SEVENTY-FIVE years after a devastating fire destroyed the Crystal Palace an exhibition took place to show people what happened.

At the Crystal Palace Museum, Anerley Hill, Crystal Palace, the 15 minute film mixed still images of the incident with live footage.

This footage was recorded on November 30, 1936, as 438 firefighters from four brigades battled the flames as the blaze took hold of the building.

The fire, which started shortly before 7pm that night, was visible from the English Channel and was said to be the biggest London had seen since the Great Fire in 1666.

Museum director and curator Ken Kiss says the fire started when a pipe under the floor carrying flue gas ruptured and this caused the wooden flooring to catch light.

This pipe had been put in as part of an underfloor heating system by the architect Joseph Paxton for the building’s opening in the park in 1854 and Mr Kiss says it was lucky a fire had not happened before then.

He said: “The first thing the pipes came into contact with was the floor and over 82 years this had turned from timber to tinder.

“It was like putting a match to a large amount of tinder and watching it burn.

“It is amazing such a fire did not happen before.”

The museum exists to keep the history of the Crystal Palace alive and the fire is part of this.

Mr Kiss added: “We feel an obligation.

“It’s not a pleasing element, the destruction of the building, but it happened and it is history and we cannot deny that.

“We feel obligated to continue [telling the story].”

The exhibition took place last weekend (December 3 and 4).

History of the Crystal Palace

The Crystal Palace started life as the Great Exhibition in Hyde Park before it closed in 1851.

It reopened on a site in Sydenham on June 10, 1854, and quickly became known as the People’s Palace.

In 1868 the Palace had the first public showing of moving pictures using a zoetrope.

Between 1854 and 1884 an average of two million people visited the Palace each year.

Queen Victoria and Prince Albert were regular visitors as well as Napoleon III in 1855, the Sultan of Turkey in 1867, the Khedive of Egypt in 1869, Tsar Alexander II in 1874 and the King and Queen of Greece in 1876.

Its’ popularity started to wane at the end of the 19th century and by 1936 it had gone into liquidation.

The great fire of November 30 destroyed the building and by the morning of December 1 the whole site was gone.