'In another eighteen months London will rejoice in a New Tower of Babel, piercing the skies some 150 feet higher than the renowned Eiffel Tower of Paris. Not only will the Watkin Tower look down 150 feet on the Eiffel Tower, but it will be capable of taking up three times as many passengers at a time.’
A proposed site was found in Wembley, Middlesex - then a small hamlet to the North-West of London - and designs were invited with a 500 guinea prize for the winner. Sixty-eight designs were submitted including Albert Brunel’s vision of a granite tower twice the height of the Eiffel, a plan by the Peternevouro company of Constantinople for a conical tower some 1,070 feet high called the ‘Upas Tree of Java’, and a design by J H M Harrison-Vasey which featured two and a half miles of spiralling road, a railway and ‘a captive parachute to hold 4 persons, regulated by a brake’.
One of the more curious designs was submitted by Arnold F Hills, Director of the Thames Ironworks and Shipbuilding Company and also President of the London Vegetarian Society. He put forward ‘Ye Vegetarian Tower’, which was shaped like an Egyptian monolith on four sturdy legs and topped by a 1/12th scale pyramid of Giza that ‘would house a colony of vegetarians growing fruit and vegetables in hanging gardens’. The structure would also have housed a temple, an international store, a club, museum, library and hotel as well as apartments with ‘a rent proportionate to their Alpine altitude.’
However, the prize and the contract were awarded to the firm of Stewart, MacLaren and Dunn of London, who suggested a structure that looked remarkably similar to the Tour d’Eiffel – just taller and with eight legs rather than four. It proposed two observation decks along with restaurants, theatres, Turkish baths, a ninety bedroom hotel and, at the very top of the tower, an astronomical observatory.
The remarkably precise cost of building this 1,200 feet tall iron giant was £352,222. Watkin, rather cheekily, approached Gustave Eiffel himself to supervise the build but he declined, stating that, if he did, ‘the French people would not think me so good a Frenchman as I hope I am.’ The job was therefore passed to Sir Benjamin Baker, designer of Scotland’s Forth Railway Bridge, and the site was duly prepared.
Watkin was a visionary but his imagination often outstripped his budget and many of his more grandiose plans never got off the drawing board (including an early version of the channel tunnel). While he had envisaged an amusement park around his tower with boating lakes, a waterfall, ornamental gardens, and cricket and football pitches, all that actually materialised was a very nice park and a new train station. His plan had been to build a railway line that connected Manchester and Sheffield to London (and, ultimately, to Paris) via Wembley Park so that people from all over the country, and, indeed, Europe, could come and marvel at the tower and its surroundings. But the tide of world events was flowing against him and the British government had other plans for their money.
In 1889 Prime Minister Lord Salisbury had passed the Naval Defence Act which allowed him to fund the largest ever expansion of the Navy in peacetime. It cost £20 million of public money, a staggering amount when, at the time, you could build the world’s tallest tower for the price of a modern day semi-detached house. In a climate where such massive spending was taking place, money for what some were already calling ‘Watkin’s Folly’ was not forthcoming.
Even before construction began in 1891, the design had to be modified from eight to four legs to reduce costs. But, despite the problems, the park itself proved to be very popular with those Londoners who could afford to visit. It offered fresh country air as a break from the industrial smog of the city and, once the first stage of the tower was completed (to a height of 155ft) people could travel by elevator up to a viewing platform to admire the surrounding countryside. Amazingly, photos do exist from this time:
However, four years into construction, the building company went into voluntary liquidation and then the land under the tower began to subside. Wembley was quite a marshy area in those days and the additional pressure exerted on the foundations by the reduction in legs caused the tower to start leaning. For safety reasons, the lifts were shut down and the tower was closed to visitors.
No more money to complete the project was forthcoming. Britain had just fought a series of expensive overseas wars - the Second Boer War (1899-1902) alone had drained the government’s coffers of £217 million – and with progress halted and public enthusiasm waning, the project attracted the nickname of ‘The London Stump’.
Watkin himself had retired from public office in 1894 following a stroke and died in 1901 leaving the tower without a champion. This was the final nail in the project’s coffin.
The part-built structure remained standing and gathering rust until 1907 when it was finally destroyed with explosives.
But all was not entirely lost. The park that Watkin had created remained as popular as ever and, in order to recoup its losses, the tower construction company turned to house building, creating the Wembley suburb that we know today. And his Wembley Park train station is now part of the London underground network.
The park still exists although it has changed beyond all recognition. Wembley Stadium was built on the site of the tower in 1923, as was the new stadium (which opened in 2007) , and the park has since become the site of the OVO Arena (formerly the Empire Pool Wembley), the Conference Centre, the Square of Fame, several hotels, apartments, flats and a school.
It is busier now than it has ever been, which might have been some comfort to Watkin if he could have known.
You can view a catalogue of all of the designs for the tower at the fantastic Public Domain Review website here.
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