Alexandra Palace
Alexandra Palace is an entertainment and sports venue in north London, situated between Wood Green and Muswell Hill in the London Borough of Haringey. A Grade II listed building, it is built on the site of Tottenham Wood and the later Tottenham Wood Farm. It was designed by John Johnson and Alfred Meeson. It opened in 1873 but following a fire two weeks after its opening, was rebuilt by Johnson. It was intended as "the People's Palace" and it is often referred to by the nickname "Ally Pally".
At first a private venture, in 1900 the owners planned to sell it and Alexandra Park for development. A group of neighbouring local authorities managed to acquire it. An Act of Parliament created the Alexandra Palace and Park Trust. The Act required the trustees to maintain the building and the park, and make them available for the free use and recreation of the public forever. The present trustee is the London Borough of Haringey, whose coat of arms shows lightning bolts depicting Alexandra Palace's pioneering role in the development of television.
In 1935 the trustees leased part of the Palace to the BBC for use as the production and transmission centre for their new television service. Thus, in 1936, it became the home of the world's first regular public "high-definition" television service. The broadcasting system was 405-line monochrome analogue television – the first fully electronic television system to be used in regular broadcasting. Although other facilities soon superseded it after the Second World War, Alexandra Palace continued to be used by the BBC for many years, and its radio and television mast is still in use.
The original Studios A and B still survive in the southeast wing with their producers' galleries, and are used for exhibiting original historical television equipment. The original Victorian Alexandra Palace Theatre with its stage machinery also survives and, as of 2019, is back in use. The theatre and the stage structure are on English Heritage's Buildings at Risk register. Alexandra Palace became a listed building in 1996, at the instigation of the Hornsey Historical Society. A planned commercial development of the building into a mixed leisure complex, including a hotel, a replacement ice-skating rink, a cinema, a ten-pin bowling alley and an exhibition centre, encountered opposition from public groups and was blocked by the High Court in 2007.
The Great Hall and the West Hall are typically used for exhibitions, concerts and conferences. They are operated by the trading arm of the charitable trust that owns the building and the park on behalf of the public. There are also a pub, an ice rink, a palm court and a panoramic view of London.
In 2013 Alexandra Park was declared a local nature reserve. It is also a Site of Borough Importance for Nature Conservation, Grade 1.
The nearest railway stations are Alexandra Palace, with Great Northern services from Moorgate, and the London Underground station Wood Green on the Piccadilly line. Alexandra Palace is also served by London Buses route W3, which is operated by Arriva London.
History
19th century
The "Palace of the People" was conceived by Owen Jones in 1859. The Great Northern Palace Company had been established by 1860, but was initially unable to raise financing for the construction of the Palace. Construction materials were acquired and recycled from the large 1862 International Exhibition building in South Kensington after it was demolished: the government had declined to take it over. In 1863 Alexandra Park Co. Ltd. acquired the land of Tottenham Wood Farm for conversion to a park and to build the People's Palace, on a site that stands on a ridge more than high, part of Muswell Hill. Alexandra Park was opened to the public on 23 July 1863.The planned building was originally named "The Palace of the People"; it and its park were renamed to honour the popular new Princess of Wales, Alexandra of Denmark, who had married Prince Albert Edward on 10 March 1863. The Palace of the People, or the People's Palace, remained as alternative names. In September 1865 construction commenced but to a design by John Johnson and Alfred Meeson rather than the glass structure initially proposed by Jones.
In 1871 work started on the Edgware, Highgate and London Railway to connect the site to Highgate station. Work on both the railway and the Palace was completed in 1873 and, on 24 May of that year, Alexandra Palace and Park were opened. The structure covers some. The Palace was built by Kelk and Lucas, who also built the Royal Albert Hall in South Kensington at around the same time. Sims Reeves sang on the opening day before an audience of 102,000. Only 16 days later, Alexandra Palace was destroyed by a fire which also killed three members of staff. Only the outer walls survived; a loan exhibition of a collection of English pottery and porcelain, comprising some 4,700 items of historic and intrinsic value, was also destroyed.
The Palace was quickly rebuilt and reopened on 1 May 1875. The new Alexandra Palace contained a concert hall, art galleries, a museum, a lecture hall, a library, a banqueting room and a large theatre. The stage of the theatre incorporated machinery that enabled special effects for the pantomimes and melodramas that were then popular: performers could disappear, reappear and be propelled into the air. The theatre was also used for political meetings. An open-air swimming pool was constructed at the base of the hill in the surrounding park; it is long since closed and little trace remains except some reeds.
The grounds included a horseracing course with a grandstand, named the Alexandra Park Racecourse but nicknamed the "Frying Pan" or the "Pan Handle" because of its layout. It was London's only racecourse from 1868 until its closure in 1970. There were also a Japanese village, a switchback ride, a boating lake and a nine-hole pitch-and-putt golf course. Alexandra Park cricket and football clubs have also played within the grounds, in the middle of the old racecourse. since 1888. A Henry Willis organ was installed in 1875, vandalised in 1918, and restored and reopened in 1929. In its restored form Willis's masterpiece was declared by Marcel Dupré to be the finest concert organ in Europe.
