Jonjon explores… “Croydon Airport Visitor Centre”

Directions. Closest station: Waddon (next to Croydon West Station). Exit the station and walk south for fifteen to twenty minutes. Official website claims an optimistic “five-minute” walk. Oops.

Take the bus if you’re really in a hurry.

Brief history. Airport opened 1920, closed 1959. Serving commercial airlines. Came under control of the RAF during WWII.

Only the airport terminal is now left standing. As a museum.

Glance: Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

1. Now it may seem like a daunting task to immortalize a vanished airport despite its rich history.

Imagine what it’s like to find a place to store all these artifacts and information panels.

But having made the entire terminal into a museum, at least now you have lots and lots of space. So find yourself a never-ending series of photos as you stroll across corridors one after another walking past these conference rooms and office space behind card-secured gates.

And the more the montage unfolds itself, the more you’ll be taken back to the 50s – with pictures of the aircrafts that frequented the airport, and the enthusiast King George, who learnt to fly here, and finally Winston Churchill, who attempted the same thing but failed.

(Let’s say he wasn’t meant to be a pilot-person.)

2. Interesting use of airport jargons: a murky corner is signed “customer lounge”.

3. You’ll have to find the interesting artifacts at the rear, upstairs – walk past all the historic photos to get there.

Let staffers explain their significance.

(Here you can see the first-ever air traffic controller certificate, numbered 1.)

4. “May day” was coined here at Gatwick Airport to facilitate communication between English and French crew. Derived from maider (French).

See yourself: Croydon Airport Visitor Centre

5. On the observation floor, staffers will walk you through the controls of the flight simulator (clip).

6. The more you travel up, the more the showcasing gets ambitious. Stumbling upon global travel, aerial history, basic aerodynamics, and even the evolution of passenger chairs.

(Before you leave: the history of the airport comes handy in a VHS tape, sitting comfortably on the gift counter.)

Time is asset: save it for better with 25-min museum tours. Or find yourself in my novel, check out the photo of the day and finish it off with a secret prize.

Tags - in_depth_tourism; museum; London_writer; London_travel; indie_writer; independent_blogger