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A canada goose ducks under water, in the background a mosasaurus crawls out.
Dinosaur Court
This series of sculpted dinosaurs and extinct mammals was commissioned in 1854 and unveiled in 1856. This was designed to accompany the Crystal Palace in its new home in Bromley.
The beasts were built by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, and were the first of their kind. Hawkins was assisted with Sir Richard Owen providing some technical guidance on the dinosaurs.
The design of some of these dinosaurs are rather innacurate, but others are believed to be quite realistic.
Crystal Palace Park came from the Penge Place estate when, in 1854, the Crystal Palace was moved from Hyde Park (where it was set up in 1851 for The Great Exhibition).
The Crystal Palace was designed by Joseph Paxton, who also played a role in the relocation and designing the new site with its Italian gardens and terraces.
The area waned in the late c19th, and despite hosting the Festival of Empire in 1911, the managing company declared bankruptcy. In 1913 the Earl of Plymouth purchased it to save it, and a public supscription was raised to purchase it for the nation.
It was a naval training ground during the Great War, after which it was the first Imperial War Museum.
The 1920s saw a programme of restoration and rejuvenation, but 30 November 1936 an office fire broke out and the building burned down.
Since then the Park has hosted various events and partial development. Today it is primarily a public park.
Taken in Crystal Palace
Yeah, I happened to watch Jurassic World.
This is just the head. I have got the rest of the body, but it needs improvement. As you can see I have sink-folded everything which on the one hand gives the mouth a hinge, (handy for biting other dinosaurs) but also makes the head very thick.
Sculptures of prehistoric animals with associated geological strata including lead mine. Constructed between 1852 and 1855 for The Crystal Palace Company on a twenty acre site. The prehistoric animals were constructed out of re-constituted stone on a framework of iron rods on brick plinths by Benjamin Waterhouse Hawkins, an artist and sculptor who specialised in natural history subjects, with advice on their authenticity by Sir Richard Owen. The associated geological strata and lead mine were probably laid out by David Thomas Ansted, consulting geologist, but constructed by James Campbell using geological rocks. The landscape was designed to represent the geology of Britain from the Primary (Pre-Cambrian and Lower Palaeolithic) rocks through the Secondary (Upper Palaeolithic-Upper Cretaceous) and Tertiary (Tertiary and Quaternary) eras with economic rocks, geological structures and reconstructions of associated animals and reptiles on the lakeside and islands. To the south west of the site facing the lower lake is a cliff constructed to illustrate the coal formation with old red sandstone at the base, new red sandstone above and mountain limestone and millstone grit above this. To the south west of this is a thre quarters scale representation of a Derbyshire lead mine with cave complete with stalactites. To the east is the Secondary island illustrating the Secondary era with geological features including tilted red sandstone and in turn Lias Oolite and Wealden rocks, surmounted by chalk at the head of the island. On top of the rocks are reconstructions of animals recovered from these geological formations, two Dicynodonts and three Labrinthodonts from New Red Sandstone, three Icthyosaurs and three Plesiosaurs from the Lias, two Teleosaurus, two Pterodactyls re-constructed in fibreglass of the Oolite and Chalk, one Megalosaurus from Stonefield Slate and its prey from the Weald, two Iguanodons and one Hyaelosaurus and the chalk marine monster Mosasaurus. Originally the lake water rose and fell as the park fountains played, alternately submerging and revealing the aquatic animals. Separated from the Secondary island by a weir is the Tertiary island with animals placed on a geological backdrop of worked aggregates representing this era's relatively unconsolidated rocks. These comprise two Palaeotheriums and three Anoplotheriums from the Paris basin, one Megatherium from South America and four Megaceros or "Irish Elk". Further planned reconstructions for the Secondary era and none of the Primary era were ever constructed becase the project ran into financial difficulties and was terminated in 1855.
STATEMENT OF IMPORTANCE: This was the first attempt to accurately re-construct the three dinosaur species known to the scientific world by the 1850s within their geological environment and the sculptures and associated geological strata form a unique display of the state of palaeological understanding in the 1850s, opened five years before the publication of Darwin's "Origin of Species". Of exceptional historic interest in a national and probably international context. EH Listing