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Abstract
This essay explores the interior spaces of three nineteenth-century, London-based, large-scale, multi-functional, public leisure centres — the Alexandra Palace, the Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens, and the People’s Palace. Thanks to the possibilities of iron and glass, and the model provided by the Crystal Palace, the new buildings were constructed from the 1870s onwards, offering a new building type and providing London’s working-class population with the recreation that the earlier open-air Pleasure Gardens had offered the aristocracy and the middles classes, albeit indoors. A mixture of entrepreneurialism and social reform drove the development of the new venues. This article seeks to unpack the complex interior spaces of these new buildings, focusing on the components they had in common, among them winter gardens, great halls and ice-skating rinks. The tensions that arose from the attempts, made in all three centres, to combine high cultural educational offerings with more popular passive entertainment are explored, as are the experiences of the visitors. The conclusion briefly considers the legacy of nineteenth-century winter gardens and people’s palaces in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries.
Notes on contributor
Penny Sparke is a Professor of Design History and Director of the Modern Interiors Research Centre at Kingston University. She studied French Literature at the University of Sussex and was awarded a PhD at Brighton Polytechnic in 1975. She taught the History of Design at Brighton Polytechnic (1975–1982) and the Royal College of Art (1982–1999). From 1999 to 2014 she was Dean of the Faculty of Art, Design & Music and Pro Vice-Chancellor at Kingston University. Her publications include As Long as It’s Pink: The Sexual Politics of Taste (1995); Elsie de Wolfe: The Birth of Modern Interior Decoration (2005); and The Modern Interior (2008).
Notes
1 For more on the history of leisure in this period read: J. Walvin, Leisure and Society, 1830–1950 (London: Longman, 1978); J. Walton and J. Walvin (eds.), Leisure in Britain 1780–1939 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2012; H. Cunningham, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c. 1780–c.1880 (New York: St Martin Press, 1980); A. Brodie, Tourism and the Changing Face of Britain (Swindon: Historic England, 2019).
2 P. Bailey quoted in L. Nead, Victorian Babylon: People, Streets and iomages in Nineteenth-Century London (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000), 112.
3 Nead, Victorian Babylon, 5.
4 The theatres and music venues in both the Alexandra Palace (where the theatre seated 3000, as many as London’s Drury Lane Theatre) and the Royal Aquarium (in which in 1879 the theatre came under new management and was renamed the Imperial Theatre) were directly comparable in their range of offerings, prices and their cross-class appeal as their West End equivalents which grew in number and popularity in the same years as the winter gardens and people’s palaces.
5 See map in S.J. Downing, The English Pleasure Garden (London: Shire Publications, 2011), 9.
6 J. Flanders, Consuming Passions: Leisure and Pleasure in Victorian Britain (London: Harper Press 2006), 280.
7 Nead, Victorian Babylon, 9.
8 J.M. Munro, The Royal Aquarium: Failure of a Victorian Compromise (Beirut, Lebanon: American University of Beirut Press, 1971), 6.
9 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthaeum_Hove [accessed 25 June 2019].
10 See A. Brodie, The Seafront (Swindon: Historic England), 2018.
11 L. Pearson, The People’s Palaces, Britain’s Seaside Pleasure Buildings 1870–1914 (London: Barracuda, 1991), 27.
12 See J. K. Walton, Riding on Rainbows: Blackpool Pleasure Beach and its Place in British Popular Culture (St Albans: Skelter Publishing, 2007); V. Toulmin, Blackpool Pleasure Beach (Blackpool: Boco Publishing, 2011); J. Kane, A Whirl of Wonder!’ British Amusement Parks and the Architecture of Pleasure 1900–1939 (Unpublished PhD thesis, The Bartlett, UCL, University of London, 2007); J. Kane, The Architecture of Pleasure: British Amusement Parks and the Architecture of Pleasure 1900- (Farnham: Ashgate, 2013; https://historicengland.org.uk/images-books/publications/iha-historic-amusement-parks-fairground-rides/ [accessed 25 June 2019].
