The Crystal Palace was constructed of iron and glass – so how and why did it burn down?
The first prefabricated building of its kind, the enormous Crystal Palace in south London was struck down by fire in the winter of 1936. But what caused the fire that destroyed the Victorian glass house that had housed the 1851 Great Exhibition?
The first prefabricated building of its kind, the enormous Crystal Palace glasshouse incorporated 300,000 sheets of glass in the largest size then ever made, and was home to the 1851 Great Exhibition, a spectacle of innovation championed by Queen Victoria's husband, Prince Albert.
When fire struck the Crystal Palace on 30 November 1936, years of wear and tear, and lack of finance to repair it, had left it in poor condition.
The cause of the fire is still unknown and there was never an official inquiry. There were rumours of arson at the time, but this appears unlikely. It was probably an electrical fault or cigarette end in the office area of the building.
The palace – which was erected at Hyde Park in 1851 before being moved to Sydenham Hill, south London – had been patched up extensively down the years with wood. It also contained a lot of wooden furniture, a lot of assorted junk, and wooden flooring. Having been in a greenhouse for decades, this wood was tinder-dry.
There had been several other fires in the palace before. The building itself was a natural flue, and the loss of wooden panels where glass should have been, combined with a strong wind, turned it into an inferno whose glow was visible as far away as Brighton.
Over 400 firemen fought the blaze, while 750 police officers struggled to contain the immense crowd of sightseers. The palace was 25 smouldering acres of wreckage by the following morning, with only Brunel’s two vast water towers at either end still standing. Fortunately, no one was killed.
This article was first published in the September 2007 issue of BBC History Magazine
