Crystal Palace Bowl facts for kids
Crystal Palace Bowl is an iconic South London venue, with 60 years of live music heritage and a legacy as an outdoor performance venue stretching back over a century. It has a unique sculptural permanent stage designed by Ian Ritchie Architects, which won multiple awards and was nominated for the prestigious RIBA Stirling Prize in 1998.
It is positioned in a natural amphitheatre capable of holding up to 15,000 people, with the stage facing an ornamental lake - part of the original Joseph Paxton vision for the landscaped grounds of the Crystal Palace, this area being known as the 'English Garden Landscape'. It is located within the historic and Grade II* listed Crystal Palace Park in the London Borough of Bromley
From 1961 it hosted regular classical music performances by the likes of the London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic Orchestra. From 1971 to the early 1990s the Bowl saw some of the most popular musical acts in the world across rock, pop, punk, blues, jazz, roots and reggae play the ‘Garden Party’ festivals and later Greater London Council organised events. Notable concerts included those by Pink Floyd, Bob Marley, Elton John, The Beach Boys, Lou Reed, The Cure and Pixies.
The Bowl has been inactive as a music venue for several years and the stage has fallen into a state of disrepair, but as of March 2020 London Borough of Bromley Council are working with a local action group to find “creative and community-minded business proposals to reactivate the cherished concert platform”.
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Early history
Following the Great Exhibition of 1851, The Crystal Palace was relocated from Hyde Park to Sydenham and 200 acres of surrounding land was extensively re-landscaped by original architect Joseph Paxton, creating a spectacular Victorian pleasure ground. The North West corner of the grounds (today's Crystal Palace Park) was an area initially used for archery demonstrations and known as the ‘English Garden Landscape’, described thus: ‘On a beautiful slope bordered by trees is the archery ground, where targets are fixed at various distances. Nearby is [a] small piece of water...and beside it a beautiful grove of trees forming a pleasant summer shade’.
The sloping topography of the area lent itself to large gatherings, from the 1880s it was used for regular controlled balloon ascents in front of enormous crowds. In 1884 a ‘Venetian Fete’ was inaugurated, illuminating the English Garden Landscape to spectacular effect with a display of 15,000 oil lamps dotted around the grounds and 2,000 coloured Chinese Lanterns suspended from the trees. The small lake was decorated with a series of semi-circles, floating on the surface and gradually diminishing in size, their reflections in the water giving the appearance of rings of light stretching into the distance. The Venetian Fete illuminations were choreographed by the pyrotechnic specialists Brocks, well known for their firework displays at the Palace.
Pageant of London
For the 1911 Festival of Empire held at Crystal Palace, the central attraction was a ‘Pageant of London’, sited in the natural amphitheatre of the English Garden Landscape. Masterminded by Frank Lascelles, this was a hugely ambitious theatrical spectacle of historical re-enactments in several acts, with a cast of 15,000 performers telling the story of London, Britain and the Empire. It was sound-tracked by an original and patriotic score written by 17 native composers, amongst them Edward Elgar and Gustav Holst.
A temporary grandstand accommodating up to 10,000 spectators was constructed and 120 performances were given between June and September 1911, with over 1 million visitors traveling from across the country to see the Pageant. A contemporary review of the Pageant by The Times concluded ‘It would be difficult to conceive of a finer effect than was given by the mingling of theatrical art with the natural beauty of the arena'
The event was the first use of this area of the grounds as a large scale public performance venue and in terms of historical significance, it was "undoubtedly the largest and most ambitious pageant of the Edwardian period, if not the whole twentieth century, [and] it stands alone as a seminal moment in the growing popular appeal of pageantry"
Music in the open air
After the huge success of the 1951 Festival of Britain on London’s South Bank (directly inspired by the 1851 Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace) and in the spirit of post-war optimism, an ambitious new masterplan was developed in 1955 for the scarred and dilapidated park, which had been closed to the public since the destruction of the Palace by fire in 1936. This included a national exhibition and sports centre, a 160 ft high observation tower and an acoustic shell stage for open air concerts.
Sited in the small lake and facing the natural amphitheatre of the area formerly known as ‘English Garden Landscape’, an elegant concrete and steel shell stage design was proposed but never built. However preparatory work was soon begun on a temporary stage that would enable open air concerts in the park.
In June 1961, the new Crystal Palace Concert Bowl opened with a performance conducted by Antal Dorati, resuming a musical tradition at the Palace that stretched back more than a century to the great Handel Festivals and pre-war Brass Band Championships. The ‘Music in the Open Air’ and 'Proms in the Park' classic concerts grew in popularity throughout the 1960s and became a popular annual fixture, continuing in various forms and with differing orchestras for over 45 years until circa 2007.
Garden Party festivals
After the first decade of solely classical music at Crystal Palace Bowl, the Greater London Council were persuaded by young promoters Harvey Goldsmith and Michael Alfondary, to allow large scale rock and pop events to be staged at the venue.
Goldsmith and Alfondary partnered with father and son promoters John and Tony Smith – who managed many of the major touring acts at the time – together launching 'Crystal Palace Garden Party' with an inaugural event in May 1971. Coming quickly on the heels of the new large multi-day pop festivals in mostly rural locations; like The Isle of Wight Festival (1968), Woodstock (1969) and Glastonbury Festival (1970), Crystal Palace Garden Party pioneered a different formula – the more modest sized, semi-urban one day festival.
