In the sixteen years of running our Crystal Palace bookshop, Bookseller Crow on the Hill, just one thing stubbornly remains the same. Despite fantastic buses (the 24-hour number 3 takes you through Brixton and up to Trafalgar Square – and other routes will get you direct to Elephant and Castle, Blackheath, Peckham) and rail connections (we’re under 20 minutes from London Bridge and Victoria), not least the recent addition of the ingenious and effortless Overground (which takes in west Croydon, Clapham Junction, Hackney and Highbury & Islington, with Jubilee Line and DLR connections), the misconception that Crystal Palace is difficult to get to prevents so many of our fellow Londoners from enjoying this generous, busy place.
Over the years Upper Norwood – which is what officialdom and older people tend to call the area – has suffered being in the crossfire of the five different London boroughs: Bromley, Croydon, Lewisham, Lambeth and Southwark converge here.
But this proud suburb has learned to stick up for itself, its feisty sense of identity raising a middle-finger to those who feel the lofty (literally, as you can see from the view above) neighbourhood is beneath them. But if you still need a reason to top up the Oyster card and visit, here’s five of them.
We call our shopping quarter “the triangle” and with traditional retailers hanging on in there too, you can still get a haircut and buy a length of bandage, goldfish or bag of nails (and soon a chop and a filet as a butcher and fishmonger are about to return after fifteen years exile blamed on the supermarkets). And books. Lots of books. Seven days a week we sell literary American imports, books for kids and cooks and crime addicts and local historians and miles of other new stuff. We run a reading group, writing workshops and have weekly events with authors as diverse as Jonathan Meades, Matt Haig and the LA Times Fiction prize-winning, Ben Fountain. Recently described as “shabby but wonderful,” the Bookseller Crow is up on the hill for one reason – it really is the only place to be.
Words and pictures (unless specified): Jonathan Main & Justine Crow, who run the independent bookshop, Bookseller Crow, 50 Westow Street, SE19. Tel: 020 8771 8831.
Want to read a north Londoner’s take on Crystal Palace? Check out the piece our sister site, Kentishtowner, recently ran after an excursion down south.
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