Description
6-An exhibition of all nations: Great Exhibition information board, Hyde Park
We have now arrived at the home of the Great Exhibition. Between May and October of 1851 the wonders of industry were displayed on a 26-acre plot on this very site. The flat grassy area now used for sports pitches was where the exhibition building stood. The building was designed by Sir Joseph Paxton, a horticulturist who built glass houses. Made from a cast-iron frame and large pieces of glass, it was essentially a giant greenhouse. Punch magazine mockingly dubbed it ‘the Crystal Palace’. This name stuck: when the Great Exhibition closed, the building was dismantled and rebuilt on Sydenham Hill in Southeast London. That area has been known as Crystal Palace ever since. ‘The Crystal Palace’ was over 560 metres long and 125 metres wide. We can get a feel for the size of it by looking across this flat area of grass. Also look at the diagram on the information board. It must have been an awe-inspiring sight! The writer Charlotte Bronte visited and recorded it as “vast, strange, new and impossible to describe”. If the outside was spectacular, the inside was just as incredible. There were almost 14,000 exhibitors and over 100,000 exhibits from 50 different nations and 39 colonies or protectorates. It was a celebration of science, technology, invention and creativity. Exhibits ranged from steam engines to glittering diamonds, from a newly-invented voting machine to a barometer that used leeches! Charlotte Bronte again: “Its grandeur does not consist in one thing, but in the unique assemblage of all things. Whatever human industry has created you find there [...] It seems as if only magic could have gathered this mass of wealth from all the ends of the earth – as if none but supernatural hands could have arranged it thus, with such a blaze and contrast of colours and marvellous power of effect.” Over its six-month duration the exhibition had an incredible six million visitors. Entrance cost five shillings for the first three weeks and one shilling thereafter. The organising committee made a substantial profit. This surplus was used to buy 86 acres of land to the south of Hyde Park. Centred on the appropriately named Exhibition Road, this land was developed for educational and cultural institutions. The original ‘Crystal Palace’ has not survived. In November 1936 it caught fire during the night. The flames could be seen for many miles across London and the building was destroyed. Visitors to the site can still see the foundations and steps. There’s also an excellent little museum that is well worth a visit.
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