The town that's been named one of UK's 'worst' but is actually a hidden gem

The tram making its mode done the municipality centre (Image: Express)

Elizabeth I utilized to enactment astir the country from the Lidl connected Croydon's Church Street. The Lidl wasn't determination astatine the time, of course, but Croydon Palace – a higgledy-piggledy clutch of herringbone ceramic and half-timbered buildings dating arsenic acold backmost arsenic the 15th period – remains.

It's portion of a girls’ schoolhouse now, but for hundreds of years was a 'ye olde motel' for the Archbishops of Canterbury, who'd halt disconnected connected their mode to Lambeth to enactment connected their sermons and space for trout successful the babbling streams.

Croydon has consistently punched supra its weight.

From its aboriginal days, what should person been a run-of-the-mill marketplace town, served arsenic a hot-desking spot of power, frequented by high-ranking men of the cloth and the monarchs who congregated astir them.

When John Whitgift became Archbishop of Canterbury successful 1583, Elizabeth I was a regular visitant to Croydon; she enjoyed Whitgift's hospitality (he erstwhile had a play specially commissioned which fawned implicit "Eliza Englands [sic] beauteous Queene, connected whom each seasons prosperously attend").

She enjoyed the equine racing Croydon was celebrated for astatine the clip adjacent more.

And arsenic the archbishops gradually drifted away, Croydon learned to basal connected its ain 2 feet. When Brighton became a trendy edifice for wellness devotees who bathed successful (and drank) the seawater, Croydon pounced connected its plum presumption connected the Brighton Road, establishing a slew of coaching inns and carriage works.

A engaged marketplace successful Croydon (Image: Express)

Businesses similar Messrs Lenny and Co churned retired broughams, phaetons, clarences, wagonettes, stanhopes and Parisians, and Croydon became an 18th period mentation of 'Motor City', minus the motors.

By 1815, immoderate 100,000 radical were passing done Croydon, though not everyone appreciated the hospitality. The Prince Regent, en way to 1 of his Brighton jollies, was booed and hissed astatine by a mob extracurricular the Crown inn of each places.

He ne'er returned to Croydon.

By the 1830s, Croydon had moved onto steam power, plugging into London's spidering railway network, and again taking afloat vantage of its unsocial geographical position.

Trains ran with up to 44 coaches stuffed with immoderate 4,000 passengers travelling to the southbound coast. Soon, it was besides a highly desirable spot to live. In 1862 London Society Magazine wrote that "Handsome villas outpouring up connected each broadside tenanted by City men whose portly persons assemblage the trains." Croydon's estimation arsenic a commuter municipality was born, arsenic was the 'Leafy Surrey' dream.

Simultaneously, the Victorian Croydon exploded into a buying shangri-la, acknowledgment to a flurry of stores peddling Eastern antiques, Indian cigars, and a portion merchant, Mr DH Weston, selling a refreshing German brew that was caller to these shores, known arsenic 'lager'.

Croydon is often overlooked, but the municipality has a batch of absorbing past and a batch to connection (Image: Express)

One shop, called Remsbury's, boasted that it stocked everything from vino glasses to horses. John Sainsbury opened the archetypal suburban subdivision of his grocer's store successful Croydon, portion successful 1912 Frank Woolworth personally opened a store connected the North End, praising Croydon arsenic a "fine, progressive and bustling" place.

Chief among Croydon's shops were the Kennards, Grants and Allders section stores. The archetypal of these expansive dames to unfastened (in 1853), Kennards was touted arsenic the 'store that entertained to sell', priding itself connected its pop-up rooftop theatres and play courses, which foreshadowed a inclination that swept London astir a period later.

Hollywood stars similar Dirk Bogarde and Norman Wisdom made appearances. Live cheetahs were plonked connected the tables of the fancy restaurant, portion 1 escapade saw Joss the baboon fly his cage successful Kennards' Monkey Village, spell connected a rampage done the artifact section past clamber up onto the extortion where, "to the delight of everyone watching him successful North End, helium danced".

Such was the tailoring section astatine Grants, meanwhile, claims the publication London's Lost Department Stores, that French aristocrats would alert into Croydon Airport simply to beryllium measured for a bespoke suit.

And with the commercialized came the cultural.

A slew of opulent theatres sprung up, making cardinal Croydon thing akin to London's West End oregon different Vienna's Operngasse. The Hippodrome was designed by Frank Matcham, the antheral down London Palladium, portion the legendary Sarah Berndhart performed astatine Croydon's Grand Theatre and Opera House 2 years connected the trot.

When built successful 1928, the Davis Theatre doubled up arsenic 1 of the biggest cinemas successful the country, and successful 1956 was the root of a queue snaking done the town, arsenic radical scrambled to get tickets for the Bolshoi Ballet.

The satellite had already travel to Croydon, but its airdrome made doubly sure. From the seeds of a rudimentary airfield hastily cobbled unneurotic to support the municipality from marauding German airships, flourished the world's archetypal purpose-built planetary airport.

While world-famous grounds breakers similar Amy Johnson knew Croydon arsenic a 2nd home, mean people (those with sizable slope balances anyway) utilized Croydon arsenic a gateway to Empire. After Imperial Airways took helping successful 1924, you could alert from Croydon to Delhi, Cape Town, Brisbane oregon Hong Kong.

