Wyld's Great Globe

The globe was hollow and contained a staircase and elevated platforms which members of the public could climb in order to view the surface of the Earth on its concave interior, modelled in plaster of Paris, complete with mountain ranges and rivers all to scale.

Though the novelty of a concave globe continued to win accolades for Wyld, he was faced with competition from other educational attractions, and had to adapt the entertainments on offer in order to maintain visitor numbers.

Wyld held topical exhibitions and gave lectures on current events, and attempted to transfer ownership of the attraction to the "Cosmos Institute" to establish a national geographic and ethnological museum.

Described in Charles Dickens' Household Words as a "howling desert",[9] the gardens were at that time an insalubrious area, "with broken railings, a receptacle for dead cats and every kind of abomination"[10] and a meeting place for "ne'er well-to-do youths".

[note 4] Although Wyld and the Tulks attempted to negotiate with the owner of the buildings on the north side of the square, Henry Webb, they were not able to reach an agreement, and they eventually signed the contract without his assent.

[15] Wyld obviously still felt insecure about his claim on the land and, although he was not an MP himself between 1852 and 1857,[16] over the years a number of bills surfaced in Parliament aimed at either establishing the title to the gardens in his favour or confirming the validity of the erection of the globe building.

[17] It appears that Wyld initially intended to seek public funding for the construction but after an estimate of the costs he considered it was unlikely that he would be able to secure reimbursement and decided instead on a purely commercial venture.

As he was embroiled in negotiations with Henry Webb at the same time, Wyld decided that he would have to settle for something less ambitious and to "give up a great part of the original design of the building".

At this meeting he claimed that in addition to the £3,000 he had paid for the freehold he had also agreed to pay £4,500 for the building and the works would cost £12,000; he would have to spend around £21,800 on the project in total, which included the outlay for new gardens and a new enclosure railing.

Abraham's designs included a new supporting wall for the globe itself (correcting what he saw as Welch's error of leaving the trusses unsupported), as well as buildings to cover the whole area of the gardens which Wyld would be able to rent out to recoup some of his costs.

[25] Details of the statue's treatment are unclear; for the most part it was reported that it was lowered into a specially constructed pit that was located beneath the building when it was erected, but there were also stories that it was sawn up and buried or that Irish workers had dismantled it and taken pieces for themselves.

Although he had been contemplating the idea for many years, Wyld quickly realised once work was underway that the project called not just for money but for inventiveness; there were setbacks in the design and manufacture of the globe that "demanded an amount of labour and a degree of application, anxiety, and responsibility, of the extent of which no adequate estimate could be formed".

The Georama had been smaller and of a simpler construction though, using material and paper draped over an iron frame, and the methods employed there would not have been applicable to Wyld's larger, more robust version.

[34] Abraham's design, although described as having "no pretension",[33] did not meet with universal approval: for some who remembered Leicester Square as the home of artists Hogarth and Reynolds, the "bastard Byzantine architecture"[35] was "hideous"[10] and out of place.

[39] The building, which was reminiscent of the Coliseum in Regent's Park,[40] was entered through the newly laid out gardens via one of four loggias facing north (the main entrance[33]), south, east and west, which opened into a large vestibule paved with "patent lava" and from there through turnstiles into Jermyn's circular corridor.

[33] Four large galleries[note 7] were later built between the loggias to surround the internal corridor and there was a refreshment stand to service the queues waiting to enter the globe.

[19][22] Wyld complained that the building had not been finished to a high standard: there were cracks in the plaster and brickwork, leaks from rain, and there were complaints about the smell from the blocked drains almost as soon as the attraction opened to the public.

[43] Although the staircase and platforms allowed closer examination of individual sections, the structure prevented an appreciation of the globe as a single unit, and later there were plans for its removal.

[48] Some ventilation was provided by a system housed at the North Pole, which had the advantage of being quite featureless and located at the top of the globe, but the heat generated from the gas lighting and the mass of visitors meant the attraction was still uncomfortably hot; Henry Morley remarked that "the heat reflected on all sides from the concave surfaces rises to make a little Sahara of the North Pole Station",[38] and Punch commented that the temperature was "equal to that of any baker's oven.

As the British Quarterly Review remarked in an article on the problems of accurately representing the Earth's features, Wyld would have had to construct a globe with three times the diameter to unify the scales.

Active volcanoes were picked out with a fiery red with cotton wool smoke, and snowy mountains with white crystal that sparkled in the gas light.

[53] In the first few weeks of the Globe's operation it was seen by an array of "distinguished personages",[54] including Prince Albert (to whom Wyld had dedicated the project),[55] Lord Castlereagh, the Duke of Wellington, the Austrian Ambassador and the King of Belgium.

[64][note 10] The jury in the case was unable to reach a verdict,[66] and while opinions differed on whether Wyld had been duped, it was clear that with topical exhibitions he had found a way to reinvigorate the attraction.

[63] When a large collection of captured Russian weaponry and uniforms was added in 1855 this exhibit attracted greater attention and was visited by Queen Victoria and Prince Albert.

[71] Lectures on the exhibits and current events such as the Crimean War or the construction of the Panama Canal were held at regular intervals and "guides to knowledge" were positioned in the various galleries to assist and inform the visiting public.

[63] The Panopticon was constructed by a consortium hoping to take advantage of the market for scientific and cultural attractions, but like the Great Globe it struggled to draw sufficient visitors.

The agreement with the Tulks expired in April 1862, and in the same month, Henry Webb threatened legal action because of Wyld's failure to remove the building and restore the gardens.

[63] Even before the globe was dismantled, the building and gardens had deteriorated to such a degree that, speaking in Parliament in July 1861, Lord Overstone commented that "in addition to the unsightliness of the structure that had been created in the centre, and the accumulation of everything that was filthy, unseemly, and improper which existed in the enclosure, scenes took place there at a late hour which were most discreditable to the Metropolis".

The rider may have already been stolen and sold for scrap,[28] and the horse quickly became a target for vandalism; the legs were removed and body was painted with black and white spots.

Despite the bill having been proposed precisely for the case of Leicester Square gardens,[77] the attempted seizure was found to be unlawful,[14] and the Board failed to get the decision reversed on appeal.