The Beasts of Sydenham

The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a phenomenal success.  In the five and a half months that it was open to the public, an estimated six million visitors passed through the doors of the Crystal Palace as the exhibition building became known – and at a time when the population of England and Wales was not quite 18 million.  But what to do with the building once the doors had closed? Suggestions ranged from simply leaving it in situ to the more outlandish scheme of rebuilding it as a tower.

Sir Joseph Paxton, the building’s architect, set up the Crystal Palace Company with the aim of moving the building from Hyde Park in central London to Penge Hill in Sydenham. The newly constructed Crystal Palace boasted 50 per cent more floor space than its predecessor and it was filled with courts representing different cultures and time periods. It was conceived as an ’illustrated encyclopaedia’ through which visitors could progress from one subject to the next. This notion of physical space as a means of presenting information was also applied to the large shield-shaped park laid out below the palace. It was here that the artist and sculptor Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins decided to attempt something new. Inspired by Richard Owen’s monographs on the extinct giant reptiles of the Mesozoic era, he felt compelled to create a series of large sculptures of extinct creatures for public display.

Hawkins drew concepts for each of the animals, based on the published work of Owen and others. Satisfied with the designs, he created scaled-down clay models, which were refined to meet Owen’s standards, based on the available scientific knowledge of the time. Hawkins then made life-size clay models, from which metal casts were produced. The larger models, such as the Iguanodon, were built in situ (near the lowest lake in the park),,by pouring concrete into moulds surrounding foundations of steel and brick. Even before they were unveiled, the reconstructions were being discussed and speculated over. The Illustrated Crystal Palace Gazette reported ‘The grounds adjoining to the new road from the Rock Hills Sydenham to Penge… is the site being prepared, in hollow basin, mounds, and upheaved tumulae, for the representatives of the antediluvian world.’

This term ‘antediluvian’ refers to the biblical Great flood. One popular belief was that the extinct animals had been killed in the flood and it was even suggested that the dinosaurs’ demise was due to their being too large to fit in Noah’s ark. This, of course, wasn’t the accepted scientific theory, but it was the one presented in newspapers at the time. Another view was that these creatures were ‘the inhabitants of this earth before the abode of our first parent Adam’.

Speculation about the models came to a head on New Year’s Eve 1853, when Hawkins held a banquet at Crystal Palace Park. The table and chairs were set inside the mould used to make the standing Iguanodon, (and not inside the model itself as the famous Punch cartoon suggests). The guests included the leading scientists of the day, with Richard Owen, in his only recorded visit to the park, seated at the head of the table.

Although unfinished when the Sydenham Crystal Palace was opened by Queen Victoria in June 1854, the Geological Illustrations, to give them their official name, were a sensation and a major part of the unique experience of the park. The models were accompanied by an array of merchandise, including guidebooks written by Owen, small-scale models and engraved prints and posters. They also featured in satirical cartoons, many suggesting that the ‘antediluvian monsters’ were more terrifying than illuminating.  Those involved with the project believed that the experiment in visualising extinct animals would significantly further the causes of geology and palaeontology, among the other natural sciences. Others agreed, with The Crystal Palace Herald reporting that the models were: ‘A great visual idea, of much importance to scientific instruction, this portion of the Great Exhibition will be second to none’. Hawkins thought that children in particular responded to tangible things rather than to abstract words. He summed up the driving idea behind the Crystal Palace as being ‘one vast and combined experiment of visual education’.

On opening, the set of completed models on display comprised of Anoplotherium, Dicynodon, Hylaeosaurus, several species of Ichthyosaurus, Iguanodon, Labyrinthodon, Megaloceros, Megalosaurus, Megatherium, Mosasaurus, Palaeotherium, Plesiosaurus, Pterodactyl and Teleosaurus. These models are the most famous result of Hawkin’s labours but the park also featured three islands, each representing a different geological formation and era of time andan ‘exposed cliff face’ showing the litho-stratigraphic order of the rock formations in which the fossilised remains were found.Both Hawkins and Owen planned to introduce more extinct animals at Sydenham: there were plans for a mastodon, mammoths and a moa. Owen even suggested including a dodo.

The relocation of the Crystal Palace failed to live up to expectations.  After the great success of the Great Exhibition, it was thought that any amount of money involved would be recouped, but Joseph Paxton wished to push the grandeur of the Sydenham palace to the extreme, seemingly regardless of the cost. From the start, the Crystal Palace Company was operating beyond its means. Relocating to Sydenham left them with a debt of £1,300,000 (equivalent to £96.5 million today) that was never recovered. The building itself was not adequately insured and when the north transept burnt down in 1866, it was never rebuilt. The Geological Illustrations consumed time and raw materials and having cost £13,729 by the middle of 1855, the company decided that the range of animals already on display was sufficient.  Despite protests and their evident popularity, the project came to a stop.  Contemporary maps of the park show the site of a mastodon that never materialised. The steel frame for a mammoth was 18 foot high when work stopped. The model would have required 50 tonnes of clay.

The financial woes of the Crystal Palace Company also explain why the models were not protected from the rigors of time, either from physical damage or the more telling advances in scientific knowledge. The discovery of Hadrosaurus in 1858 showed that this dinosaur walked upright on its hind legs. A similar conclusion was drawn for Iguanodon and Megalosaurus, confirmed in 1878 by the  discovery of near-complete Iguanodon skeletons in Bernissart, Belgium. This discovery also revealed that the dinosaur’s’ ‘horn’ was actually a thumb claw, betraying the most famous ‘mistake’ in Hawkins’s reconstructions. Subsequent discoveries would further erode the reputation of the models. When American geologist Othniel Marsh visited in 1895, he said ‘There is nothing like unto them in the heavens, or on earth, or in the waters under the earth.’ They were further discredited by Henry Woodward, Keeper of Geology at the Museum in the book Extinct Monsters, when he stated that Hawkins was ‘occupied for years in unauthorised restorations’. Woodward noted that the toad-like Labyrinthodon and Dicynodon should have been more akin to salamanders, while ’Iguanodon did not usually stand on all-fours but more frequently sat up like some huge kangaroo…’ This particular notion has since been superseded.

On the night of 30 November 1936, a fire tore through the palace, burning so brightly it was seen in eight counties. 100,000 people watched the Crystal Palace’s destruction in 1936.  Amongst them was Winston Churchill, who called it ‘the end of an era’.  By morning all that remained of Joseph Paxton’s masterpiece was red hot steel and pools of molten glass. Although the Crystal Palace Company attempted to maintain the park as a going-concern, the Trustees of the company were disbanded in 1951 and the park was given to London County Council.  With the building lost and the park very much altered, the models are the most visible evidence of the ‘experiment in visual education’ that lay at the heart of the Crystal Palace scheme. 

Today, the models are largely known for their inaccuracy. It is undeniable that they quickly became outmoded, but it is their outmodedness that now makes them so valuable.  By studying past attempts to communicate science we get our best record of contemporary understanding, and in setting their ideas about these animals literally in stone, Hawkins and Owen created a unique record of the state of scientific understanding at the time. Though our understanding has since advanced it does not make their attempt less valid. Rather, it shows that our understanding of the natural world is never definitive, but subject to change.  But equally any restoration or interpretation can be superseded.  A gallery or model can be outmoded after a few years or even sooner. There will always a requirement to review, more to discover and more to communicate to others.