Cronx brewery co-founder explains Palace connection
Ahead of the 10th annual Crystal Palace Beer Festival on May 14th, we caught up with Mark Russell, co-founder of The Cronx brewery, to talk all things beer and Palace. This interview was conducted in 2019, before two postponed events.
Mark Russell is surrounded by a tapestry of beer mats as he perches in a now-closed minimalist bar next to East Croydon station. He offers a beer (which, naturally, we decline on professional grounds) and settles down amongst the bumbling hubbub of conversation around him.
He’s just finished a meeting with his events team, who linger as he excuses himself, and dives straight into this interview without dropping a beat.
Mark is the co-founder of The Cronx, an independent brewery conceptualised and created by a pair of south London-born Palace fans a few years back. “We started in 2012,” he explains. “Me and a fellow Palace fan, Simon Dale, got together. We’d been individually having thoughts of creating a brewery and it grew from there.”
Sitting in The Cronx Bar on the edge of East Croydon’s Boxpark and looking back over eight years in business, Mark reflects on a very special and personal accomplishment: selling his beer in the stadium his grandfather and father frequented for over 80 years.
The third generation in a family of Palace fans, Mark had a founding hand in the club’s annual Beer Festival - which will celebrate its 10th event in May - and so already had connections with the team he began watching from the Family Enclosure in the early 1990s.
Today, The Cronx Brewery supplies beer across Selhurst Park, proudly boasting its own bars and the newly established Tap Room; which sells a range from The Cronx and a different, local guest beer at every matchday.
“Both my dad and my grandfather were Palace fans,” Mark says. “I was born in Mayday Hospital and taken to Palace as a matter of course. For nearly 20 years we went as three generations and sat at Selhurst.
“David Hopkins’ goal in the play-off final is always a vivid memory, equally like Steve Claridge’s shin was the year before! There are many positive memories; Wembley visits, the FA Cup semi-final against Watford, travelling to Brighton for the play-off semis, lots.
“[Working with the club] was mainly an idea to promote local beer. From the start Palace were very keen to get on board with a local brewery run by Palace guys.
“When I started the brewery and your beer’s being sold in the ground, my dad and grandfather at the time were saying: ‘We’ve got to go, we’ve got to drink the beer,’ because it was a big thing for us. The Tap Room at the ground has really invigorated that. A lot of people head there early to have a beer before the game.”
It’s a rewarding cycle: a south London Palace man supported by his fellow Eagles in the local community. For Mark, the backing of his club, selling his proudly brewed beer there and enjoying it with family and local friends supporting the same badge has a more personal meaning that it would for many.
“Unfortunately, my grandfather passed away,” he says, “but he went to Palace from the 1930s. My dad went from a young age, he lived around Selhurst Park.
“You get a sense of achievement when you see someone drink your beer at the bar and they really like it, but to have it served at the football team you support, the football team your family have supported for a long time, it made my grandfather and dad as proud as it made me.
“You can’t really put it into words.”
Buy your tickets for the 2022 Crystal Palace Beer Festival by clicking here! Please note, this event is open to over-18s only.
Images: Cronx brewery.