British Empire Exhibition

A Moment in London’s History – The British Empire Exhibition…

by exploringlondon
Postcard showing the Empire Stadium. PICTURE: Via Wikipedia/Public Domain

It’s 100 years ago this year that the British Empire Exhibition was held in Wembley Park.

Located on a more than 200 acre site, the exhibition was designed to showcase the diversity and reach of the empire. It ran for two six-month long summer seasons – first opening on 23rd April, 1924, and running until 1st November that year and then reopening on 9th May, 1925, and running until 1st October.

PICTURE: Via Wikipedia/Public Domain

The opening ceremony, which took place on St George’s Day, was attended by King George V and Queen Mary, and the event, in a first for a monarch, was broadcast on BBC radio.

The exhibition, which cost £12 million and attracted some 27 million visitors, featured what was said to be the largest sports arena in the world – Empire Stadium (later known as Wembley Stadium) – as well as four main pavilions dedicated to industry, engineering, the arts and the government, and a series of pavilions for 56 of the empire’s 58 territories as well as some commercial pavilions.

The latter included an Indian pavilion modelled on  Jama Masjid in Delhi and the Taj Mahal in Agra, a West African pavilion designed to look like an Arab fort, a Burmese pavilion designed to look like a temple and a Maltese pavilion designed as a fortress with the entrance resembling the famed Mdina Gate.

The Empire Stadium hosted events including military tattoos and Wild West rodeos while other attractions included a lake, a 47 acre fairground, a garden, restaurants and a working replica coal mine.

Star attractions included a replica of King Tutankhamen’s tomb (housed in the fairground), a working model of Niagara Falls and a full-sized sculpture of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII) made of butter (both in the Canadian pavilion), a 16 foot diameter ball of wool (Australian pavilion) and dodgem cars (also in the funfair). Queen Mary’s Dollhouse – now housed at Windsor – was designed by Sir Edwin Lutyens and served as a miniature showcase of the finest goods of the period.

Reinforced concrete was the main building material used in its construction, earning it the title of the first “concrete city”. The streets of the exhibition, meanwhile, were named by Rudyard Kipling.

The Malta Pavilion entrance. PICTURE: Wikipedia/Public Domain

Wembley Park Tube station, which had first opened in 1893, was rebuilt for the event and a new station – Exhibition Station (Wembley) added (it was officially closed in 1969).

While many of the buildings were dismantled after the exhibition, some survived for decades afterwards including, of course, the Empire Stadium which became Wembley Stadium and was the home of English football until replaced in 2003.

8 structures from the London that never was – 2. Watkin’s Tower…

by exploringlondon

Designed as London’s response to the Eiffel Tower, Watkin’s Tower was the brainchild of railway entrepreneur and MP Sir Edward Watkin.

Watkin's-TowerFollowing the opening of the Eiffel Tower in 1889, Watkin wanted to go one better in London and build a tower than surpassed its 1,063 feet (324 metres) height.

He apparently first approached Gustave Eiffel himself to design the tower which was to be located as the centrepiece for a pleasure park development at Wembley Park in London’s north (which, incidentally, would be reached by one of Sir Edward’s railway lines – he opened Wembley Park station to service it). But Eiffel declined the offer and Watkin subsequently launched an architectural design competition.

Among the 68 designs received from as far afield as the US and Australia were a cone-shaped tower with a railway spiralling up its exterior, a Gothic-style tower (also with a railway), a tower topped with a 1/12 scale replica of the Great Pyramid, one modelled on the spire of Bow Church in Cheapside and one topped by a giant globe (you can see the catalogue of all entries here).

The winning entry was submitted by Stewart, MacLaren and Dunn who proposed a steel eight legged tower soaring 1,200 feet (366 metres) into the sky. To be lit with electric lighting at night, it came with two observation decks with restaurants, theatres and exhibition space as well as winter gardens, Turkish baths, shops, promenades and a 90 room hotel as well as an astronomical observatory. The top of the tower would be reached by a series of elevators.

The first stage of the project – formally known as London Tower or the Wembley Park Tower – had still not been completed when Wembley Park opened in May, 1894 – standing 154 feet (47 metres tall), it was finally finished in September the following year.

It was to never rise higher. The project become mired in problems – Watkin retired through ill health (and died in 1901), the structure started to subside and the construction company went into liquidation. Dubbed Watkin’s Folly and the London Stump, what there was of the tower was eventually demolished between 1904-1907.

While the dream of the tower never came to be, the site nonetheless became a popular vehicle for recreation and the site was later used for the 1924 British Empire Exhibition with Wembley Stadium built over the spot where the tower had once stood.

Where’s London’s oldest…Tube station?

by exploringlondon

In this, the year of the 150th anniversary of the creation of what we now know as the London Underground, it’s only fitting that we take a look at the city’s oldest Tube station – Baker Street.

Opened on 10th January, 1863, by the Metropolitan Railway, the Grade II* listed property was designed by John Fowler, the company’s engineer in chief. While some stations on the initial railway – which stretched from Paddington to Farringdon – had platforms located in open cuttings, Baker Street was one of only three initial stations (the other two were at what was then named Gower Street (now Euston Square) and Great Portland Street) which was genuinely located underground, with subterranean platforms covered by brick barrel-vaults and lit by gaslights as well as natural light brought from the surface by “lunettes”.

The station was subsequently extended and further developed and, thanks to the company’s desire to make Baker Street its headquarters and “flagship” station, it underwent a major overhaul in 1911-13 with Charles Walter Clark, another Metropolitan Railway employee, designing a new grand booking hall and concourse featuring a lost property office, “ladies’ room” and a WH Smith bookstall.

Features inside include a cast-iron screen – complete with clock –  installed at the entrance to the lower concourse in 1925 to help control passenger flow during the British Empire Exhibition at Wembley, a marble memorial to Metropolitan Railway employees who died in World War I, and, in a nod to the proximity of his fictitious Baker Street residence, large and small Sherlock Holmes silhouettes on tiles located at various places inside (there’s a statue of him outside the station).

For more on the 150th anniversary, see www.tfl.gov.uk/tube150.