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Some of you may not be that familiar with the history of the British Conservatory, those that are may like to be reminded of some of the milestones that conservatory development has passed on the way to today. There are, I believe, some interesting parallels that may help you predict the future.
There is some evidence of Roman attempts to provide structures that let in the light but kept out the cold, making use of sheets of mica in place of glass. The British origins of conservatories appear to be based on ideas borrowed from Italy and date back to Sir Walter Raleigh's time, in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Along with potatoes and tobacco, Sir Walter is alleged to have brought back orange pips from one of his overseas trips, which eventually found their way to which would class as an early conservatory at Beddington in Surrey, in the home of Sir Frances Carew. Orange trees were flourishing in Beddington from the 1580s, making use of early conservatories apparently constructed from timber, with some glazing. The general idea seems to have been to provide removable panels that could be detached so as to let in light and sunshine on mild days, but replaced when frost was expected.
Additionally, two coal burning
stoves were provided, which were apparently very effective at providing
heat, presumably at the expense of non-
Of course, being timber, the conservatory required serious maintenance from time to time, and was apparently completely replaced by a brick structure in the eighteenth century, a wall of which remains to this day.
Designs seem to have moved fairly rapidly on to more permanent brick structures and many of these have survived to the present day. Designs from the Georgian era feature a coal or charcoal fired central heating systems, which might suggest one reason for moving to brick from combustible timber.
The growing of tropical fruit seems to have been the driving force for conservatories throughout the 18th century. After oranges came pineapples (see picture left). This was built for the Earl of Dunmore and now shares its landscape with Kincardine Bridge and Grangemouth Oil refinery.
People began to regard conservatories as more than just devices for growing fruit. It became customary, apparently, to remove the over wintered plants from the conservatory so that the building could be used to house social gatherings during the summer months. It must have been about this time that the problem of the conservatory bases presented itself, since up until then, conservatories had been constructed so as to enclose fruit trees planted in the ground. In other words, they did not have a floor.
One way round the problem is shown here, at Frampton Court in Gloucestershire, which possesses two floors and several fireplaces, and it seems that, whilst the lower floor continued its horticultural purpose, the upper floor was intended for social entertainment.
None of these designs possessed glass roofs, but the increasing pressure for all year round indoor gardening took full advantage of improvements in glazing to introduce them. Roof glazing was introduced during the 1790s, and by the early 19th century, theories about catching the suns rays were being advanced, one being that roof glazing should be at normal incidence to gain maximum benefit.
This resulted in two kinds of structure, the ridge and furrow style (which was the development of one of the foremost conservatory designers of the time, Joseph Paxton) and what I would call the onion dome form.
Victorian Conservatories
The early Nineteenth Century was typified by technically daring designs, with opportunities to span larger areas in more spectacular ways because of the availability of wrought and cast iron as framing materials. The age was perhaps crowned by the building used for The Great Exhibition of 1851.
It's worth recounting the story of this Mother of all Conservatories, because it evokes uncanny comparisons with the Millennium Dome. The Great Exhibition was intended to celebrate the technological excellence of all developed countries. Companies from around the world, but particularly Europe were invited to exhibit their products to paying visitors, not in a competitive way but as a celebration of all the benefits springing from the Industrial Revolution. The problem lay in
how to house it. An international competition was arranged for designs to be put forward but the Royal Commission set up to review the entrants liked none of them, including one proposed by Brunel. Paxton, who by then had acquired an international reputation as a conservatory designer, had not entered the competition (which had been for a conventional building rather than a conservatory); but time was running out and the commission was becoming desperate. In fact, in their desperation, they produced a design of their own, described as a dome of gigantic proportions. Apparently the dome idea became so unpopular with the general public that Paxton offered an alternative design based on the conservatories he had designed at Chatsworth. His proposal was for a glazed construction on an enormous scale; he produced a conservatory triumph.
It pushed technology to its limits, especially glazing, and used huge quantities of materials; nearly 4,000 tons of cast iron, over half a million cubic feet of timber, and over 900,000 square feet of glass. Apparently this represented more than 30 % of the UK's annual glass capacity at the time. This must have presented emergency glaziers with major supply headaches for a while!
The Crystal Palace, as a journalist of the day christened it, was a monument to Victorian conservatory engineering. A feature of the design was repetition of a basic design unit. This allowed the structure to be put together very quickly, and to be dismantled and re erected quite easily, too. It was re built at Sydenham as a Winter Garden, and survived for a further 85 years, until being destroyed by fire in 1936.
Like the Millennium Dome, it had been intended for a short period of use, and to exhibit British Industry at its best. In the six months of opening it attracted over six million visitors; more than the Dome. This should be compared with a population in England and Wales at that time of 18 million, less than a third of today's figure.
What is perhaps even more startling, the enterprise was financed privately. No Government money was involved and it made a profit of about a quarter of a million pounds, which was used to start the construction of the great museums in the Cromwell Road.
Joseph Paxton's design showed how large spans could be glazed to provide secure and reliable protection from the elements.
The nineteenth century was the great age of conservatory designs, driven by technical ambition, fuelled by the leisure interest of the wealthy and enabled by technological developments in glazing, in iron feature of the home, often forming both the largest and the most frequently used reception room.
Indeed, it is possible that the very popularity of the conservatory in the nineteenth century led to its decline in the twentieth. Respected architects of the early years of the 2Oth century came to disapprove of the grotesque mixture of influences in conservatories and this may have contributed to their decline.
There is no doubt that fashion plays a large part in conservatories; but the decline of the conservatory in the 2Oth century was more to do with the First World War, the imposition of Death Duties, and the high cost of maintaining structures of glass and wrought iron. Many of the elegant structures that had characterised the golden age of conservatory building fell into disrepair, or burnt down or were abandoned in the face of crippling maintenance costs. The Great Conservatory that Paxton had built at Chatsworth for the Duke of Devonshire was unceremoniously blown up because it became too expensive to maintain.
Fortunately, many fine examples do survive to delight the eye and to provide guidance for future designs. Those at Kew Gardens, for example, are stunning, to many people more interesting than their contents.
However, the domestic conservatory went into decline after the First World War and remained in the doldrums until well into the 1960s.
Resurgence
It has been said that history is the discovering of the constant and universal principles of human nature. One of these, perhaps, is a steadfast desire to enjoy the benefits of the garden with the comforts of the house; to make conservatories part of our living experience. Given the technical stimulus of iron frames and cheap glass, the market boomed; but went into decline because maintenance, heating and repair all became too much to pay for the living experience. Style is not enough: function is of equal importance, and today's conservatory has to be easy to maintain and use. As soon as new, lower maintenance materials became available after the Second World War, designers started to find ways of satisfying this need at an affordable cost. In effect, the pattern of development which took place in the last quarter of the nineteenth century has been repeated in the last quarter of the twentieth, except that in place of wrought iron and glass we have aluminium, pvc and polycarbonate.
Ed Du Bois, (Advisor to the Conservatory Association) Extract from Conservatory Dilemmas, Conservatory Magazine, July August 2001.
History
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