Follow-up

My FaTHER took my two brothers and me from our house in Fulham to visit the Crystal Palace (Peterborough) several times in the Thirties — I remember it very well. In the grounds was a brick tower, like a windmill. on the ground floor was a steam engine. We walked up wooden stairs and out onto a balcony. There were little wooden boats hung on steel arms from the top; the boats had seats inside and a wooden propeller on the front. We all climbed into a little boat. The steam engine below made the boats go forward, increasing speed as the boats flew round many times, then slowing down back to the balcony. It was a wonderful piece of engineering. We also went into one of the two steel towers at the ends of the Crystal Palace. When we had climbed halfway up, my father, who did not like heights, told us to stop. looking down through the windows, the people below looked like ants. We could not visit the south tower because it was occupied by a weird boffin called John logie Baird who was inventing a new-fangled thing called television. I wonder if he got anywhere with it? I recall the lovely ornamental ponds full of goldfish and the stone prehistoric monsters we visited in the grounds. In 1936, on the evening of November 30 at about 8pm, we heard a BBC news broadcast: ‘The Crystal Palace is on fire’. all the children were in bed, but my two elder brothers put coats over their pyjamas and walked with my father to Putney Bridge where, looking down the river, they saw a tremendous orange glow in the sky. The newspapers were full of it every day for a week. I believe 88 fire engines from all over Southern England came to fight the fire. The next day their fire hoses were like spaghetti all over the roads at the top of anerley Hill. I was ten when the Crystal Palace burned down — I’m now 87. My eldest brothers are 89 and 90 and all still going strong.