Philip Henry Delamotte and the Crystal Palace

The Great Exhibition took place in Hyde Park May from May to October 1851 as a celebration of modern international industrial technology and design and a means to demonstrate Britain’s position at the forefront of the modern world.

The Crystal Palace

The building which housed the exhibition, designed by Joseph Paxton, was quickly nicknamed ‘The Crystal Palace’ as it took the form of a massive iron framed glass house about 563 metres long by 138 metres wide. The exhibition was a great success and at its close on 15 October that year the building was moved to a new park in Sydenham Hill, an affluent area of South London.

The re-erected Crystal Palace was not a copy of the building in Hyde Park being larger and taller but not as long. In anticipation of its popularity two new railway stations were constructed to serve the attraction, Crystal Palace lower level in 1854 and Crystal Palace high level in 1865. The latter was closed in the 1950s and mostly demolished in the early 1960s although the subway is sometimes open to visitors.

Philip Henry Delamotte

Philip Henry Delamotte (1821-89), a photographer and respected artist, was commissioned to photograph the move to Sydenham. Construction began in 1852 and was completed in two years with its official opening in June 1854 by Queen Victoria.

Delamotte exhibited photographs at the Society of Arts and the Society of Antiquaries. In 1855 He became professor of drawing at King’s College, London, but continued to photograph Crystal Palace. Delamotte’s portfolios of images of Crystal Palace were possible due to the invention of the wet collodian process and albumen printing process at about the same time in the early 1850s which enabled multiple, good quality images to be produced. As with the construction of the Crystal Palace at Hyde Park and the summer of the Great Exhibition, the Illustrated London News kept the public informed of the progress at Sydenham. Delamotte’s images were used to illustrate the publication before the portfolios had been published.

Delamotte’s photographs were published in several books and those in the exhibition were taken from 'Photographic Views of the Progress of the Crystal Palace Sydenham taken during the progress of the works, by desire of the directors 1855'. This is part of TLA’s library collection and comprises 160 images. The images are all available on the London Picture Archive.

The images begin with the delivery of materials from Hyde Park and the beginning of work and continue with the recording of the piecing together of the structure. The interior is captured from the Roman courts to fighting leopards and workmen installing items including the completion of mosaics in The Byzantine Court.

Delamotte’s recording of the workers and artisans working on the project and taking dinner is particularly compelling and he also records the ‘Crystal Palace dinosaurs’. These were the first ever life-sized models of extinct animals and some of these can still be seen in the park today.

Crystal Palace remained a south London landmark until 30 November 1936 when disaster struck and it caught fire. Within hours it was reduced to rubble with only the two water towers left standing. In 1911 the Crystal Palace Company suffered financial collapse and the complex was ‘saved for the nation’ in 1913. The building had also suffered a serious fire in the north transept in 1866 when many exhibits were lost. However, Delamotte’s record survives to show the remarkable and pioneering structure that was the Crystal Palace.