1) See the Clock Tower
The most iconic symbol of South Norwood is probably the ornate cast iron clock tower at the top of the High Street. It's a facsimile of Little Ben outside Victoria station, both having been built by the legendary Gillett & Johnston of Croydon, although this is 15 years younger. It was gifted to the community in 1907 by William F Stanley, the local inventor/philanthropist, on the occasion of his golden wedding anniversary. It's more of a traffic obstruction these days but useful if you want to know the time or the wind direction. Come on the second Saturday of the month, which I didn't, and you can enjoy a streetfood market in the vicinity.
2) Attend Stanley Arts
William's greatest legacy is the gorgeously eccentric cluster of buildings at the foot of South Norwood Hill comprising Stanley Technical Trades School (Britain's first technical college) and Stanley Public Hall (for concerts, plays, lectures and general educational betterment). Most schools don't have an astronomy tower but that's what happens when your benefactor makes telescopes. Stanley Tech is now a Harris Academy, having been out-entrepreneured, and the public space nextdoor recently rebranded as cultural hub Stanley Arts. You can still go inside for ceilidhs, flowerpot workshops and a weekdays-only cafe, but if it's panto you want alas Red Riding Hood closed last weekend.
3) Down a pint in the Jolly Sailor
The Jolly Sailor Inn was the first public building in the locality, opened in 1810 to serve canal traffic, and thirty years later when the railways came there was nothing else nearby so they named the local halt Jolly-sailor. The pub still serves pints, although its corner building by the busy crossroads isn't the original, it's a 1860s replacement. As old pubs go it looks depressingly bland, especially if you peer inside at the recent refit, although I suspect the Wednesday pub quiz and Thursday drag karaoke are lively affairs.
4) Sit on Captain Sensible's bench
The good Captain from The Damned is a local lad, as you'll know from his song Croydon, and grew up living on Edith Road SE25. Ten years ago the good folk of the South Norwood Tourist Board remembered him by transforming a small wasteground by Goat Bridge into a cultivated community space called the Sensible Garden. Ray attended as guest of honour and even gave an impromptu performance in The Ship, alas a couple of months before that age-old watering hole closed for good. The garden is no longer so well maintained and the Captain's bench is in a sorry plaqueless state, but it is still possible to rest awhile under the glare of the Heart FM digital billboard.
5) Shop on South Norwood High Street
SE25's High Street is jampacked with shops including a Morley's, a fishmonger and a lot of places to get your hair or nails done. There's even a hardware shop called SE25DIY which confirms we're in the right place. The only place Time Out would get especially excited about is Shelverdine Goathouse, this exactly the kind of quirky name Antic select for their pubs in an attempt to entice discerning punters. Time Out would also likely get very excited about Little Mouse, the artisan cheese and wine shop which cements its middle class credentials by retaining above its window a vintage signboard from the days when this was Elfin Pet Stores, but technically that's a few doors down Selhurst Road.
6) Walk through the world's first reinforced concrete underpass
As thrilling blue plaques go, 'The world's first reinforced concrete underpass Opened 31 July 1912' is right up there. Use the narrow-bore whitewashed subway to pass directly underneath the station, which is of course no longer called Jolly-sailor but goes by the much better known name of Norwood Junction.
7) Pop into the Brutalist library
Heavens this is great, assuming you like brutalist public buildings conceived by Borough Architects in the late 1960s. This slabby concrete box looks ridiculously small if you peer in from the ramped lobby but is in fact on five offset floors, each open plan and cosy with knowledge. Of course this being financially-challenged Croydon the council have proposed demolishing it, then withdrawn that philistine plan in favour of opening just two days a week, which local readers still aren't especially pleased about. If it's not Tuesday or Saturday you can at least still admire the child-designed swirly heritage mosaic in the forecourt, or just salivate at the concrete overhang.
8) See Arthur Conan Doyle's plaque
Sherlock Holmes' creator really got about but from 1891 to 1894 his home was a three-storey detached villa in Tennison Road, South Norwood. The Adventure of the Speckled Band and The Adventure of the Final Problem were all published in Strand Magazine while he was living here at number 12, amazingly. Today his house is somewhat unloved and, judging by the doorbells, has been subdivided into six flats. But at least it's still standing, whereas numbers 2 to 10 Tennison Road have all been demolished and each replaced by three lowlier townhouses, none of which will ever be graced by a blue plaque.
9) Experience pneumatic nirvana
As thrilling blue plaques go, 'The London to Croydon Atmospheric Railway operated through South Norwood' is right up there, in this case high on the wall beside the bridge on Manor Road. Only four such air-pressure-powered railways ever operated, this one in the mid-1840s with its pumping station located just north of the bridge. What's more the pipe got in the way of adjacent tracks so they had to build a wooden ramp to get the rails across, gradient 1 in 50, and that was the world's first railway flyover.
10) Join Stormzy in the Blue Jay cafe
Rapper Stormzy would classify SE25 as his 'hood, and has confirmed the Blue Jay cafe on Portland Road as his favourite eaterie. It serves proper Caribbean cuisine daily, include jerk chicken and curry goat, but also a Full English if you don't want ackee and saltfish with your breakfast. A few lucky punters can sit out front on a covered patio, while those inside can scrutinise a wall completely covered with photos (I don't know of what because it was closed).
