of the village running south up College Road. The walk includes some wonderful architecture from the College buildings and grand villas to humble cottages; features names such as Charles Dickens, Camille Pissarro and Ernest Shackleton; includes a curious connection to the historic telephone box design and attempts to explain the surviving Tollgate Road.
Photo: Copyright: Peter Trimming licenced for reuse under creative commons through Geograph.org.
Hitting the Heights: the History of Crystal Palace
When most people think of the history of Crystal Palace, it is the world-famous exhibition site they imagine – the successor to the Great Exhibition.
But there is so much more: in the C19th it was a fashionable shopping area just on the capital’s southern outskirts. Emerging from the historic Great North Wood, it was built on and around one of the highest areas of London, it had attractive spas and gardens near-by even before the exhibition, with rising grand villas and lovely churches. Hear the stories of how the great realist novelist Emile Zola and god father of Impressionism Camille Pissarro end up here, and of the first great black actor, your guide’s historic neighbour.
Come and discover the “heights” of Crystal Palace with tour guide and local, Richard Watkins.
Please note, there will be two short, steep hills to walk up.
Dulwich: Hamlet Village and Suburb
On Richard’s second tour of Dulwich, he shows how it developed through the nineteenth century and onwards, with new transport links, a new Parish church, new park, new suburban streets, houses and shops springing up while retaining its rural character and charm.
Richard goes beyond its famous wide verges, grand villas and legacy of prestigious schools to find the story of its development is far more interesting than it at first seems.
Walking south from North Dulwich station, we take in a fantastic array of building styles, a wonderfully atmospheric graveyard, an iconic Victorian south London boozer and great Dulwich characters from a diminutive grocer-artist to a Nazi rabble-rouser.
Circling the Triangle: Continued History of Crystal Palace
Richard’s second tour of Crystal Palace explores the Triangle and the streets around. He tells the story of the area’s social development emerging from an historic wood (which is remembered in street and pub names) becoming a fashionable cultural and shopping district (even before the exhibition site arrived) with sweeping views.
Richard shows the site of a lost grand Victorian railway station, old boundary marker and course of a lost river. We see some of the photographic record in situ of a great nineteenth century French writer and homes of a great French artist and English movie star. We discover curious shops, pubs and churches both past and present and a massive orphanage which Dickens praised.
This tour involves a few steep but short hills. Also, the tour does not take in the Crystal Palace exhibition site. Come to the Crystal Palace Museum to learn about that.
Crystal Palace: Walking the Historic High Level Railway
When the Crystal Palace exhibition site opened in June 1854 it was served by one railway line to a station half way down the hill carrying thousands of visitors a day... But another private railway company wanted a piece of the pie! 10 years later the Crystal Palace High Level Railway opened bringing visitors to the top of the hill to a very grand castillated station with an ornate entrance right into the exhibition halls!
This line and station have now long gone. So what happened?
My walk traces the remnants of the southern half of the line up to the Lordship Lane station site. We find elegant butressed station walls, north and south portals to two major tunnels, pass the site of the Crystal Palace subway (currently under a fantastic restoration), walk along the track bed in Sydenham Woods to find that "Pissarro view" and take in other surprises such an historic ventilation shaft, a surviving station building and other historic buildings.
Note: this is a three hour walk but there is the chance for a break at the Wodehouse pub. Sensible footwear is recommended for walking through woods. We will finish by the beginnings of the Horniman's nature trail. It is a short walk from there down to Forest Hill mainline station or there are plenty of buses going from there and along London Road.