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THE GREAT EXHIBITION OF 1851
It is Queen Victoria’s
husband Albert who is normally credited with being the
driving force behind the Great Exhibition of 1851, but
it appears that just as much praise for organising this
remarkable event should also be bestowed upon one Henry
Cole.
At the time Henry’s day job
was as an assistant record keeper at the Public Records
Office, but he had lots of other interests to including
writing, editing and publishing journals. Henry’s major
passions appear to have been industry and the arts, and
he combined both of these as editor of the Journal of
Design. The journal encouraged artists to apply
their designs to everyday articles which could then be
mass-produced and sold to the great unwashed.
In 1846, in his role as a
council member of the Society of Arts, Henry was
introduced to Prince Albert. It appears that Henry and
the prince got on well as not long afterwards the
society received a Royal Charter and changed its name to
the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts,
Manufacturers and Commerce.
With its raison
d’être now clearly defined the society arranged several
relatively small exhibitions to promote their cause. No
doubt impressed by the much larger scale of the French
‘Industrial Exposition’ of 1844, Henry sought Prince
Albert’s support to stage a similar event in England.
Initially there was
little interest in the concept of an exhibition by the
government of the day; undeterred by this Henry and
Albert continued to develop their idea. They wanted it
to be for All Nations, the greatest collection of art in
industry, 'for
the purpose of exhibition of competition
and encouragement',
and most significantly it
was to be self-financing.
Under increasing
public pressure the government reluctantly set
up a Royal Commission
to investigate the idea. Pessimism appears to have been
quickly replaced by enthusiasm when somebody explained
to the ‘powers that be’ the concept of a self-financing
event. That now understood, national pride dictated that
the exhibition must bigger and better than anything
those Frenchies could organise.
A competition was
organised to design a building that would not only be
large enough, but be of sufficient grandeur to house the
event. The firm of Fox and Henderson eventually won the
contract, submitting plans based upon a design by Joseph
Paxton. Paxton’s design had been adapted from a glass
and iron conservatory he had originally produced for the
Duke of Devonshire’s Chatsworth House.
The issue of
a suitable venue
was settled when the Duke of Wellington backed
the idea of
Hyde Park in
central London. The design of the impressive glass and
iron conservatory, or Crystal Palace as it would more
popularly become known, was amended to accommodate the
parks rather large elm trees before building finally
began.
It took around 5,000 navvies
to erect the 1,850 feet (564 m) long,
108 feet (33 m) high structure. But the work was
completed on time and
the Great Exhibition was
opened by
Queen Victoria on 1st May 1851.
The exhibits
included almost every marvel of the Victorian age,
including pottery, porcelain, ironwork, furniture,
perfumes, pianos, firearms, fabrics, steam hammers,
hydraulic presses and even the odd house or two.
Although the original
aim of the world fair had been as a celebration of art
in industry for the benefit of All Nations, in practice
it appears to have been turned into more of a showcase
for British manufacturing: more than half the 100,000
exhibits on display were from Britain or the British
Empire.
The opening of the
Great Expedition in 1851 just happened to coincide with
the building of another great innovation of the
Industrial Revolution.
Visiting London had
only just become feasible
for the masses thanks
to the new
railway lines that had spread across the country.
Church and works outings from across the country were
organised to see the “Works of Industry of All Nations”
all housed in Paxton’s sparkling Crystal Palace.
The Great Exhibition of 1851
ran from May to October and during this time six million
people passed through those crystal doors. The event
proved to be the most successful ever staged and became
one of the defining points of the nineteenth century.
Not only was the event
self-financing, it even turned in a small profit. Enough
in fact for Henry Cole to realise his dream of a complex
of museums on an estate in South Kensington which now
houses the Science, Natural History and Victoria and
Albert Museums, as well as the Imperial College of
Science, the Royal Colleges of Art, Music and Organists
and not forgetting the Albert Hall!
And what became of the
Crystal Palace itself? Paxton's clever design
not only allowed the building
to be quickly erected
but disassembled too. And so shortly after the
exhibition, the whole
structure was removed from Hyde Park site and
re-erected at
Sydenham, then a sleepy hamlet in the Kent countryside,
now a multi-ethnic part of South East London.
The future for
Paxton’s Palace atop Sydenham Hill was however not a
happy one. After being put to a variety of uses in the
years that followed, the building was finally destroyed
by fire on the 30th November 1936. The flames are said
to have lit up the night sky and were visible for miles.
Sadly,
the building was not adequately insured
to cover the cost of rebuilding it. Very little evidence remains of this wonder of the Victorian Age
except the
foundations and some stonework. The memory of
the glorious past survives today however, as that sleepy
Kent hamlet eventually became part of
Greater London and the surrounding area came to be known
as Crystal Palace.
© HUK
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