This feature first appeared in April 2024 on Londonist: Time Machine, our much-praised history newsletter. To be the first to read new history features like this, sign up for free here.
Joseph Paxton already had form when it came to great glass buildings.
The Crystal Palace was a wonder of the world, built for the Great Exhibition of 1851. It was the largest glass building ever seen. But its architect Joseph Paxton had built another “world’s greatest glass structure” a decade earlier.
In 1841, Paxton had turned the aristocratic heads of Derbyshire with this highly original building in the gardens of Chatsworth House:
This is the Great Conservatory, the largest glass building in the world when it was completed. It measured 84 metres in length and 19 metres in height, but a better sense of the scale can be gained by noticing the tiny figure to the right of that central leylandii.
Its curving, crystalline form looks very modern, so imagine how futuristic it must have looked almost 200 years ago.
Paxton didn’t create this beaut single-handedly but worked with architect Decimus Burton. It’s not entirely clear which elements can be attributed to which man. It seems that Paxton worked out the modular construction of glass and wood, while Burton gave it architectural form. The sources are contradictory, though most contemporary accounts mention only Paxton. Either way, Paxton developed skills and experience that would become invaluable during the planning of the Crystal Palace.
The Great Conservatory was built for the 6th Duke of Devonshire, whose family have owned Chatsworth since Tudor times, and remain there to this day. The Duke wanted to create a tropical paradise in the Derbyshire Dales, complete with ferns, aquatic plants, and vibrant flowers. The conservatory was to be so large that it could accommodate a central thoroughfare wide enough for two carriages to pass.
The Chatsworth estate, just 15 miles from Sheffield, is not known for its tropical climate, and no amount of amazing glazing could trap enough heat to nurture the plant collection through the colder months.
The Duke was happy to splash out. To keep the glasshouse balmy, he commissioned six miles of underfloor piping. This bewilderment of plumbing was fed hot water from eight coal-fired boilers. These required some 300 tonnes of the black stuff to get the Duke’s exotics through one winter.
But that wasn't the end of the logistical gymnastics. It wouldn’t do to have the filthy coal-heavers coming and going about the gardens. Instead, the fuel was smuggled in below ground on a subterranean railway. The smoke was similarly concealed from view, funnelled underground for half a mile, out to a distant chimney in the woods. I’m not sure if the Guinness Book of World Records has ever entertained a category for “World’s most expensive and ludicrously polluting greenhouse,” but this would surely have claimed the title.
“In no other country under God’s blue sky could a similar structure be erected by private wealth,” crowed the syndicated press upon its completion. “It will alone be sufficient to extend the Duke’s fame to other generations.”
This much proved prophetic, for here you are, eight or so generations later, reading all about the Duke and his botanical extravagance.
The conservatory endured well into the 20th century. But come the First World War and the nation had better things to do with its manpower and coal reserves than heat up a toff’s cycads. The plants died out and the vast greenhouse fell into disuse. It was demolished in 1920 with the help of 150lbs of explosives — an explosion heard seven miles away.
It’s a well known saying that people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones. In this case, the glass house was thrown away, but the stones remain. If you visit the site today (and you should; Chatsworth is an exceptional day out), then you can still see the stone supporting walls that Paxton built all those years ago. Look, here they are:
Inside these 180-year-old borders now grows a hedge maze, a coniferous counterpart to the perplexing plumbing of yore. Sadly, it’s crafted from nothing more exotic than yew. In a nod to the site’s tropical past, however, a number of palm species can be spied beside the adjacent flower beds. The maze might not be as impressive as the world’s biggest greenhouse, but it’s certainly better for the environment.
Paxton’s glass legacy is now mostly in the imagination. His Great Conservatory was blown up and his Crystal Palace burned to the ground 16 years later. But we can still enjoy some of his handiwork at Chatsworth. He served the Duke not only as an architect and engineer but also as a master gardener. Many of the most notable corners of the garden were Paxton’s doing, including the Pinetum, Rock Garden and the 90 metre Emperor Fountain, which is arguably Chatsworth’s most iconic feature.
Paxton died at his home in Sydenham in 1865, but he’s buried up here near Chatsworth in the village of Edensor. He has one further memorial in the county. This versatile man also served as a Director of the Midland Railway. It was while at a board meeting at Derby station that he first sketched his idea for a great Crystal Palace. The incident and the doodle are immortalised on this plaque on Platform 1:
Note again that date: 11 June 1850. The completed Crystal Palace opened on 1 May 1851. To go from an initial sketch to a glittering megastructure in under 11 months feels impossibly optimistic today. Paxton’s glass was more than half-full.
