Airships, Boxers and Charabancs: When Leicester City won at Crystal Palace
Selhurst Park may be a tough place to go, and a tough place to get to, but Crystal Palace has a rich history of contests and spectacles that have drawn visitors from far and wide.
The original Crystal Palace was built in Hyde Park for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was a huge structure but with the exhibition only lasting six months, a new home had to be found for it.
The following year, reconstruction of the Crystal Palace began south of the river on Sydenham Hill. It was reopened by Queen Victoria on 10th June 1854 and became the focal point of a venue for multiple leisure pursuits.
In 1857, a cricket ground was established on the site. Initially used by Kent County Cricket Club in the 1860s, it was home to London County Cricket Club between 1900 and 1904. In July 1901, Leicestershire were the visitors for a drawn three-day match in which the great WG Grace, playing for the hosts, was the highest run scorer.
A football stadium on the grounds held the FA Cup final every year from 1895 to 1914 - Derby County went there three times during this period and lost each final, including a 6-0 defeat to Bury in 1903. Attendances were enormous, with the highest recorded as 120,028 for Aston Villa’s 1-0 win over Sunderland in 1913.
1905 FA Cup final: Aston Villa 2 Newcastle United 0 (Att: 101,117)
As one of the highest points in the capital, one of the many uses for the new location of the Crystal Palace was to launch hot air balloons into the skies of London. The earliest remaining aerial photographs of Britain were taken from these flights in the second half of the 19th century.
On 22nd September 1902, the Spencer, the first British airship, launched from the site. It flew over London for an hour via Battersea, Hammersmith and Acton before landing at Eastcote, not far from Wembley.
These early excursions into the air began to fascinate an entrepreneur called Claude Grahame-White. Captivated by aviation, Grahame-White travelled to France in 1908 to see Wilbur Wright take flight.
Wilbur Wright in Le Mans, France. 1908
(Photo: public.resource.org)
The Wright Brothers were allegedly unimpressed by Grahame-White, who they saw as someone out to make money from aviation rather than seeing the progress it could offer the human race. They probably had a point. By 1910, his weekly flights were drawing crowds of 10,000 - as he took the air from the Crystal Palace.
The following year, Grahame-White leased 207 acres of land in Hendon in north London and established a basic aerodrome. He quickly became an enthusiastic advocate for the bright future of aviation, being invited to speak in the Houses of Parliament on the topic and demonstrating the possible military uses of the aeroplane at Hendon in May 1911 by dropping flour bombs on a painted battleship.
His weekly attraction at his new home, known as The Hendon Habit, was more wide-ranging, with spectacular flying displays again bringing huge crowds. In time, air shows and exhibitions would become synonymous with Hendon.
Claude Grahame-White
In 1912, Grahame-White went on a tour of the country to perform aerial stunts over fashionable seaside resorts. He called it “Wake Up, England!” and its scale was enormous, taking in 121 towns, over 500 exhibition flights and around 1,200 passengers.
This was the same year Leicester had its own aerial first. On 30th November 1912, Gustav Hamel took off from a temporary airstrip in Leicester to undertake the first ever British newspaper delivery flight, landing safely with his cargo in Loughborough.
That airstrip was located, it seems, a wind-assisted goal kick or slog sweep’s distance from Filbert Street at Aylestone Road cricket ground, where Leicestershire County Cricket Club had been tenants since 1901.
With the threat of war looming, venues across the country were requisitioned by the RAF. In 1913, Aylestone Road was handed over. In 1914, fresh from welcoming its one millionth visitor, so was Hendon Aerodrome.
Meanwhile, many pioneering aviators were thrown into military action. Claude Grahame-White was commissioned as a Flight Commander in the Royal Naval Air Service.
The threat of bombing from German airships was paramount in military aviation planning. In September 1914, Grahame-White made the first aerial night patrol over London in response to the danger, while Hendon was one of several aerodromes forming a ring of ten around London - one of the ten, Beddington, was established in 1915, just a few miles southwest of the Crystal Palace.
After the war, Grahame-White got back to business. In May 1919, he established Aerofilms Ltd - which would later go on to produce iconic aerial football ground photobooks. And in July 1919, the same month that Leicester became a city and Leicester Fosse became Leicester City, the London Flying Club opened its doors at Hendon.
On Friday 22nd September 1922, in an article titled “Famous Airman Fined for Unattended Car”, Claude Grahame-White found himself in the pages of the Hampshire Independent for a brush with the law:
“At the Isle of Wight County Petty Sessions, at Newport, on Saturday, Claude Graham White, the well-known airman, was summoned for causing an obstruction by leaving his motor car unattended outside the Gloster Hotel early on the morning of September 1st.
PC Eames said he found the car unattended at 12.40 on the morning of September 1st. There was a light in front and a light at the rear of the car, a Rolls-Royce. When he saw the owner and complained to him of the dangerous position of the car, in the event of the lights going out, Mr Grahame White said witness was making a lot of fuss about a very little thing.
A letter bearing an address of Hendon, was read from the defendant, who expressed regret for having contravened the regulations. He thought he was doing no harm, seeing that in that particular part there was very often a long line of charabancs during the day.
The Bench imposed the maximum penalty of £10.”
The following day, Leicester City travelled to face Crystal Palace and a charabanc (the 1920s equivalent of that away day favourite, the minibus) was at the heart of another transport-related issue.
It was Leicester’s second visit to Palace’s The Nest ground that year, having suffered a 1-0 defeat in April, and their trip was not a smooth one:
“Leicester City journeyed for the second time to Croydon this afternoon and fulfilled their third engagement in the League with Crystal Palace.
This being not the only function of vital interest to Leicester with which the Crystal Palace is associated - no fewer than six local bands being engaged in the great Brass Band Contest - there was quite a fair sprinkling of local support.