13 M.K. McLean, ‘Re-Thinking Late-Victorian Slum Fiction: The Crowd and Imperialism at Home’, English Literature in Transition, 1880–1920, 54:1 (2011), (London: ELT Press), 30.
14 A. Shaw, ‘London Polytechnics and People’s Palaces’, The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine (New York: Vol. XL, June 1890), 163.
15 In his book, Leisure in the Industrial Revolution, c. 1780–1880 of 1980, social historian, Hugh Cunningham, explained that ‘rational recreation’ was the ideal that nineteenth-century middle-class reformers hoped to impose on the urban working class of their day. They believed, he wrote, that ‘leisure activities should be controlled, ordered, and improving’ (p. 90). See also P. Bailey, Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978).
16 R. Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace: A History (London: Greater London Council, 1975), 6.
17 W. Besant, All Sorts and Conditions of Men (London: Harper, 1882), 28.
18 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era 30th January 1876, 4.
19 ‘The Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 6 January 1883, 4.
20 B. Phillips, ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, The Times 9 October 1875, 6.
21 E. Sherson, London’s Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century (London: John Lane The Bodley Head Ltd., 1925), 297.
22 Phillips, ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, 7.
23 In addition to the three structures being discussed here, Olympia’s Grand Hall (known originally as the Royal Agricultural Hall) was opened in 1886 and what would eventually become Earls Court opened in the following year.
24 See K. Nichols and S.V. Turner (eds.), After 1851: The Material and Visual Cultures of the Crystal Palace at Sydenham (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2017).
25 J. Harris, Alexandra Palace: A Hidden History (Stroud, Gloucestershire, 2005), 17.
26 https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101268256-alexandra-palace-including-former-alexandra-palace-station-to-north-alexandra-ward#.XA6VdPZ2sxM, 1. [accessed 10 December 2018].
27 K. Gay, Palace on the Hill: A History of Alexandra Palace and Park (London: Hornsey Historial Society, 1992), 7.
28 https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101268256-alexandra-palace-including-former-alexandra-palace-station-to-north-alexandra-ward#.XA6VdPZ2sxM, 2. [accessed 10 December 2018].
29 Gay, Palace on the Hill, 11.
30 ‘The Alexandra Palace’, Municipal Journal, 9 March 1900, 8.
31 Gay, Palace on the Hill, 22.
32 Harris, Alexandra Palace, 22.
33 https://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101268256-alexandra-palace-including-former-alexandra-palace-station-to-north-alexandra-ward#.XA6VdPZ2sxM, 2 [accessed 10 December 2018].
34 Gay, Palace on the Hill, 28.
35 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 30 January 1876, 4.
36 ‘The Royal Aquarium’, New York Times, 12 February 1876, 7.
37 C. Dickens (Jr), Dickens’s Dictionary of London: An Unconventional Handbook (London: Charles Dicken and Evans, 1879), 23.
38 Dickens (Jr) Dickens’s Dictionary of London, 24.
39 A place of healthy recreation and education for the poor of London, the People’s Palace was built in the wake of the bread riots of 1885–6 and aimed to provide a more wholesome form of entertainment to East-Enders than that offered by the area’s gin palaces and gambling dens.
40 http://britishlistedbuildings.co.uk/101268256-alaxandra-palace-including-former-alexandra-palace-station-to-north-alexxandra-ward#.XA5-PvZ2sxM, 1. [accessed 18 December 2018].
41 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 30 January 1876, 4.
42 Shaw, ‘London Polytechnics and People’s Palaces’, 174.
43 Phillips ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, 6.
44 Ibid.
45 Gay, Palace on the Hill, 18.
46 See M. Pimlott, The Public Interior as Idea and Project (The Netherlands: Jap Sam Books, 2016).
47 Pimlott, The Public Interior as Idea and Project, 37.
48 Although ice-skating had been going on for centuries, from the mid-1870s it became fashionable in London for a decade or so. The Glaciarum was opened in 1876 on the Kings Road in Chelsea and was popular with upper-class men and women. A number of other rinks were also opened in these years, among them the examples in the leisure centres under discussion. See: https://www.museumoflondon.org/discover/ice-skating-fashion-craze. [accessed 26 June 2019].