11) Swim at South Norwood Leisure Centre
Let's knock the old pool down and build a new one said Labour councillors in 2005. Let's not said the incoming Conservative administration the following year, let's save £6m and just refurbish it. It is thus a less exciting leisure centre than it could be. It does however have a blue plaque out front for Ellen 'Ciss' Wright, 1930's All England champion over 440 yards, but she lived half a mile up the road so it's not especially well placed.
12) Explore Brickfields Park
There's a clue in the name here because Brickfields Park used to be a brickfield, indeed so did several parks locally because the high grade London clay hereabouts was ideal for brickmaking. Try to picture the site as it was 50 years ago with five kilns and a 160 foot chimney, rather than scrubby grassland, a flooded claypit and an austere play-labyrinth.
13) Hit the southern edge of London Elmers Road (alongside Blackhorse Lane tram stop) isn't just the southernmost street in SE25 but also the southernmost street in the entire London postal district. The southernmost public building is the Church of God of Prophecy, the southernmost business is Blackhorse Service Station, the southernmost food outlet splits its offering between pizza and burritos, and a resident of the southernmost property really should have pulled his trousers up before leaning into the back of his white van.
14) Squidge through South Norwood Country Park
Prior to becoming a country park in 1989 this utterly sprawling greenspace has been a farm, a sewage farm, an army training ground and a spoil heap, so is much better off in recreational form. It can feel a bit remote along the trails in the centre as well as squidgy underfoot, so it's very low down on my list of favourite parks, but on this occasion I had a proper close-up encounter with a lone fox near Harrington Lane tramstop so it's gone up in my estimation a tad.
15) See the actual Arena
If you've ever wondered which Arena the tram stop called Arena is named after, it's Croydon Sports Arena SE25 4QL. This opened in 1953 and is still home to Croydon Amateurs, now Croydon FC, midtable stalwarts of Southern Counties East League Division One.
16) Walk through Heaver's Meadow
A walk alongside the Norbury Brook sounds lovely, but the river's in a culvert and the long tarmac path alongside is sandwiched between a thickety bog and the edge of an exceptionally large rail depot, so really only pleasant if you like crows, flood prevention schemes and Southern rolling stock.
17) Get trained at Selhurst Depot
The Southern and Gatwick Express Driver Training Centre is at Selhurst Depot, so if you're planning to become a fully qualified train driver you could spend the first six months of intensive training here before being allowed out for 225 hours driving experience with an instructor.
18) Try to see Coleridge-Taylor's house Samuel Coleridge-Taylor is best known for his choral work Hiawatha's Wedding Feast, a setting of verses from the Song of Hiawatha by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. With the proceeds of his success he moved from Croydon to a smart little house in Dagnall Park, close to Selhurst station and appropriately enough bang opposite the Brit School. Samuel was also the first ever black recipient of a blue plaque, but you'll struggle to see it because the house's current owners have surrounded their front garden with a deliberately obstructive screen of shrubbery.
19) Experience top flight football at Selhurst Park Selhurst Park is Crystal Palace's home ground, and has been since 1924 when the club were ejected from the current site of Selhurst train depot. The Main stand is an original but is about to be replaced. The Whitehorse Lane stand contains executive boxes perched on top of a Sainsbury's supermarket. The Holmesdale Road stand is the most recent and from the rear has all the charm of a secure institution. Fans can enjoy a visit to the club shop, a drink in the Fanzone and a photo in front of a mural depicting ten famous players, although I recognised none of them. There are also lots of pictorial references to Eagles, this being the club's nickname, and no references to the fact that Apple TV drama Ted Lasso used the stadium as the home ground for AFC Richmond, Nelson Road.
20) Walk through Grangewood Park
This is a lovely large park, triangular in shape with more woodland than grassland and packed full of contours. In the centre I found a sunken garden, the remnants of some public conveniences, a couple of players bravely playing tennis and evidence of an outdoor playgroup called Mudder Nature. It's also somewhere a lot of local residents bring their muzzled dogs for exercise, because SE25's hounds appear to be on the large side.
21) Go sailing on the reservoir
When the Croydon Canal was built they needed a reservoir so they dug one at the top of South Norwood, off what's now Avenue Road. Since 1836 it's not been needed, but that's good because today you can sail boats on it and fish from round the edge of it. Croydon Sailing Club keep their boats on a slipway near the cafe and launch them every Sunday, with members watching proceedings from the clubhouse verandah. Bowls is a Monday and Wednesday affair. Swimming is not permitted, and all fish must be returned to the lake.
22) Walk through the actual Great North Wood
Norwood was originally covered by the Great North Wood, hence the name, of which not many ancient fragments remain. But Beaulieu Heights is one such remnant, a glorious deciduous slope below the TV mast threaded through with a waymarked path. I followed the white arrows up wooden steps scrunchy with oak leaves and from the summit enjoyed a broad view across SE25 and far beyond.
23) Gaze up at the Croydon Transmitter
Visible for miles on the top of Beulah Hill, this 152m mast is the successor to ITV's very first TV transmitter erected in 1955. It still transmits radio, both analogue and digital, but since 2012 no longer television... although it is ready to kick in as back-up if Crystal Palace ever fails. From close up you can see a bevy of dishes attached to its latticework, and from even closer up you can rick your neck while standing in Arqiva's car park.
24) Ordain yourself at Spurgeon's College
Have you ever wanted to be a Baptist minister? Thankfully Charles Haddon Spurgeon opened a training college in 1856 and in 1923 it moved to Falkland Park, a grand home on Beulah Hill gifted by a wealthy convert. I know it's unlikely that your career plans include Bible-led teaching but if they do Pastor Rick Warren would love to welcome you to SE25.