Indeed, Mr M. J. Rice, the Chairman of Directors, ran a special train for the benefit of his many workpeople at Syston.
It was quite an adventurous journey that the City had to make, and there was barely 20 minutes to spare on arrival at the nest at Selhurst. The delay arose through an unusual and distinctly amusing circumstance.
A charabanc had been chartered from St Pancras, and the driver mistook the football club for a brass band, and drove them all up to the main entrance to the Crystal Palace. However, there was quite enough time, and no delay in starting.
There were already 12,000 spectators when Harrold won the toss and the City were cheered by many of their own friends.”
Mr M J Rice’s name lives on for many young Leicestershire-based football fans, who still to this day compete for the Rice Bowl named in his honour with the final currently held each summer at the King Power Stadium.
Having arrived safely, Leicester won 2-0. Meanwhile, at the 17th Great National Band Festival at the Crystal Palace, bands - including the actual City of Leicester Brass Band - were playing a piece by Hubert Bath, also one of the contest’s adjudicators.
This year, Leicester City will be the first visitors to Selhurst Park in its second hundred years of existence. The ground was opened on 30th August 1924, with Crystal Palace losing 1-0 to The Wednesday - five years before they added the “Sheffield”. Palace were unbeaten in their next four games at their new home, before Leicester City rolled into town and inflicted the second defeat of Selhurst’s existence.
The date was 18th October 1924.
The London Daily Chronicle was rapt. In a breathless report titled “Inept Crystal Palace - Londoners Completely Mastered by Leicester City”, they weren’t shy to sing the visitors’ praises:
“Leicester City have only to maintain the form they showed against Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park to become formidable candidates for promotion. They are a live side, with no weak spot, and, what is more, they play real match-winning football.”
The Leicester Evening Mail concurred:
“Because Leicester City only defeated Crystal Palace by 2-0, it must not be assumed the teams were more or less on an equality.
In about everything except shooting the Palace players were outclassed, and a balance of at least half-a-dozen goals in favour of the city would give a far better indication of the superiority of the visitors over the Palace.”
Croydon Times were damning of the home side, with one writer stating:
“I do believe that the art of ball control and the art of shooting goals on the soccer field is fast dying away.”
Later that night, a 19-year-old Leicester boxer named Charlie Chetwynd won the semi-final of a boxing tournament at Crystal Palace. He went down six times in the first two rounds but came back to win on points against Len Brooks, before losing in the final to Gunner Bennett. Chetwynd had only started boxing 6 months earlier. Boxing at Crystal Palace drew gigantic crowds, including in 1931.
The visuals from the Crystal Palace in 1931 get even more interesting in video format, with British Pathé capturing that year’s National Brass Band Championships:
This was the same year Hubert Bath would return for a second time to adjudicate the contest, and the year Bath also composed a tune called Out of the Blue.
Originally written for the RAF Marching Band at the Hendon Aerodrome, it became much-loved by football supporters as the theme tune to BBC Radio’s Sports Report. Since 1948, the sound of Out of the Blue has greeted thousands of fans returning to their cars after away days up and down the country.
The 1931 Hendon air show, at which Out of the Blue was played, was missing one attraction from the previous year. The R101 airship was, upon its completion in 1929, the largest flying craft in the world and one of a pair built with the intention of carrying people the long distances required across the British Empire.
Like the Spencer airship of 1902, it was flown over London leading to some incredible juxtapositions:
R101 over St Paul’s Cathedral, 1929
Photo: Dick Gilbert (Flickr)
Testing in 1930 revealed multiple issues, particularly during a test flight at the annual Hendon air show in June 1930.
But R101 still took off for its maiden overseas flight on 4th October 1930 from Cardington in Bedfordshire, bound for India. Among those on board was Sydney Ernest Scott, a 40-year-old charge hand engineer who had been brought up in Aylestone, on a street that borders the Grace Road county cricket ground.
That night, R101 passed over London and headed towards the English channel. It was approaching the French town of Beauvais, just north of Paris, at about 2am when it encountered a problem. Its descent was swift and upon hitting the ground in a wooded area just south of Beauvais, it burst into flames. 46 of its 54 passengers were killed instantly, a further two losing their lives shortly afterwards as a result of injuries sustained.
The wreckage of the R101 airship in Beauvais, France
Sydney Ernest Scott was one of the 46, leaving behind a widow and a child.
Six years later, the Crystal Palace would share R101’s fate at the hands of fire. While 500 firemen from across London’s Fire Brigade battled the blaze, aeroplanes were chartered for £1 apiece for the rich to watch the inferno after taking off from nearby Croydon Airport, part of which had previously been Beddington Aerodrome.
Little remains of Croydon Airport. It closed in September 1959, one month after the death of Claude Grahame-White, and there are few clues as to its existence.
Meanwhile, Hendon lives on. Although the aerodrome closed in the late 1960s, the site was reopened in 1972 as a Royal Air Force Museum. The honour fell to Queen Elizabeth II, mirroring Queen Victoria’s opening of Crystal Palace in its new location 118 years earlier. The runways on the site were removed to make way for a new housing estate, named Grahame Park.
The RAF Museum remains open to this day, and on 17th March 2016 it welcomed another VIP. This was the day G-LCFC, the helicopter belonging to Vichai Srivaddhanaprabha, was photographed at Hendon.
Two days later, at a 92-year-old football stadium 23 miles away in south east London, Leicester City supporters were missing Sports Report. Instead, they were standing in the Arthur Wait Stand at Selhurst Park long beyond the final whistle and twirling their scarves, Vichai and Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha making their way over the pitch to join in the celebrations.
Leicester City were going to win the league.
With thanks to the Leicester City fan-owned, Crystal Palace-based bookshop Bookseller Crow.
