THERE ARE NO CRYSTALS, PALACES, nor parades on Crystal Palace Parade. But there is treasure: an ornate subterranean Victorian foot tunnel, hidden beneath a dusty main road at one of the highest points in London.
The Crystal Palace Subway — more Puglia than Penge — was untouched by the 1936 fire that destroyed the Crystal Palace, a catastrophe that seemed to sear the end of the Empire into the national psyche. Conservationists found the great scorched doors that helped protect the subway from the flames buried beneath weeds. In the decades after the fire, the tunnel survived much more: the Blitz, close demolition, years of dereliction, indifference — even the rave era.
“It is the only remaining major part of the Crystal Palace,” says Ian Harper, an architect with Historic England. “Grade II* listed, and it was derelict. A wasted asset.”
As an architectural
