Alexandra Palace
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Set in Alexandra Park, Alexandra Palace was built in an area spanning Wood Green and Muswell Hill, North London, England in 1873 as a public recreation, education and entertainment centre and North London counterpart of The Crystal Palace.
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[edit] Overview
The Great Hall and West Hall are used as an exhibition centre and conference centre operated by the trading arm of the charitable trust which owns the building and Park on behalf of the public. There is also an ice skating rink. Since 1995 the Palace has been a Grade II listed building. It was designed to be ‘The People’s Palace’ and later nicknamed (allegedly by Gracie Fields)[1] “Ally Pally”, and in 1936 became the headquarters of the world's first regular public ‘high definition’ television service, operated by the BBC. The Alexandra Palace television station was located on the site and its iconic radio tower is still in use. The original Studios A and B still survive in the south-east wing but are empty having been stripped of all the BBC equipment in the 1980s. The original Victorian Theatre with its stage machinery also survives. The theatre and stage structure is currently on English Heritage's Buildings at Risk register. There is currently an application to upgrade the listing by Hornsey Historical Society[2], which originally got the Palace Grade II listed (against the opposition of trustee Haringey council), and the BBC.
Also, a planned development of the building into a mixed leisure complex including hotel, replacement ice rink ,cinema,bowling and exhibition centre has encountered much opposition by some public groups and was blocked in the High Court in October 2007.
The nearest tube station is Wood Green, which is about a one and a half mile walk from the Palace .
[edit] History
In December 1858 the architect Owen Jones, who had been involved with the Crystal Palace, exhibited drawings for a proposed 'Palace of the People' to be constructed on the hilltop between Muswell Hill and Wood Green. The Great Northern Palace company was established, but was unable to raise the finance for the project. However, the idea lived on and on 23 July 1863 Alexandra Park was opened to the public. It was named after Alexandra of Denmark who had married Prince Edward, the Prince of Wales, four months earlier. In September 1865 construction of the palace commenced, but to a design different from Jones'.
The palace covers some seven and a half acres. In 1871 work started on a railway line to connect the site to Highgate Station. Work on both the railway and the palace was completed in 1873 and, on 24 May, Alexandra Palace and Park was opened. Sims Reeves sang on the opening day before an audience of 102,000.[3] Only sixteen days later the palace was destroyed by fire, killing three members of staff. Only the outer walls survived.
With typical Victorian vigour, the palace was quickly rebuilt and reopened in May 1875. It contained a concert hall, art galleries, a museum, a lecture hall, a library, a banqueting room and a theatre. An open-air swimming pool was constructed at the base of the hill in the surrounding park; the pool is now long closed and little trace remains except some reeds. The Grounds included a racecourse with grandstand (Alexandra Park, which closed in 1970), Japanese village, switchback ride, boating lake and a par 9 golf course. The Willis organ installed in 1875 (vandalized in 1918, restored and re-opened in 1929) is still working, but its restoration is continuing. In its 1929 restored form, Father Willis's masterpiece was declared to be the finest concert-organ in Europe by Marcel Dupré.[4]
In 1900 the Palace and Park’s owners were threatening to sell it for development, but a consortium of local authorities led by Hornsey Urban District managed to raise enough money to purchase them in the nick of time. By the Alexandra Park and Palace (Public Purposes) Act, 1900, a charitable trust was set up; representatives of the purchasing local authorities became the trustees with the duty to keep both Palace and Park “available for the free use and recreation of the public for ever". The Palace passed into the hands of the GLC and then was transferred in 1979 to Haringey council.
The building has a wealth of history, for example, during World War I the park was closed and the Palace and grounds were used as an internment camp for German civilians.
