Well, if it’s 31 December, it’s… yes, of course: 170th anniversary of the dinner Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, creator of the Crystal Palace dinosaurs, gave for 21 leading academics and other VIPs inside the Iguanodon.
They had eight courses, including mock turtle soup, pigeon pie, pheasants, woodcocks and snipes, and claret, sherry, madeira and port. The only problem with the number invited was they didn’t all fit inside — some were at an adjacent table.
Hawkins was a sculptor and artist who specialised in natural history, and when the Crystal Palace from the Great Exhibition of 1851 was moved from Hyde Park to Penge Place on Sydenham Hill in South London, he was the man approached by the Crystal Palace Company.
They were going to be turning the land into a park with gardens and artificial lakes. This being an era when the likes of Mary Anning were unearthing remarkable prehistoric creatures, what better thing for this grand, new/recycled tourist attraction?
Hawkins worked with palaeontologist Richard Owen, the man who had coined the word ‘dinosaur’, on beasts
Of course, this was the olden days, so the iguanodon was still rather a chunky beast, and still had a horn on its nose, rather than thumb spikes.
The dinner was designed to capitalise on interest in the new park and the dinosaur models, so the guests (all men) included newspaper editors as well as scientists and investors in the park. They arrived at 5pm, and were, apparently, still there, merry, at midnight.
Hawkins drew his own picture of the dinner, which again shows the stage needed to get into the model and serve dinner to people inside it — but we have no idea where the model was at the time. it may already have been in situ, or still in Hawkins’ studio.
We do know that Richard Owen was seated at the head of the table, “quite literally”, according to the Friends of Crystal Palace Dinosaurs: “sitting where the brain was located” — and, from the report in the London Illustrated News, we know that there were plans for further models, which hadn’t yet been constructed — not least a Dinornis, or New Zealand’s giant Moa:
Hawkins also wanted to create a mammoth, a dodo and others, and kept working after the park was opened in 1854, but in spring 1855, the Crystal Palace Company’s directors decided costs were too high, and Hawkins’ funding dried up.
As scientific knowledge improved, and people realised how inaccurate they were, the dinosaurs’ reputation fell — a situation not helped by the 1936 fire which destroyed the centrepiece of the tourist attraction of which they were part.
The models became overgrown by their surrounding plants, and the park fell into disrepair. The dinosaurs were restored in 1952, but some were moved to more exposed spots, increasing the wear and tear they suffered.
Finally, in 1973, they were Grade II listed, and completely restored in 2002. Five years after that, they were made Grade I. And, as of last year, there’s a book about them, with iguanodons on the front.
(Yes, it is a bit late to put that on your Christmas list. Sorry.)
