I'm a little puzzled by the location of No.4 - as suggested, it looks like Crystal Palace.
I spent a couple of hours in the Park yesterday, hoping to get an "as now" picture for comparison. At the point where the houses are closest to the track - Fisherman's Bend - the buildings are quite different.
Back at North Tower, there is one house in particular that has architectural features matching those in the pic. but not in quite the same config - principally three vertical sections of window between the stone mullions, rather than four, on the face of a angle-ended bay.
The building is rather further from the track than the picture suggests (even though it doesn't appear to be foreshortened by a long lens). It's possible that the building has been very sensitively (and very expensively) remodelled (now apartments) re-using, or even recreating, the stonework to a new configuration - the houses along the road would have been quite imposing in the day and still retain much of their original outward appearance, but this one is particularly smart.
What puzzles me though, is partly the apparent proximity to the track and - in particular - the track would have had to be a good 12-15 feet higher than it is now.
Was there ever a time when the track ran run much closer to the edge of the park - and consequently much higher up the slope? It's fairly steep ground covered in mature trees and shrubbery - and I understood the line of the outer track was constant through its life.
Seems way too much of a coincidence for it not to be CP - but somehow it doesn't'quite' look right. I'm fairly accustomed to dealing with camera and lens effect (spent many a year directing studio photography) but this has me a bit puzzled...
Edited by 2F-001, 26 May 2011 - 12:04.