In 1935 the trustees leased part of the palace to the BBC, which used it 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 this site in 1936. Two competing systems, Marconi-EMI's 405-line system and 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 1937. The palace continued as the BBC's main TV transmitting centre for London until 1956, interrupted only by World War II when the transmitter found an alternative use jamming German bombers' navigation systems (it is said that only 25% of London raids were effective because of these transmissions).[citation needed] In 1944 a German doodlebug exploded just outside the organ end of the Great Hall and blew in the rose window, leaving the organ exposed to the weather.[5]
During the early 1960s, an outside broadcast was given from the very top of the tower, in which the first passage of a satellite across the London sky was watched and described. After that it continued to be used for news broadcasts until 1969, and for the Open University until the early 1980s. The antenna mast still stands, and is still used for local analogue television transmission, local commercial radio and DAB broadcasts. The main London television transmitter is at Crystal Palace in South London.
In 1980 the trustee ( Haringey) decided to refurbish the building but a couple of days after the Great British Beer Festival and during Capital Radio's Jazz Festival a second disastrous 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 TV studios and aerial mast, were saved. In this fire parts of the famous Organ were destroyed, though it had been dismantled for repairs and 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, managing to create an £80 million deficit. Later the Council was severely criticised for this in a report by Project Management International.
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An ice rink was installed in 1990. Primarily intended for public skating, it has also housed ice hockey teams including Haringey Racers, Haringey Greyhounds and briefly London Racers.[6] During the 1960s the Palace housed a public roller-skating rink.
The Theatre was greatly altered in the early 1920s with the General Manager McQueen-Pope spending the war reparation money on refurbishing the auditorium. He abandoned the understage machinery which produced the effects necessary in Victorian melodrama: some of the machinery is preserved and a current project is for restoring 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 five thousand people to the Hall for a charity event. However after the BBC leased the eastern part of the Palace the theatre was only used for props storage space.
In June 2004 the first performances for about seventy years took place in the theatre, first in its foyer then on 2 July in the theatre itself. Although conditions are far from ideal the audience was able to see the potential of this very large space — originally seating 3000, it cannot currently be licensed for more than a couple of hundred. It is intended that the theatre will one day reopen but much costly restoration will be required first. It will never again reach a seating capacity of 3000 (not least because one balcony was removed in the early part of the twentieth century as a fire precaution, when films started to be shown there) but it does seem likely that a capacity of more than 1000 may one day be achieved. A major season of the theatre company Complicite was planned for 2005 but the project, which would have included some repair and access work, was cancelled due to higher-than-anticipated costs.
The plans by current trustees Haringey Council to refurbish the venue by means of a development into a mixed leisure complex have encountered opposition, and on 5th October 2007 in the High Court, Mr Justice Sullivan granted an application by Jacob O'Callaghan to quash the Charity Commission's Order authorizing a 125-year lease of the entire building to Firoka Ltd.[7]
[edit] Famous events
In November every year, a large fireworks display is held as part of London's Bonfire Night celebrations.
[edit] 1960s
The Observer Wildlife Exhibition held here in 1963 was an important early event in highlighting awareness of worldwide endangered species, and gained a very large attendance (46,000).[8]
On 28 April 1967, a benefit event took place at the palace. "The 14 Hour Technicolor Dream", organised by the "International Times", demonstrated the importance of the quickly developing UK Underground scene. Although "underground" venues such as the UFO Club were hosting counter-cultural bands, this was certainly the biggest indoor event at the time. Performers included Pink Floyd, The Pretty Things, Savoy Brown, The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, Soft Machine, The Move and Sam Gopal's Dream (featuring Sam Gopal, Mick Hutchinson and Pete Sears).
[edit] 1970s
In 1972 Pink Floyd debuted their work Eclipse (A Piece For Assorted Lunatics) at Alexandra Palace and the bootleg is still in circulation. This set is what would later become their magnum opus album Dark Side of the Moon.
In 1973 the Divine Light Mission held a "Festival of Love".[9]
The Grateful Dead played a series of shows here, September 9th-11th, 1974. The band's recording of the show was released as part of the Dick's Picks series in March, 1997.
