Watkins Folly Tower Wembley, follies and folly towers at follytowers.com (original) (raw)

Original un-enhanced Photograph from here.

It came about after Sir Edward Watkins, a Victorian railway owner and entrepreneur, had returned from Paris full of excitement and ideas after seeing the newly built Eiffel Tower.
Watkins was a man with a lot of ideas however, some good, and some not so viable for the times. These included a Channel tunnel for trains, a tunnel between Scotland and Ireland, and a ship canal across Ireland itself, the latter two have never materialised even after nearly 140 years.

A Design Competition:
Once back in London he decided that England needed its own tower, so he set about getting one built on some land he owned at Wembley.

A competition was duly run for people to enter designs, but it did not produce any suitable admissions, one submission nearly accepted was for a construction over 1200 feet high.
Next Gustave Eiffel himself [ Stephen Sauvestre was the Architect, Eiffel was the contractor] was approached to see if he would design the tower, but, not unsurprisingly, he declined. Finally the design commission was given to Sir Benjamin Baker, unfortunately the workmanship did not stand the test of time so well as Sir Benjamin's other noted work, the Fourth Bridge across the Firth of Forth at Queensferry, Scotland.

The spot chosen for this new venture, was derelict land near 'Wembley Park', the park at that time was a golf course though, a far cry from the Stadium that eventually was built there in the 1920's at a cost [then] of 3/4 of a million pounds [UK].

Work Starts:
Work started there in 1892, with the laying of the foundations. With the benifit of hindsight it seems that maybe more prepartion might have been beneficial, as it was this area of the work that eventually - though not solely - led to the tower's demise.
In 1896 [some accounts say 1895] the first stage was finished. It was decided to open this to the public, with the completion being scheduled later on, when finances permitted. The tower's height at the time was only a mere 155 foot, against its French rival which boasted 986 feet, size is everything !

The whole affair was surrounded by a pleasure garden which also included a lake, but despite being an initial attraction, interest soon declined.
Shortly afterwards when the foundations moved, and the wonderfully named 'Tower Construction Company' ran into finicial problams, the project was abandoned.
Interestingly the designer Sir Benjamin Baker, who had obviously not investigated the ground sufficiently prior to building, seems to have got away unscathed, as poor old Sir Edward was the person to have his name attached to the tower, when it later became known as 'Watkin's Folly'.

The End:
The painful end finally came in 1907, when it was blown up, resulting in 2500 tons of scrap steel. The Eiffel Tower incidentally, had about 8000 tons of steel in its construction at that time. I can recall seeing a photograph at one time that showed a local council building that utilised some of the steel work in its construction, so maybe parts do still survive.
The site was next used for the British Empire Exhibition, - one of those flag waving exercises for British Imperialism that were popular at the time - , and then it became the site of the Wembley Football Stadium. This too has recently been demolished and is scheduled for rebuilding to provide a newer and better version, - much like Watkin's Folly was meant to have been.