49 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, January 30 1876, 4.
50 A. and C. Black, Black’s Guide to London and its environs (8th edition) (London: Black, Adams and Charles, 1882), 64.
51 J. Banerjee, ‘John Johnson and Alfred Meeson, Alexandra Palace, North London’, http://www.victorianweb.org/art/architecture/johnson/2.html, 1. [accessed 18 December 2018].
52 Black, Black’s Guide to London and its environs (8th edition), 62.
53 Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace, 238.
54 Black, Black’s Guide to London and its environs (8th edition), 62.
55 ibid.
56 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 30 January 1876, 4.
57 Sherson, London’s Lost Theatres of the Nineteenth Century, 5.
58 Shaw, ‘London Polytechnics and People’s Palaces’, 174.
59 Shaw, ‘London Polytechnics and People’s Palaces’, 175.
60 ibid.
61 ‘The People’s Palace’, Charles Dickens Jr et al., Dickens Dictionary of London (London, New York: Macmillan, 1908), 25.
62 Nead, Victorian Babylon, 113.
63 Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace, 56.
64 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 30 January 1876, 4.
65 Munro, The Royal Aquarium, 10.
66 Phillips, ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, 6.
67 ‘The Royal Aquarium,’ New York Times, 12 February 1876, 7.
68 ‘Opening of the Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 30 January 1896, 4.
69 Munro, The Royal Aquarium, 14.
70 Munro, The Royal Aquarium, 8–9.
71 Phillips, ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, 6.
72 The Palace Journal (Vol, ix, no. 216, May 31, 1892), 1.
73 ‘The Alexandra Palace’, Living London: Its Work and Its Play, its Humor and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes, Vol III, 1902, vol III, 201.
74 ‘The Alexandra Palace’, Routledge’s Popular Guide to London and its suburbs (London: Routledge, 1897), 43.
75 ‘History of the National Chrysanthemum Society’ (originally published in National Chrysanthemum Society Yearbook, 1996) on: www.nationalchrysanthemumsociety.co.uk/history-ncs/4553231108, 1. [accessed 20 December 2019].
76 Gay, Palace on the Hill, 19.
77 Munro, The Royal Aquarium, 18.
78 N. Pemberton and M. Worboys, ‘The surprising history of dog shows’, https://www.historyextra.com/period/Victorian/the-surprising-history-of-victorian-dog-shows, p. 1. [accessed 27 June 2019].
79 Shaw, ‘London Polytechnics and People’s Palaces’, 176.
80 Circuses also offered entertainment to visitors in fixed central London sites. The first building to stand where the Alhambra Theatre stood in Leicester Square, for example, was The Royal Panopticon of Science and Art which opened in 1854 and closed in 1856. The Alhambra Palace was opened in 1856 under E.T. Smith at first as a circus and then a music hall in 1860. See https://wcclibraries.wordpress.com/tag/royal-aquarium-theatre/ [accessed 26 June 2019].
81 Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace, 88.
82 Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace, 98.
83 Carrington, Alexandra Park and Palace, 88.
84 ‘The Royal Aquarium’, The Era, 12 September 1885, 4.
85 Phillips, ‘The Royal Aquarium and Summer and Winter Gardens’, 6.
86 ibid.
87 ‘Royal Aquarium and Winter Gardens’ on http://lostbritain.uk/site/royal-aquarium-and-winter-garden/, 3. [accessed 11 October 2018].
88 See C. Baudelaire, The Painter of Modern Life (New York: Da Capo Press, 1964 [1863]).
89 ‘The Royal Aquarium’, New York Times, 12 February 1876, 7.
90 G.R. Sims (ed.), ‘A Country Cousin’s Day in Town: A High Dive at the Royal Aquarium’, Living London: Its Work and Its Play, its Humor and its Pathos, its Sights and its Scenes, II (1902), 345.