Sports and Leisure
See also: List of parks and open spaces in CroydonSouth Norwood F.C. were an amateur football club who were active in the 1870s and played their home matches at Portland Road. They have been described as "one of the best in England at that time".
Park Road, Holmesdale Road and Whitehourse Lane hold Selhurst Park where Crystal Palace FC plays. The ground was also home to Charlton Athletic FC as part of a ground sharing agreement between 1985 and 1991. It was also used by Wimbledon FC when they left Plough Lane until 2003.
South Norwood contains a leisure centre which is owned and maintained by Fusion on behalf of Sport Croydon. South Norwood Leisure Centre is situated on Portland Road and reopened in late 2007 after refurbishment. It was closed in early 2006 so that it would be knocked down and construction would start on a site next to the Croydon Sports Arena. This was so that it could be redesigned from scratch like the leisure centre in Thornton Heath, which would result in a cost of around £10 million.
In May 2006 the Conservatives gained control of Croydon and decided that doing this would cost too much money, so they decided to refurbish the centre instead, although this decision came with controversy. It now includes a 25m swimming pool and a gym.
South Norwood is also the home to South Norwood Country Park, a former sewage works which closed in 1966, and of a fireworks factory now converted into a nature reserve. Other parks in the local area are South Norwood Recreation Ground, Heavers Meadow, Brickfields Meadow, Beaulieu Heights, South Norwood Lake and Grounds, Woodside Green and Ashburton Park. During the 1960s, the height of the Cold War, several buildings on this site were used for mock atomic attacks to enable rescue workers to gain experience. Volunteers would use theatrical make-up and act out specific wounds while controlled fires would burn around them.
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Famous quotes containing the words sports and, sports and/or leisure:
“Sports and gallantries, the stage, the arts, the antics of dancers,
The exuberant voices of music,
Have charm for children but lack nobility; it is bitter earnestness
That makes beauty; the mind
Knows, grown adult.”
—Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962)
“The whole idea of image is so confused. On the one hand, Madison Avenue is worried about the image of the players in a tennis tour. On the other hand, sports events are often sponsored by the makers of junk food, beer, and cigarettes. What’s the message when an athlete who works at keeping her body fit is sponsored by a sugar-filled snack that does more harm than good?”
—Martina Navratilova (b. 1956)
“... in the fierce competition of modern society the only class left in the country possessing leisure is that of women supported in easy circumstances by husband or father, and it is to this class we must look for the maintenance of cultivated and refined tastes, for that value and pursuit of knowledge and of art for their own sakes which can alone save society from degenerating into a huge machine for making money, and gratifying the love of sensual luxury.”
—Mrs. H. O. Ward (1824–1899)