[edit] 1980s
The exterior of the palace was used as Victory Square in Michael Radford's 1984 film adaptation of George Orwell's novel 1984.
The Famous Sinclair C5 was launched at the palace on January 10 1985.
[edit] 1990s
The Stone Roses played their first major gig in the south of England which became famous due to the fact that the band managed to sell the venue out before making major in-roads into the music press or making any national TV appearances.
Squeeze and The Kinks performed at the palace on August 12, 1990, in a concert which was broadcast on BBC Television.
[edit] Since 2000
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This section may be slanted towards recent events. Please try to keep recent events in historical perspective. (January 2008) |
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The Strokes recorded a live performance at Alexandra Palace on 5 December 2003, this performance was to be released in the form of a live album, but the idea was scrapped.
Travis played Ally Pally on 20 December 2003, the footage of which was used for their live DVD titled 'Travis - At The Palace'.
The third annual European Social Forum (ESF) took place on 15–17 October 2004 in London, the main venue being Alexandra Palace.
The very first Give It a Name music festival was held at Alexandra Palace on 2 May 2005.
In October 2005 Kiss 100 FM celebrated its 20th anniversary with a club night featuring many famous past and present Kiss DJs performing.
On December 5, 2005 Paul Weller Played one night and released the show on a two disc cd entitled Catch Flame.
In 2006 a dance music rave promoted by Slammin' Vinyl under the name of Tranzmission was held at Ally Pally [10]
Alexandra Palace plays an important part in the 2006 Doctor Who episode "The Idiot's Lantern", set in 1953.
On 16 June-17 June 2007 the Palace hosted the first London Hackday which was affected by a lightning strike on the building resulting in rooftop vents opening and the hall being flooded.
Alexandra Palace is the new venue PDC World Darts Championship from December 2007 [11] after 14 years at the Circus Tavern in Purfleet, Essex. The Alexandra Palace was previously home to the News of the World Darts Championship between 1963 and 1977.
The band Kick Asteroid recorded a single entitled "Shadow of the Palace" recounting semi-biographical events centred on the famous London landmark
[edit] Nearest places
[edit] Access
- Nearest rail station: Alexandra Palace
- Nearest Tube station: Wood Green
- Address: Alexandra Palace, Alexandra Palace Way, London N22 7AY [12]
[edit] Notes and references
- ^ nytimes.com
- ^ [1]Hornsey Historical Society
- ^ C. E. Pearce, Sims Reeves: Fifty Years of Music in England (Stanley Paul, London 1924), 307.
- ^ Felix Aprahamian, The Alexandra Palace Organ, Sleevenote to HMV HQM 1199 (Hayes 1970).
- ^ Aprahamian 1970, loc. cit.
- ^ Martin C. Harris, Homes of British Ice Hockey
- ^ bbc.co.uk
- ^ William M. Adams, Against Extinction:The Story of Conservation (Earthscan 2004), p. 61. Example of display, [2]
- ^ Price, Maeve (1979): "The Divine Light Mission as a social organization". Sociological Review, 27, Page 279-296.
- ^ jungleravers.com
- ^ World Darts moves to London
- ^ grid reference TQ296900
[edit] External links
- Alexandra Palace (official site)
- Alexandra Palace (Victorian London)
- Save Ally Pally: history of recent ownership of the Palace, and campaign to preserve the Palace and the TV studios for access and use by the public
- Detailed history of early BBC TV broadcasts, with archive photos 2003-09-14
- Alexandra Palace Television Society
- Unofficial History of BBC Television at Alexandra Palace
- "Development threat to the palace, where television was born" (The Independent article on development plans, 30 December 2006)
- "TV studios under threat" (Local MP's blog on Palace's future, 29 October 2006)
- Pictures and Information About Alexandra Palace History
- Hornsey Historical Society
- More information on the 14 hour technicolor dream
- Alexandra Palace Organ Appeal
- Complicite scraps plans for Alexandra Palace rebirth (The Stage Online)
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