PREHISTORIC PLEASURES

The other week - before the big break - the weather was so unseasonably nice that we took a small break and made the trip to one of my Favourite Places --- Crystal Palace Park.

Of course, there isn't actually a crystal palace there any more and hasn't been for the past 62 years but the name - like a dream - lingers on...

The famous cast-iron and glass building was designed by Joseph Paxton to house the 1851 Great Exhibition. This Temple to the Gods of the Industrial Revolution was 1,850 feet long (Joe definitely missed a trick there: one more foot and it would have been an appropriate 1,851 feet), had an interior height of 108 feet and covered 990,000 square feet of exhibition space displaying the best examples of arts, crafts and technology from ever corner of Victoria Regina's boundless Empire.

In 1854, the Crystal Palace was relocated to Sydenham Hill (where it stood until it was destroyed by fire in 1936) and the grounds surrounding the great building were opened as a public park with ornamental gardens and a series of man-made lakes in and around which dinosaurs were encouraged to frolic!

Not real dinosaurs, since they were by then somewhat extinct, but accurate recreations (or so it was thought at the time) of prehistoric reptiles and mammals sculpted by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins with guidance from the eminent palaeontologist, Sir Richard Owen.

Hawkins set up a studio in the Crystal Palace grounds in which to create his giant sculptures...

To begin with the plan was for a series of early mammals such as giant sloths, tapir-type animals and the magnificent Irish Elk...

Then project was extended to cover examples of the great reptiles.

Fifteen species were exhibited (others were planned but never made) and the resulting Dinosaur Court, as it was known, were the first dinosaur sculptures in the world.

Prior to the opening of the exhibit, Hawkins used one of his two iguanodon sculptures as the venue for a private dinner party on New Year’s Eve 1853, to which prominent naturalists of the day were invited (right).

The iguanodon sculpture was located beneath a striped marque with part of its back removed (the operation scar is still visible to this day!) in order to create a space within which a dinner table could be set up complete with all the requisite china, silver and candles demanded by Victorian good taste.

When it was first opened, what a stir the Dinosaur Court must have caused for Victorians whose Christian beliefs were being assailed by the new religion of Evolution! One can imagine them strolling with their top hats and parasols and gazing in total awe - probably disbelief - at these inconceivable beings from the mists of time.

As a child in the '50s, I found the place totally entrancing, even though there weren't any Stegosauruses or Tyrannosaurus Rexes - on account of the fact that they hadn't yet been discovered when Messrs Hawkins and Owen created their monstrous theme park.

Every school summer holiday, my Mum would make up a picnic lunch, we'd hop on a 227 bus, go to Crystal Palace and spend the day in the park before going on to my Nan and Granddad, who, lived nearby, for tea. I drew pictures of the dinosaurs and, a few years later, took some of my first photos (not the ones exhibited here) with my newly acquired Kodak Instamatic.

Along with the bony occupants of the Natural History Museum, the dinosaurs of Crystal Palace fired my youthful fascination with prehistoric life to the extent that I created my own model park in a soup tureen filled with earth from the garden and decorated with stones, small plants and half a dozen plastic dinosaurs that collected from packets of Shreddies breakfast cereal...

The chief failing of my replica was revealed when I attempted to create a lake in which to put the figure of the pleisosaurus. Every time I filled the lake the water disappeared until all the denizens and the vegetation sunk in primordial ooze!

The original lake has, fortunately proved rather more enduring...

Over the years, I came to learn that many of the sculptures were anatomically inaccurate: one creature appears only as a head emerging from the water (left), because all Hawkins had to go on was a fossilized skull. But I never lost my affection for the great beasts - even when they were re-painted for the umpteenth time in the most unsuitably garish colours.

Now, however, the dinosaurs of South London have been superbly restored: the several dozen layers of corroded paint have been removed and the great beasts live once more. True, they may prove something of a disappointment to kids brought up on the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park, but for me they are as dynamic and wondrous as when I entered their realm as a seven-year-old...

For a contemporary reaction to the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, check out a recent posting on button's blog...

Images: Dinosaurs today by Brain Sibley © 2008