Crystal Palace

Lore & Background

Crystal Palace is a residential area within several boroughs in south London around the location of the former Crystal Palace building. The Crystal Palace was built in 1851 originally in Hyde Park, then relocated to south London in 1854 and destroyed by fire in 1936. The Great Exhibition, the event the building was built for, is sometimes also known as the Crystal Palace Exhibition.

In Their Own Story

The smell of wet grass and deep heat oil hangs thick in the Selhurst Park air. It's a February evening, the kind where the floodlights cut through low cloud and the terraces are a sea of red and blue. A Palace midfielder, boots caked in mud from the first half, jogs back to the halfway line and looks up at the Kop. A single chant rolls over him — not the usual roar, but something slower, more defiant, the kind of song that only a club that has been written off a hundred times can carry. He wipes his face with his sleeve, feels the weight of the red-and-blue shirt, and knows that for the next forty-five minutes, this ground is not just a stadium. It is a promise made in 1905 and kept, season after season, by the people who walk through those gates with the eagle on their chest.

Reader's Guide

Crystal Palace F.C. is a professional football club based in Selhurst, South London. Crystal Palace F.C. (Women) is a women's football club based in South London. Crystal Palace F.C. (1861) is a defunct amateur football club formed in 1861. Crystal Palace Baltimore, previously Crystal Palace F.C. USA, was a former professional soccer team in Maryland, US. Crystal Palace circuit is a former motor racing circuit in Crystal Palace Park. Crystal Palace (basketball) is a former British Basketball League team. Crystal Palace National Sports Centre is the national sports centre and athletics stadium situated inside the Crystal Palace park. Crystal Palace Glaziers is a defunct speedway team that raced from 1928 to 1939.

Did You Know?

• Crystal Palace F.C. is based in Selhurst, South London, not in the London Borough of Wandsworth.
• The Crystal Palace building was originally built in Hyde Park in 1851, relocated to south London in 1854, and destroyed by fire in 1936.
• Crystal Palace Park is the grounds to which the Crystal Palace Exhibition building was relocated.