Grace's Guide To British Industrial History

Registered UK Charity (No. 115342)

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 167,010 pages of information and 246,691 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Grace's Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 147,919 pages of information and 233,587 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

Wembley Park Tower

From Graces Guide
1890. Stewart, McLaren and Dunn's design for a Great Tower for London, height 1200ft.
1890. John Graham's design for a Great Tower for London, height 1300ft.
1890. Design for a Great Tower for London, height 1290ft.

Sir Edward William Watkin (1819-1901) was responsible for building the Wembley Park Tower, otherwise known as "The Great Tower of London", or "Watkin's Folly", on what is now the site of Wembley Stadium. The "Folly" was intended to exceed the Eiffel Tower in height after that was successfully built and erected by 1889. The Wembley tower would be 150 ft higher than the Eiffel Tower, and would be made from mild steel rather than wrought iron.

A competition was held; the prize winning design was by Stewart, McLaren and Dunn of Westminster. However this design was not adopted. Sir Benjamin Baker was subsequently instructed to proceed with the work on a simpler and cheaper plan; Mr. Stewart was appointed as joint engineer.

Accommodating the lifts in the Eiffel Tower was made very difficult by a requirement to have clear space between the legs between the ground and the first stage platform. No such constraint was applied at Wembley, allowing a straight vertical lift.

1893 Construction work began by Mr H. Heenan

1893 Description and illustrations of the structure in August [1]

1894 The steel work up to the first landing had been completed but it never progressed any further.

1896 The first stage of the Wembley Tower, being constructed by the Metropolitan Tower Construction Co, had been completed and visitors would be able to ascend to a platform of about 1 acre in extent, some 150 feet above ground, to view the countryside. The tower had been constructed by Mr Hammersely Heenan, using 3000 tons of steel[2].

1904 The tower was later demolished and the steelwork sold to Italy as scrap early in the twentieth century [3]


See Also

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Sources of Information

  1. The Engineer 1893/09/08
  2. North Eastern Daily Gazette, 18 May 1896
  3. SS 03/01/2012