Winter Gardens live dangerously. Inspired by the splendour and popularity of Joseph Paxton’s Crystal Palace, completed for the Great Exhibition of 1851, architects aspired to create People’s Palaces and, from the first, they have been uncertain investments. The earliest were built by entrepreneurial Victorians, who saw soaring iron and glass roofs as the architecture of a new age, appropriate for conservatories, exhibition halls, covered markets and railway termini.
Winter Gardens were usually erected in seaside resorts and spas with the intention of extending the summer season into spring and autumn and even winter itself. In addition, they might provide indoor attractions on cloudy and rainy summer days. They began simply as glasshouses, luxuriant with plants and foliage, but quickly acquired further spaces for promenading, eating, drinking and entertainment.
To add to their appeal, their architecture was deliberately spectacular. Take the Winter Gardens at Cheltenham in Gloucestershire, designed by local architect J. T. Darby in 1876–78, with a balloon roof to rival that of the Petit Palais in Paris. It was conceived with a skating rink, for a sport then briefly enjoying great popularity. In 1895, the town corporation invested a further £10,000 in the building, but it was demolished in 1942.
Where these buildings have survived, the race is now on not merely to return them to their former glory, but to allow them to earn their keep. The most famous recent campaign of this kind perhaps concerns the Blackpool Winter Gardens. They opened in 1878 and grew by stages to include the Empress Ballroom of 1896, the Olympia exhibition hall of 1930 and the Opera House of 1939.
Denne historien er fra February 19, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Denne historien er fra February 19, 2020-utgaven av Country Life UK.
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Save our family farms
IT Tremains to be seen whether the Government will listen to the more than 20,000 farming people who thronged Whitehall in central London on November 19 to protest against changes to inheritance tax that could destroy countless family farms, but the impact of the good-hearted, sombre crowds was immediate and positive.
A very good dog
THE Spanish Pointer (1766–68) by Stubbs, a landmark painting in that it is the artist’s first depiction of a dog, has only been exhibited once in the 250 years since it was painted.
The great astral sneeze
Aurora Borealis, linked to celestial reindeer, firefoxes and assassinations, is one of Nature's most mesmerising, if fickle displays and has made headlines this year. Harry Pearson finds out why
'What a good boy am I'
We think of them as the stuff of childhood, but nursery rhymes such as Little Jack Horner tell tales of decidedly adult carryings-on, discovers Ian Morton
Forever a chorister
The music-and way of living-of the cabaret performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey was rooted in his upbringing as a cathedral chorister, as his sister, Sarah Sands, discovered after his death
Best of British
In this collection of short (5,000-6,000-word) pen portraits, writes the author, 'I wanted to present a number of \"Great British Commanders\" as individuals; not because I am a devotee of the \"great man, or woman, school of history\", but simply because the task is interesting.' It is, and so are Michael Clarke's choices.
Old habits die hard
Once an antique dealer, always an antique dealer, even well into retirement age, as a crop of interesting sales past and future proves
It takes the biscuit
Biscuit tins, with their whimsical shapes and delightful motifs, spark nostalgic memories of grandmother's sweet tea, but they are a remarkably recent invention. Matthew Dennison pays tribute to the ingenious Victorians who devised them
It's always darkest before the dawn
After witnessing a particularly lacklustre and insipid dawn on a leaden November day, John Lewis-Stempel takes solace in the fleeting appearance of a rare black fox and a kestrel in hot pursuit of a pipistrelle bat
Tarrying in the mulberry shade
On a visit to the Gainsborough Museum in Sudbury, Suffolk, in August, I lost my husband for half an hour and began to get nervous. Fortunately, an attendant had spotted him vanishing under the cloak of the old mulberry tree in the garden.
