Rare Look Inside the Secret Passageway to London’s Lost Crystal Palace | National Geographic

You don't know it's there, so literally I can stand on that road up there and say, "Do you know what's under your feet?" and people don't [Music] know.

This subway was a pedestrian footway from the railway station into the Crystal Palace. The Crystal Palace was a rebuild of the Great Exhibition held in 1851 in Hyde Park. The original Crystal Palace building was a modular design, so it could be taken down, and it was moved here so that they could continue to make money from the exhibition. They built a new high-level station about 10 years after the Crystal Palace opened on this site. The station was at the other end of this foot subway, so that you could have a covered entrance.

It's a series of arches which, uh, support the way to the roadway above, probably designed by Charles Barry Jr., who had just come back from a grand tour, including Italy, so it's got an Italian style. The palace burnt down November the 30th, 1936, so after that, there wasn't very much traffic on the line. The station was eventually closed, uh, and so there was no longer a need for the subway.

Crystal Palace is an area that isn't really an area. Crystal Palace doesn't really exist; it gains its name because of the palace that was once there. That it survived in such fantastic condition for so many years is part of an and a very important part of the heritage. The hiddenness of it is really exciting.

Every year we open up as part of Open House London. The demand is clear and I think increasingly so in the UK, community assets are being recognized, and this is very much seen as a community asset. The brickwork inside isn't exposed to the elements, so it has weathered extremely well. It was used in World War II as an air raid shelter, um, it was then used as a store for um statues from the park, uh, that was locked up until the Nor Society started having cultural events down here about once a year during the 1980s.

I like the fact that it's quite ruined and quite magical. Some people think it'd be a great cafe, um, I have plans for it to be a museum. Personally, I think it should maintain its integrity; it should be kept as beautiful as it is now and people should be encouraged to use the space as it is. It's beautiful.