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As part of the educational purpose of the park, life-size models of dinosaurs and other extinct land and sea animals were constructed, together with geological features made from rocks of different ages to illustrate the early history of the earth and the animals alive at the time. This was the first time that full scale replicas of extinct animals had been displayed anywhere in the world. They were known as ‘prehistoric monsters’. Geology and palaeontology were new sciences which developed in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and there was great interest in collecting fossils. An artificial lake was constructed at the lower end of the park with a group of four ‘Geological Islands’ in it, linked together and accessible from the shore so that visitors were able to walk among the monsters. The rocks used in their construction represented five geological eras and the life-sized models of the animals were placed on examples of the rock layers in which their fossilised bones had been found. It forms a chronological sequence taking the visitor through millions of years in the early history of the world, with each island representing a different era. The Primary (Palaeozoic) from 550 million years ago: this island is not accessible and is empty with the animals in the water round it to show that all life at that time was in the sea. The Secondary (the Mesozoic), 200 million years ago, was the age of the dinosaurs. The Tertiary (Cenozoic) from 65 million years ago is illustrated by two islands. Nearby, the geological feature, Landscape through Time, was constructed by Paxton in conjunction with Professor David Anstead (?Ansted) using rocks of different ages to create small cliffs, faults and caves. The islands, lake and rock formations cover an area of seven acres, and are linked by paths and bridges. A miniature cliff, one of the geological features, provides a view down onto the islands. Access to the islands was stopped in the 1970s?? when they were fenced off. Now the creatures are viewed across the water, between the trees which have grown up around them and obscured most of the rock formations, but originally their setting was kept clear of foliage to give a better view. Originally the waters of the lake, which were part of the elaborate water schemes in the park, rose and fell giving the appearance of a tidal sea around the partially submerged marine reptiles. Work began on the models in 1852. They were built by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins under the guidance of Professor Richard Owen, a leading palaeontologist and comparative anatomist who in 1841 had proposed the name ‘dinosaur’, meaning ‘terrible lizard’, to describe this new class of large land reptiles. Hawkins was an artist and sculptor who specialising in animal and other natural history subjects. He was commissioned to produce the models by the Crystal Palace Company in September 1852, and given the title Director of the Fossil Department of the Crystal Palace. Both he and Owen had previously been involved in the Great Exhibition. Originally Hawkins was going to produce sculptures of large mammals but decided to include dinosaurs after reading Owen’s works. His designs were based on fossils in the British Museum and other collections using the process of comparative anatomy. He made accurate sketches of the bones of the most complete fossilised animals he could find, and compared these with the bone structures of the nearest living creatures, to produce an outline of the extinct animal with its skin and fleshy parts. In the case of the frog-like labyrinthidons there were hardly any remains to go on so their appearance is necessarily speculative. He made small clay models from these, ‘sketch-models’ as he called them, to either a 6th or 12th of the full size, drawing on his knowledge of living animals to put the extinct ones into plausible attitudes. The models were submitted to Owen for his criticism and when they were as satisfied as they could be with their accuracy, they were made up to life-size clay models, using as the basis for the finished size the largest available fossil bones for each animal. In his lecture to the Society of Arts on 27 May 1854 Hawkins says that for each one, ‘I with my own hand in all instances secured the anatomical details and the characterisitics of its nature’.(1) Moulds were then made and the casts taken. All the work on these ‘reconstructions’ as they were referred to, was therefore original and such a scheme had never been undertaken anywhere before. The reconstructions represented the state of knowledge of their time. Although views on the alignment of dinosaur skeletons are changing all the time, in many respects the models are still accurate. The iguanodon, however, is less accurate than some of the others as it has been placed on all fours, instead of on two legs, and the horn which Owen located on the nose like a rhinoceros horn, is now thought to have been a claw like a large thumb on the hand. Hawkins worked in a temporary wooden studio near the dug out lake. Queen Victoria and Prince Albert paid a visit to the workshop and saw the models being constructed. The final castings were made on site in the dry bed of the lake which was later flooded. Hawkins in his lecture refers to the scale and difficulty of the undertaking: ‘Some of these models contained 30 tons of clay, which had to be supported on four legs, as their natural history characteristics would not allow of my having recourse to any of the expedients for support allowed to sculptors in an ordinary case. I could have no trees, nor rocks, nor foliage to support these great bodies, which, to be natural, must be built fairly on their four legs. In the instance of the Iguanodon, it is not less than building a house upon four columns, as the quantities of material of which the standing Iguanodon is composed, consist of 4 iron columns 9 feet long by 7 inches diameter, 600 bricks, 650 5-inch half-round drain-tiles, 900 plain tiles, 38 casks of cement, 90 casks of broken stone, making a total of 640 bushels of artificial stone. These, with 100 feet of iron hooping and 20 feet of cube inch bar, constitute the bones, sinews, and muscles of this large model, the largest of which there is any record of a casting being made’.