A purpose-built airdrome complex, opened successful 1928, became a blueprint for different airports to come; the aerial postulation power tower, viewing platforms, neighbouring airdrome hotel, shops selling newspapers and sweets are each things acquainted to the aerial passengers of 2024.

The Second World War precipitated the extremity of Croydon Airport, portion severely pockmarking Croydon itself, which was deed by much doodlebugs than anyplace other during the Blitz.

But adjacent earlier the warfare was over, Croydon was scheming up a betterment plan, and by the mid 1950s, Sir James Marshall – a Croydon bigwig with his fingers successful each pastry going – pushed the Croydon Corporation Act done Parliament, fundamentally making the municipality a instrumentality unto itself.

While caller towns similar Stevenage were a genuine stab astatine postwar utopias, Croydon roseate from the ashes arsenic a swaggering high-rise roar town, factual monoliths springing up left, close and centre. Between 1963 and 1973, 20 per cent of the offices and 30 per cent of the jobs that near Central London coiled up successful Croydon. Lloyd’s, RAC, Tate and Lyle, Prudential, American International, Rank Xerox – they were each reeled in.

The prize drawback was Swiss confectionery giant, Nestlé, headquartered successful the 23-storey St George's House. Croydon, wrote Roy Hodson successful the Financial Times successful 1971, was "being copied... by countless communities wishing to modernise themselves up and down the country." A caller connection was coined: Croydonisation.

As freshly constructed dual carriageways, underpasses and flyovers funnelled hordes of caller employees successful and retired the municipality during the 1960s, Croydon angled to person much multi-storey car parks than Birmingham. It besides produced its ain cornucopia of motors; instantly-recognisable models similar Trojan bubble cars and Lambretta scooters rolled disconnected the accumulation lines, successful an echo of Croydon's erstwhile carriage industry.

"At 1 constituent Lambretta concessionaires were selling much Lambrettas successful this state than the Italians were selling successful Italy," says David Hambleton from the Trojan Museum Trust.

The powerfulness drills and jackhammers yet abated successful the 1970s, astatine which constituent Croydon looked successful the reflector and wondered what it'd done to itself.

The London Evening News’s Rex Grizell lamented Croydon arsenic "a spot of hard, level surfaces, corners, reflections and acold winds”.

Had the Croydon facelift gone excessively far?

This wasn't a interest for the caller question of artists and musicians present opening to colonise the town. Inspired successful portion by Croydon's hardboiled, unloving sensibility – what the essayist Les Back called "the cleanable canvas for Situationist slogans, extremist gestures and the stylistic refusals of punk" – an electrifying euphony country took off.

Ground zero was the Greyhound, a clammy fleapit adjacent to the Croydon Underpass, wherever the Ramones, the Buzzcocks, the Jam and Siouxsie and the Banshees thrashed retired their distorted ballads of discontent. The Fall were discovered present by 1 of John Peel's scouts.

“One week a enactment set specified arsenic Generation X would beryllium playing for £5,” Peter Fox, who DJed astatine the Greyhound backmost successful the day, recalls. “Then they would look connected Top of the Pops and the pursuing week they would beryllium headlining connected £500.”

The Sex Pistols were 1 of the fewer large punk bands of the clip not to play successful Croydon, but adjacent they person a necktie to the place. Their svengali, Malcolm McLaren, studied astatine Croydon College of Art (he loved sketching its skyscrapers, which for him, conjured up New York City), and aboriginal gave his classmate, and Croydonian, Jamie Reid the gig of a lifetime, designing the screen of Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols.

Even arsenic the measurement was turned down connected Croydon's punk music, the Croydonian dub creator Mad Professor was plugging successful his decks – his power aboriginal feeding into the commencement of dubstep, different merchandise of Croydon that went global.

The caller past hasn't been benignant to Croydon: it has suffered from botched lodging projects, assembly bankruptcy, nixed Westfield buying centres, a spate of mysterious feline murders, a tragic tram clang and assorted headlines successful which it comes crossed arsenic determination you wouldn't privation to interaction with a ten-foot pole.

And yet Croydon ne'er stopped being a taste cauldron; the mounting for 1 of the astir celebrated Britcoms of each time, Peep Show (2003-2015). Birthplace of supermodel Kate Moss and location to globally-adored artists similar Stomzy and RAYE. The envy of the remainder of London, with its European-style tram network.

Even the post-war architecture that has agelong been derided is present being appreciated. One Croydon (originally the NLA Tower, and owed to its antithetic shape, nicknamed the '50p Building') present adorns everything from T-shirts to the interactive occurrence of Netflix's Black Mirror series, Bandersnatch.

Recently, this erstwhile awesome of Croydonisation has been touted for listing by the Twentieth Century Society, portion determination are besides plans afoot to crook it into apartments.

If that happens, determination volition beryllium nary shortage of radical clamouring to unrecorded there. It's not each time you get the accidental to determination into a taste icon, aft all.

• Croydonopolis: A Journey To The Greatest City That Never Was, By Will Noble (Safe Haven, £18.99) is retired now. Visit expressbookshop.com oregon telephone Express Bookshop connected 020 3176 3832. Free UK P&P connected orders implicit £25