20th century
In 1900 the owners of Alexandra Palace and Park were threatening to sell them for redevelopment, but a consortium headed by Henry Burt JP, a member of the Middlesex County Council and of Hornsey District Council, embraced the opportunity of securing the Palace and the grounds for the people of London. A committee was formed by Burt and the consortium managed to raise enough money to purchase them just in time. By the , a charitable trust was created; representatives of the purchasing local authorities became the trustees with the duty to keep both building and park "available for the free use and recreation of the public forever".In 1921 a plaque was erected at the entrance of the south terrace in honour of Burt. The Palace passed into the hands of the Greater London Council in 1967, with the proviso that it should be used entirely for charitable purpose. The trusteeship was transferred to Haringey council in 1980.
During the First World War the park was closed; the Palace and its grounds were first used as a refugee camp for displaced Belgians, and then later from 1915 to 1919 as an internment camp for German and Austrian civilians. The camp commandant was Lt. Col. R. S. F. Walker until his death in May 1917.
The theatre was greatly altered in the early 1920s, when the general manager, W. J. MacQueen-Pope, spent war reparation money on refurbishing the auditorium. He abandoned the understage machinery that had produced the effects necessary in Victorian melodrama; some of the machinery is preserved, and there is a project to restore some of it to working order. After these changes the theatre was leased by Archie Pitt, then husband of Gracie Fields, who appeared in the theatre. Fields also drew an audience of 5,000 people to the hall for a charity event.
In 1935 the trustees leased part of the Palace to the BBC for use as the production and transmission centre for their new BBC Television service. The antenna was designed by Charles Samuel Franklin of the Marconi Company. The world's first public broadcasts of "high-definition" television were made from Alexandra Palace in November 1936, an event which is alluded to by the rays in the modern coat of arms of the London Borough of Haringey. Two competing systems, Marconi-EMI's 405-line system and John Logie Baird's 240-line system, were installed, each with its own broadcast studio and were transmitted on alternate weeks until the 405-line system was chosen in January 1937. After the BBC leased the eastern part of the Palace the theatre was only used for props storage space.
The Palace continued as the BBC's main transmitting centre for London until 1956, interrupted only by the Second World War, when the transmitter found an alternative use jamming German bombers' navigation systems. In 1944, a German doodlebug exploded just outside the organ end of the Great Hall and the Rose Window was blown in, leaving the organ exposed to the elements. In 1947 some of the pieces of the shattered rose window were incorporated in a new design by architect E. T. Spashett during renovation of bomb-damaged public buildings by the Ministry of Works. During the 1940s and 1950s the Palace also housed a public roller-skating rink and the Alexandra Palace Roller Skating Club.
In the early 1960s an outside broadcast was made from the top of the tower, in which the first passage of a satellite across the London sky was watched and described. It continued to be used for BBC News broadcasts until 1969, and for the Open University until 1981. The antenna mast still stands and is used for local terrestrial television transmission, local commercial radio and Digital Audio Broadcasting. The main London television transmitter is now at Crystal Palace in South London.
In 1977 the Greater London Council considered a £20 million proposal to redevelop Alexandra Park into a multi-sport complex constructed around a shared football ground for two North London clubs, Arsenal and Tottenham Hotspur. The 75,000-seat stadium would have required a new transit connection, either a monorail line or a branch of the Piccadilly line, and private funding. The proposal was rejected by the GLC after local opposition cited the potential for hooliganism in the area.
Early in 1980 Haringey Council took over the trusteeship of Alexandra Palace from the GLC, insuring it for £31 million, intending to refurbish the building but just six months later, during Capital Radio's Jazz Festival, a fire started under the organ and quickly spread. It destroyed half the building. Again the outer walls survived and the eastern parts, including the theatre and the BBC Television studios and aerial mast, were saved. Parts of the famous organ were destroyed, though it had been dismantled for repairs so some parts, including nearly all the pipework, were away from the building in store. Some of the damage to the Palace was repaired immediately, but Haringey Council overspent on the restoration, creating a £30 million deficit. The Palace was reopened to the public in 1988 under a new management team headed by Louis Bizat. Later the council was heavily criticised for the overspend in a report by Project Management International. In 1991 the Attorney General stated that the overspending by the council as trustee was unlawful, and so could not be charged to the charity. The council for some years did not accept this finding and instead maintained that the charity "owed" the council £30 million, charged compound interest on what it termed a "debt", which eventually rose to a claim of some £60 million, and to recoup it tried to offer the whole palace for sale.
An ice rink was installed at Alexandra Palace in 1990. Primarily intended for public skating, it has also housed ice hockey teams including the Harringay Racers, the Haringey Greyhounds, the London Racers and now the Haringey Huskies, as well as a figure skating club, the Alexandra Palace Amateur Ice Skating Club.