(1) The animal is hollow and the inner structure is of iron and brick, with a covering of artificial stone. To recreate the skin textures, hair, scales etc. Hawkins again used comparison with living creatures, rare fossils of skin, and bony plates and spines which exist as fossils. The artificial stone, of cement and broken stone, from which the casts were made contained the ground up remains of Gerard’s Hall undercroft. This mediaeval structure had gone to Sydenham to be reconstructed as an exhibit but for some reason was never used, and was given to Hawkins to be used in his artificial stone. On New Years Eve 1853, Hawkins held a famous dinner for Owen and another 20 guests inside the iguanodon mould. Owen was seated in the head and paid tribute to Hawkins in his speech. At the time of the official opening of the park by Queen Victoria on 10 June 1854, the display was not completely finished. There had already been great interest in the monsters with many visitors in addition to the Royal couple wishing to view the work in progress. James Tennant, who had a business selling fossils and equipment for collecting them, worked with Waterhouse Hawkins to produce items for sale, including a set of six posters depicting extinct animals in landscapes, and a series of small models of the Crystal Palace monsters. Georges Cuvier, in Paris, through his work on geological strata had put forward the theory that animals that are now extinct could have existed before man. This went against the Biblical view that all creatures including man had been created at the same time. The models were made five years before Charles Darwin’s theories on evolution were published in 1859 in The Origin of Species and caused a sensation. Restoration of the park is underway. Dr Peter Doyle is a palaeontologist with the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences of the University of Greenwich, and is palaeontological advisor to Bromley Council. He has been researching the site since 1992 and discovered the original concept of the ‘geological time trail’. Supported by Heritage Lottery funding.The Crystal Palace was originally built in Hyde Park to house the Great Exhibition of 1851. Its full title was The Great Exhibition of the Works and Industry of All Nations, and it brought together manufactured goods and cultural items from all over the world. The Committee planning the exhibition was headed by Prince Albert who was very much involved with the whole enterprise, but they were unable to settle on a satisfactory design for the exhibition building until Joseph Paxton presented them with a revolutionary design, all in glass and cast iron. Paxton was Head Gardener at Chatsworth House and his design was inspired by the rib structure of the giant waterlilies housed there in greenhouses which he had built. Ribs of white-painted cast iron supported the vast windows and it soon came to be known as the Crystal Palace, a name conferred on it in a newspaper article. The exhibition was a tremendous success with the public and drew in over six million visitors during the five and a half months it was open, from 1 May to 11 October 1851. There had always been a vociferous opposition to the whole idea, and this had ensured that any structure put up in Hyde Park had to be removed at the close of the exhibition. Paxton and others wanted the revolutionary building to survive, and the Crystal Palace Company was formed to buy it and transport it elsewhere. A site was found in south London, Penge Place, Sydenham, at the top of a hill sloping down towards Penge and commanding an extensive view over Kent. The structure was remodelled when it was rebuilt on this site and made considerably larger than the original had been. It was opened by Queen Victoria on 10 June 1854. In both the Palace and the park which was created round it, the emphasis was on education and spectacle, and planned on a huge scale. Inside the building were permanent collections and space for changing exhibitions. There was a series of Fine Art courts filled with reproductions of sculptures and other works to illustrate different eras in the history of art. Digby Wyatt and Owen Jones were sent abroad to make or obtain plaster casts of statuary to fulfil this concept. Other courts showed plants, animals and artefacts from various countries and ages. The park, of 200 acres, was laid out with gardens, two huge terraces, many statues, and, notably, an extensive and elaborate series of water features.(2) The grounds are attributed to Edward Milner and Georger Eyles. They incorporated the still extant dinosaur islands, geological features and life-size prehistoric monster models. Before the park opened, objections were received from ‘thirteen eminent persons’ that the classical copies were to be displayed in their natural state, namely the ‘nude male statues’, in front of mixed crowds of men and women. They threatened that if concessions were not made, ‘strong feeling’ could be stirred up among the public on the matter which would damage the ‘magnificent undertaking’ of which they approved so much. They demanded the removal of the offending parts and the use of the ‘usual leaf’ to cover the area. Wyatt and Jones objected strongly but the Directors gave in and the statues were altered although they apparently had difficulty in finding an adequate supply of the plaster leaves needed. Not all critics were satisfied with the measures taken and correspondence dragged on until the Directors called a halt and declared to one objector that they had formed a Committee to examine all the works of art in the palace ‘with a view to the draping of all statues which could be justly considered offensive to delicacy’ and that they did not intend to do any more on the matter.(3) The move to Sydenham had been very costly and the enterprise always suffered from a lack of money even though it was popular. Land was sold off for development and by 1911 the Crystal Palace Company was bankrupt. To save the Palace from demolition, the Duke of Plymouth bought it for £230,000, and a fund, the King Edward National Memorial Fund, was started by the Lord Mayor of London. In 1913 the Palace was bought for the nation. After the First World War its popularity revived under the General Manager, Sir Henry Buckland, who gradually restored it. The gardens were tended and the statues, including that of Joseph Paxton, were put back. It again became a venue for many popular events such as concerts, motorcycle racing and other sporting events. The Palace was destroyed by a fire which broke out on the evening of 30 November 1936, and raged through the building providing a spectacle which was watched from all over London. The building was almost completely destroyed and the site was cleared in 1937. A photograph taken in 1942 when the standing water towers were demolished, shows that there were still statues in the grounds in that year. In 1951 responsibility for the area passed to the London County Council, later the Greater London Council. They were required to develop the site for the purposes of education and recreation and for the furtherance of commerce, art and industry. Some unsympathetic development took place, notably the very concrete National Sports Centre which is right in the centre of the park, sited where the great fountain basins had been in. The area has been subject to much vandalism over the years and in 1957 there was a huge sale of sculpture from the palace. Traces of original buildings and some of the landscaping features remain, as well as some which show the sporting, musical and other uses to which areas of the park were put over the years. The main reminders today of the splendours of the Crystal Palace’s original displays, are six sphinxes, some badly damaged statuary, the large sculpture of the head of Paxton, and the lake with the geological features and dinosaur models. Bromley Council is now taking the park in hand, with the aid of Heritage Lottery funding. Various projects are underway to conserve and restore the historical features of the park and improve the whole environment, although as the sporting facilities at its centre have now been listed, there is a restriction on what can be done.

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