Initially running twice annually, the Garden Party events quickly gained a reputation for their eclectic line-ups and over excitable members of the audience venturing into the lake for a closer view of the stage. The experimental format of events and occasional madcap incidences also feature regularly in recollections. At one event in 1972, The Who drummer Keith Moon acted as compere; after arriving via helicopter and reaching the stage by hovercraft, he proceeded to take a rowing boat on the lake and, while dressed as a pirate, served tea and cake to people in the crowd closest to the waters edge.
On other occasions, the close proximity of the television transmitter in the park caused interference with the PA system, with music inadvertently interrupted by Test Match Special radio commentary from an England V Australia cricket match.
Over 10 years many of the defining guitarists of the era would appear at Crystal Palace, including Eric Clapton, Carlos Santana, David Gilmour, Jeff Beck, Rory Gallagher, Ronnie Wood, Mick Taylor and John McLaughlin.
The Garden Party events reached a climax in the summer of 1980, when Bob Marley played to a record breaking crowd at the Bowl; his last concert in London and one of the final few performances before his death the following year. The event is commemorated by a blue plaque on the structure. From 1981, organisation of events in London parks was taken over by the GLC and under new Labour leader of the council Ken Livingston, would take on a noticeably more political tone.
On the day of the Royal Wedding between Prince Charles and Diana in 1981, the 'It's Only Rock 'n' Royal' event was hosted at the Bowl. Headlined by Ian Dury, the press christened this a 'Republican rock fest', while Livingstone retorted "not everyone will want to sit square-eyed in front of a television all day – It's part of our programme of public benefit under socialism”. In 1983 Curtis Mayfield headlined the GLC Peace Picnic ‘Blues in the Bowl’, while in 1984 ‘London Against Racism’ and a ‘Free Nelson Mandela’ Benefit concert brought world music in the form of Jimmy Cliff, Hugh Masakela, Gil Scott-Heron and Segun Adewale. In 1985 a benefit concert organised by Pete Townshend featured the odd pairing of Hawkwind followed by forces sweetheart Dame Vera Lynn.
A brief cessation in events at the Bowl followed the abolition of the GLC in 1986. They resumed in 1990 at an event headlined by The Cure and a brief revival of the ‘Garden Party’ moniker. In 1991 Pixies played their biggest ever UK show, topping a bill of popular indie bands, while Blues and American music festivals brought roots legends like Buddy Guy, John Lee Hooker, Ry Cooder and Emmylou Harris to South London. The ageing temporary stage at the Bowl closed in 1994/95 in preparation for the construction of a new permanent stage and a shift towards smaller emerging acts and classical music.
Elsewhere in the park, live music continued over the next few years on much larger scale. With the boom in the acid house and dance music scene, the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre hosted 'Elevation and Reincarnation' from 1991-1994, London's largest indoors legal raves. Capital FM 'Party at the Palace' Roadshows on the park terraces gave early outings to a pre-fame Take That and East 17. Meanwhile the athletics stadium at the Sports Centre, with capacity for up to 40,000 people, welcomed the likes of Depeche Mode, Paul Weller, and Santana in the 1990s and early 2000s.
In 2002 the Sex Pistols reunited to celebrate their Jubilee (coinciding with her Majesty the Queen) with a huge 'Pistols at the Palace' day festival. Bruce Springsteen and the E-Street Band played a bank holiday double-header in 2003 on their ‘The Rising’ reunion tour, while a pair of Coldplay shows in 2005 marked the final big gigs at Crystal Palace to date.
Architecture
In 1996 an architectural competition was by held by London Borough of Bromley and Arts Council England, to design a new permanent stage in the park. Ian Ritchie Architects won with a proposal for a “simple structure causing minimal disturbance” to the rich and complex Paxton landscape.
The sculptural form was inspired by artists like Richard Serra and architects like John Winter in its use of a single material and a continuous surface, namely the self-weathering pre-rusted Corten Steel; it was of the first public buildings in the UK to use the material for external cladding. The outward appearance of the deep red oxidised steel drew inspiration from the earthy colours of the soil and reflections of the sky in the ornamental lake in front of the stage area, aiming to produce a greater harmony between structure and the beauty of surrounding landscape.
A generously proportioned 25 metre wide by 15 metre deep stage could accommodate a full 120 piece orchestra, while the acoustic canopy projects over the stage and soars to 11.34 metres high, cantilevered at an angle of 40 degrees. The structure also boasted the world's first computer controlled outdoor active acoustic system, designed by Paul Gilleron. This enabled the stage acoustics to be tuned as required by the performers; the canopy contains a total of 46 speakers, with two freestanding columns either side of the stage designed to house speakers and the amplification system.
The new stage opened in August 1997 with a performance by Evelyn Glennie, in 1998 it was nominated for the RIBA Stirling Prize, while also winning the Royal Fine Arts Commission Building of the Year Award, a Civic Trust Award and the 'Excellence in Design' award from the American Institute of Architects.
Images for kids
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Bob Marley performing at the Crystal Palace Bowl, 1980
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The Crystal Palace Concert Platform, constructed in 1997
